In the second week of January 2024, a video of President William Ruto addressing a handful of Kenyans in Nyahururu town started doing rounds on social media, with netizens noticing that most of the residents appeared to be unbothered with the high-profile speaker and were hobbling about on their usual errands.

The razzmatazz that defined his political campaigns in the lead-up to the August 2022 elections, with his charisma rattling opponents wherever he went, was conspicuously missing. As the town strolled by, only pausing to listen once in a while, someone could be heard saying, in one of the clips, almost in disbelief; "Imagine that that man, there, is the president."