The Syrian uprising is the first social media war

This is how we see war in 2013: next to like buttons and view counters.

As a battle flared just west of Idlib, a contested city in northwest Syria, a camera was mounted on an old Kalashnikov rifle so the audience would have nearly the exact same perspective that a video game player has in blockbuster first-person shooters like Call of Duty or Counter-Strike.

The sound of gunfire mixes with an army of young men screaming “Allahu Akhbar!” Dozens of armed Syrian rebels sprint across an open field to storm a well-defended government checkpoint. An editor would later alternate between first-person action and a cameraman on a nearby hill filming the battle from a bird’s eye view.

When the rebels won, the video was guaranteed to be a viral hit.

Read more at the Daily Dot.