Mike Babayan was in a hookah lounge when he heard the blast on Saturday night. Dubai – a glittering playground for the ultra‑wealthy and oligarchs, promoted as one of the safest places on Earth – was struck by Iranian missiles. Phones buzzed with emergency alerts urging residents to seek shelter. Yet Dubai’s nightlife proved unshaken. “Everyone just went back to their hookah and food a minute later,” Babayan said.
As a precaution, that evening he left his primary residence in the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower and a landmark of the Dubai skyline, for a home farther from the city centre. From there he could hear the detonations more clearly – roughly one every 20 to 30 minutes, he reported. “But people are just having coffee, strolling around as if nothing’s wrong. It’s quite surreal.”
Babayan, 23, is originally from Los Angeles. He moved to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ most populous city, in 2020 to work in finance. He now shares his life as a day‑trader and posts about his lifestyle to nearly 150,000 followers on TikTok. Over the weekend he turned his camera to the Dubai attacks, the city’s night skyline glowing behind him. He said he felt obliged to counter false information; when an AI‑generated video showed the Burj Khalifa on fire, he told his audience it was fabricated.
He also made a brief personal remark. In one clip he claimed Dubai felt safer than New York, Los Angeles or London, even amid the conflict. “Where else could I walk at night wearing a $60,000 watch without being disturbed? That’s more important to me than worrying about a drone hitting me, which I think is unlikely,” he said.
Iran launched missiles and drones at neighbouring Gulf states in retaliation for U.S.–Israeli strikes that have killed more than 700 Iranians, including 168 children at a girls’ elementary school, according to Iranian state media. Caught off guard, influencers based in Dubai reacted in the manner most familiar to them: by filling the information gap with footage of a luxurious life interrupted by war.
Will Bailey, a British travel influencer with close to 500,000 followers, watched the missiles from a beach club. The DJ kept the music playing as Bailey and others posted videos of themselves watching the nearby Fairmont The Palm hotel shrouded in smoke. (A comment on his post read: “Why is everyone still partying?”) Another visiting influencer shared his view of the attack from the deck of a yacht party.
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