The week's engagement pattern exposes a persistent gap in how the AI-and-social-media conversation gets framed: AI tools are most consequential not when they are the topic but when they are the medium. Iranian state-adjacent creators posting AI-generated animations depicting US aircraft as kebabs over a campfire achieved viral reach precisely because the content served an existing appetite for geopolitical spectacle. The algorithm did not manufacture the audience — the Hormuz standoff did. AI just lowered the production cost of the propaganda that rode it.