A 33-year-old Pakistani man has come to Internet fame for unknowingly complaining on Twitter about the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Sohaib Athar, 33, noticed the sounds of a helicopter from his home on Sunday night and complained about it on Twitter.
Irony writ large as blogger moves to find a safer neighborhood
Sohaib Athar has become an overnight sensation after he unknowingly live-blogged the “Bin Laden raid,” the incursion of U.S. forces into a Pakistan town that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Athar has a Twitter page under the name “ReallyVirtual,” according to MSNBC. When helicopters entered Abbottobad, Athar took to Twitter to announce a helicopter was hovering overhead about 1 a.m. He kept tweeting, including the discovery that the helicopters were foreign and that one had crashed. Following the time on his updates, he realized several hours later it was the raid that claimed the life of Osama bin Laden. He had moved to Abbottobad from Lahore because it was considered a safer city.
There goes the neighborhood
Athar’s live-blogging of the night of the raid is funny; Athar has a sarcastic sense of humor and acute sense of irony. After noting the presence of helicopters, he warns of getting out his “swatter,” though he makes an apology to the pilot later when he finds out that a helicopter crashed. He bemoans that “funny – moving to Abbottobad was part of the being ‘safer’ strategy” and that “I need to sleep, but Osama bin Laden had to pick this day to die.” He immediately followed by saying “Uh oh, I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without even knowing it.”
Sohaib Athar has been exhausted by the number of requests for interviews with the mainstream media, and he makes it clear he is not interested. However, he does mention his new-found celebrity by wryly saying he didn’t think his name would trend on Twitter “until I’d released a couple rock albums” and award-winning software.
Obama, Osama and social media
Facebook has exploded with comments and pages related to the death of Osama bin Laden. An “Osama bin Laden is Dead” Facebook page, according to CNN, has gone viral with nearly 200,000 fans. An Obama meme is even starting to take off, featuring humorous captions like “Sorry about not releasing my long form birth certificate, I was busy killing Osama bin Laden.”
Sources
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42855474/ns/world_news-death_of_bin_laden/
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/05/02/osama.dead.facebook.mashable/index.html?iref=NS1
Really Virtua Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual
Obama Meme photo: http://dannygreer.com/post/5132072113/obama-sorry-it-took-so-long-to-get-u-a-copy-of
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