Yookay Futurism - How Britain’s Multicultural Utopia Fuelled An Online Culture War

An ever-evolving caricature of modern Britishness has given rise to the concept of the Yookay, whose visceral imagery is a first attempt at labelling this new reality.

There should be no doubt that the world of social media and the physical world are different entities, yet thanks to a combination of relative anonymity and the previously repercussion-free nature of online posting, these channels often act as the genesis point of ideas and views that go on to take hold within the real world. Long before issues are addressed in front of cameras in vox pop news segments or polled by Ipsos, they are shouted into the void of social media. The platforms act as a testing ground, living or dying by their validity and communal recognition, thanks to algorithms that will present the most engaging content to the masses.

Most posts, often resembling the deranged ramblings of a mad person, never make it that far, safely contained within their very personal one-person echo chambers on the profile page. Other posts get slightly further, still fringe, but gaining enough traction to fuel the creation of small communities and subcultures around that specific worldview. Then there are those that unite far greater proportions of society and have the potential to extend beyond the confines of social media, able to influence the real, physical world. This is what we saw with Trump, Brexit, and countless other establishment upsets in recent years, which left many on the outside dumbfounded at how supposedly fringe ideologies could suddenly be backed by large swathes of the population. Yet, for those following the rapid proliferation of these views through online channels, the outcomes were less surprising, as their acceptance by an ever-increasing number of users signalled that the ideas had taken hold and escaped the confines of social media.

This same pattern is now being repeated with the ‘Yookay’, which quickly achieved an ideological foothold online and is beginning to seep into mainstream cultural discourse. For those who are, for now, unfamiliar with the term ‘Yookay’ and its accompanying visceral imagery, put simply it is a phonetic respelling of ‘UK’. There have been attempts to rewrite its etymology, either to add more weight to the term or to discredit those who use it. But its true origin, if slightly disappointing to its critics, is from an anonymous Twitter user in 2023. The term is scarcely used in isolation, and instead gains the majority of its commentatorial weight from its combination with images and videos that depict a very specific vision of modern Britain. A nation in flux, trapped between the decaying and worn remnants of a past Britain and the incongruous newfangled representatives of a rapidly evolving new version. Like the depressed Chinese tourists whose European holiday diverged so significantly from their idyllic Parisian dream that on return to the mainland, they fall into a deep, irreversible stupor. So too can prolonged exposure to the near-endless catalogue of ‘Yookay’ imagery drive even the occasional Elgar listener to near suicide.

The ‘Yookay Aesthetic’, as it has now been termed, aims to weave a consistent narrative of Britain’s cultural decay through a timeline of stark, but admittedly varied, imagery. The more extreme posts are clear in their intention, one image depicts two illegal immigrants attempting to steal a swan from a public park, another of a kebab restaurant worker ‘preparing’ nondescript meat in a stolen shopping trolley using a blowtorch, a third of asylum seekers crossing the channel in a dinghy simultaneously recording a celebratory TikTok video. These depict a deeply unpleasant version of Britain, one that many ‘Yookay’ critics would be quick to dismiss as anomalous and universally not representative of the country, despite its struggles.

Then there is the second tier of posts, which highlight a less abrasive form of cultural erosion, featuring commonly occurring scenes that can’t be as easily dismissed as simply one-offs. Deserted town centres with rows of shuttered shopfronts, whose only signs of life are the hoards of turquoise-clad gentlemen in balaclavas, awaiting their next Deliveroo order outside a customerless McDonald's, filling the streets with a cacophony of international language. A traditional red telephone box with windows shattered, and whose only remaining function is as a recipient of senseless vandalism. Tube carriages, coated in obscenity-laden graffiti, with furnishings worn and tattered. These posts are also often discounted by those keen to defend the current state of Britain, exalting for instance, the merits of the evolving gig-economy, or refuting any suggestion that grubbied public transport is a valid concern.

