Unlike the rest of America, Osama Bin Laden’s death has not put me in a celebratory mood. It reminds me of 9/11, and therefore depresses me whether the devil is dead or not. Having said that, I found an article today that made me laugh so hard it’s worthy of sharing. Sohaib Athar is an Abbottabad IT consultant who noticed something was amiss when he saw a helicopter hovering. Without thinking too much into it, he engaged in a series of tweets including:
- “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)”
- “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope it’s not the start of something nasty”
- “The few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani”
- “People are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful.”
As it turns out, Athar was live-tweeting the Osama Bin Laden raid, and now every media outlet on the planet wants to interview him. In fact, after he heard Obama’s announcement, he immediately realized what he had done, and tweeted, “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.” In response to the media inquiries, he said, “Bin Laden is dead. I didn’t kill him. Please let me sleep now.” You gotta hand it to the guy — he’s certainly unfazed. To think, some people really don’t want their fifteen minutes.