On July 14, I wrote about Taâarof ; the millennia-old Persian art of flattery, refusal, and ritualised courtesy. Itâs often misunderstood in the West as âsaying no three times,â but itâs really about emotional high-context negotiation, reading the room before the room speaks.
The next day, on July 15, Sharghzadeh posted a powerful video, calling it Iranian Diaspora Fatigue. A searing takedown of the Iranian Diaspora’s toxic racial insecurities, internalised Islamophobia, misogyny masked as modernity, and cultural denialism. Heâs mostly right.
What he calls fatigue, Iâd call poisoned flattery turned inward. Because Tehranglos are no longer performing Taâarof to honour guests or elders. They’re doing it to whiteness itself. Hoping if they refuse our own identity long enough, maybe the West will say: âYes, come in.â
Thatâs not assimilation. Thatâs exhaustion. And the worst part? Even the racism feels borrowed; against Arabs, against Afghans, against Iranians back home. Itâs not even Iranian. This isnât just about cringe TikToks or awkward panel guests. Itâs about who gets to narrate Persian culture. And what gets flattened when tradition becomes product. I was stunned when Zachary Newman â one of the most prominent Persian-Jewish American chefs â endorsed Netanyahuâs strikes on Iran. That moment crystallised something.
Sharghzadeh and I are saying the same thing: Persian culture is being gentrified by its own children. What survives isnât tradition. Itâs content. Itâs vibes. If Iran is an unreadable poem, diaspora is turning it into a slogan. If Iran is lived, diaspora is increasingly just captioned. And they wonder why they’re tired. Is the Persian diaspora preserving a culture, or just performing it for the algorithm?