Yet it is only in the final tier of posts, whose subtle messages are being put forward implicitly, hidden within the minds of the reader, that the true power of the Yookay motif is clear, as these become inaccessible to those who would be quick to criticise its claims. Each of these posts feels like it should be accompanied by a wink. A digital version of a conversation in a flat-roofed pub where a seemingly innocuous event is followed up with a reference to ‘the usual suspects’ in order to tie the story together, and reveal its true meaning. As a consequence, many of these posts appear to depict something fairly mundane that wouldn’t be noteworthy when performed by a ‘native Brit’, yet they take on an additional significance when undertaken by someone representative of a different culture. One post shows a man of Indian heritage eating with his hands on public transport. Another includes a year group picture for an inner-city London school where only a handful of pupils are white. A third is a screenshot from a TikTok video about English people trying Somali food, where the two hosts are non-white. Each of these is posted without a caption, yet they receive hundreds, and sometimes thousands of likes, with comments from those also in on the joke.

The reliance on implication, rather than outright criticism, within these final tier of posts, leads many on the outside to dismiss the entire Yookay phenomenon as just another form of online racism, which warrants no further consideration, and shouldn’t be analysed too closely. This is an approach that many in the media have already taken, writing off the more prescient and nuanced elements of its cultural critique as an all-encompassing act of xenophobia and ethnic hatred. Yet this would be missing the wider point. Britain’s steadfast attempt at mass cultural acceptance, through a constant reinforcement of the importance of different cultures, the metropolitan melting pot, and the need for a diverse society, has muddied the water so significantly that any cultural discussion is now impossible. Identities are increasingly fluid, with ethnicity, nationality, and race intertwined so inexplicably that absolute statements of one’s cultural identity are abandoned. This has, in large part, driven the newfound preoccupation with ‘British Values’ that is exploited by both ends of the political spectrum to either act as a catchall for anyone who wishes to consider themselves British, or a set of exclusionary criteria that must be met in order to do so.

The overwhelming desire for inclusion has instead prevented large swathes of the population from being able to align with their own cultural identity. If everyone is deemed to be British, then no one is. It loses all value as a concept when it is considered simply to be an ever-evolving and interchangeable term that can adapt to fit any narrative. As the applications of Britishness become ever more farcical and diverge from its original, and now historic, meaning, this has only helped to reinforce the message behind the ‘Yookay’. Those who seek to retain the definition of Britishness in line with its original conception inevitably end up down a path of viewing the world through a racial lens, as evidenced by the final tier of ‘Yookay’ posts. They feel comfortable interpreting the end-of-year class photograph as consisting of a small number of British students, the rest as foreign. Or that the two Englishmen trying Somalian food for the first time are actually two Somalis eating Somalian food. This is condemned by many, but it’s an understandable reactionary interpretation when the media is quick to embrace first-generation immigrants as representative of Britain, declaring that their values are ‘our’ values.

As levels of immigration have soared in recent years, the media’s myopic approach to inclusivity frequently embraces this cartoonish attempt at rewriting Britishness. It was asserted, unquestioningly, that this country was built by immigrants, that the most important historical figures were immigrants, and that the Britons to be most proud of today are immigrants. Any attempt at defining Britishness outside of a multicultural lens was banished to the realms of far-right bigotry. Historical figures were universally dismissed, art, theatre, and literature were replaced by ‘inclusive’ reinterpretations that centred minority voices. Why shouldn’t Henry V be a black woman? Even sport now had to be viewed through this lens, with adverts showing England’s football team without immigration, leaving only three players remaining on the field. Even the most childish and stereotypical understanding of Britain was refuted, with many, for instance, eager to remind you that Britain’s supposed national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala, so how dare you consider fish and chips as having any more cultural significance in this country than Fufu.

This sent a clear message: cultural heritage was important, invaluable even, but only when it concerned somewhere other than Britain. That the country’s great achievements stemmed solely from immigration, yet its failures and shame lie with the indefinable ‘native’ population. The ‘Yookay’ should therefore not be dismissed as simply another racist trope, or a meme that should have been contained within its far-right echo chamber, but rather a signifier of the cultural erosion that has taken place within the country. For a large subset of the population, there is a visceral feeling that times are changing for the worse, as they have lost their identity. They feel gaslit by the establishment and the media, as the foundations of their way of life are rapidly stripped away, to be ridiculed as a bygone era. That any attempt to justify their internal beliefs is met with fierce accusations of racism, hatred, xenophobia, or silence as their voices are banished to the fringes. Britain’s attempt at being a friend to all has made it a friend to none, its core values deemed to be no longer compatible in a multi-faith/ethnic/cultural world. The concept of the ‘Yookay’ is merely a first attempt at labelling this transition, one that is clearly imperfect, at times hateful, but whose dismissal will only further its adoption.