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- A technical fault on the transmission system plunged much of the country into darkness on Saturday night
- Many Pakistanis were also finding amusement in the sheer amount of dark humor taking place online
RAWALPINDI: As a massive power blackout hit whole Pakistan on Saturday, Twitterati lit up the dark night with even darker humor.
Since the outage was reportedly caused by a transmission line trip, not an attack, coup, or apocalypse, the country’s ruling party urged Pakistanis not to worry, with a peace sign emoji.
But some Twitter users took the blackout as an opportunity to make a jab or two at the government, saying that the country was being restarted in a similar way that we all hope a quick “reset” might repair our computers or gaming consoles.
Twitter user @Mahobili guessed that Prime Minister Imran Khan must have asked his advisers to turn the country “off and on” to fix things.
Lawyer Salaar Khan tweeted out a photo of baffled-looking Khan, with a caption that perhaps Pakistan’s leader had forgotten to pay the country’s electricity bill.
A meme format popular on Twitter, with a screengrab from the US television show Glee was posted by Twitter user @Commiedi: “Electricity providers tonight: I am going to create a country that is so dark.”
Similarly, Twitter user @Jahanzaibb_ used the popular Spiderman meme with Pakistanis asking one another if they had light at home.
A classic throwback was to the tendency of some of Pakistan’s religious right to blame any negative event on women’s clothing. Twitter user @Freakonomist5 wrote: “Go head daughters of the nation, wear jeans more.”
Another user @ArhumL92 responded that religious leader Maulana Tariq Jamil, known for finding the fault in jeans would have to blame leggings.
Twitter user @Hassan_Javid jested that this was the moment Pakistan’s “candle mafia,” was waiting for, a tongue in cheek remark on Pakistan’s government and media’s tendency to label anything a mafia.
Another popular joke was that a possible coup was taking place.
Photographer Rizwan Pehelwan cracked a joke that any 90’s Bollywood fan would love, by inserting the word “coup,” into “Choli Ke Peeche,” a classic song from the film “Khalnayak.”
Many Pakistanis were also finding amusement in the sheer amount of humor taking place online.
Twitter user @Kha_nobya tweeted out a meme format of the Titanic sinking and Pakistanis taking the role of the band that played as it went down.
And lastly, Twitter user @Guilty4fries nailed an all-encompassing joke for the evening, dubbing all that went on online “dark humor.”