This paper argues that understanding the diversity of social protest is crucial to conceptualising the character, inspiration, and ambition of Iran’s Gen-Z-led uprising. Through this, it addresses several considerable gaps within the social science literature. Previously, few scholars have theorised the specificity of the visual, as a powerful political tool. There is a growing, but limited, literature on social media as a vehicle for change. Furthermore, a lot of this research has focused on Twitter – a platform barely used by Zoomers. TikTok and Instagram are social media platforms that depend on visuality and audio. As such, they create their own specific forms of messaging. A core lens, through which to understand the protests, is generational. This paper seeks to apply a methodology of “Critical Visual Analysis” to the Iranian protests – adapting it to include audio analysis. It uses this carefully devised, process-driven method, to characterise the Iranian protests as distinctly modern, secular, and tech-savvy. In doing so, it aims to contribute to future studies into social protest, encouraging them to challenge previously held assumptions. This applies not only to the discipline, but to Iranian studies specifically. The majority of Iran’s Gen-Z protesters were born after 9/11. As such, they do not possess strong anti-Western views. What they do remember is Khamenei’s brutal suppression of the 2009 Green Movement, his denial of vaccines, and the downing of Flight 752. The Islamic Republic is no longer able to control the youth’s access to the wider world, and their hope of a more liberal life. Although the Iranian youth are more active on TikTok, the Iranian diaspora have been fundamental to the visibility of the protests on Twitter. For a sense of perspective, in the first 2 months of protests there were 300 million Tweets on the Persian Mahsa_Amini hashtag – that is 50 million more than there have been on the Ukraine hashtag since the war began. Many of these tweets are accompanied with visuality, depicting the brutality of the regime and strength of the protesters. Together, visuality and audio define the character of contemporary protest. It is their specific character across social media, that needs properly theorising.