Last week we said it had been a slow week. The world might have taken just a bit of offence to that, because this week threw the kitchen sink and then some at us for the social media roundup, and that was despite social media in Pakistan (including Whatsapp) going down for a few hours on Friday.
There is a lot of ground to cover this week, with the cute little boy in that old picture with Imran Khan now being the former finance minister after a 19 day stint at the job, which makes us feel a little silly for discussing him as the PTI’s new posterboy, but not nearly as silly as it must be making the PTI bots feel that are now talking about the experience and maturity Shaukat Tareen brings to the job, not even three weeks after they were celebrating the injection of fresh blood and new ideas into the finance ministry.
We look at all this, the creeping and grubby hands o influencers in politics, why everyone that says they are a finance guru is not a finance guru, take stock of this week’s memes and try to asses the crazy side of twitter and more, as Profit’s Ariba Shahid brings you our social media roundup.
- Tilting at windmills
A super useful question for startup founders: is this crazy enough? https://t.co/hEbfxRvgas
— sameer (@sameerchishty) April 11, 2021
As kids, we were often told that we shouldn’t act crazy. That’s the whole schtick with growing up. But apparently, if you’re a startup founder, some level of craziness is encouraged. We could trace a long history of the ‘mad genius’ character archetype, but madness is encouraged in the hopes that someone will come up with an idea crazy enough that it will actually work. “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact,” writes the Bard. We wonder if he would have added ‘startup founder’ if he were writing in our day and age.
In all seriousness, it might take a very, very, crazy idea to get the team at Profit to follow deadlines. Right now we have Asana, but we invite all those crazy dreamers out there to make the lives’ of our senior editors easier.
- Influenza threat
The justifications have begun. It’s like GoP took a page from the restaurant industry’s playbook. Sweet talk to influenzas, get them free food and photo ops, and they will sweet talk for you.
— Ammar Khan (@rogueonomist) April 16, 2021
The GoP of Pakistan tried to pull off a PR masterclass. They invited people that are known for supporting the PTI (despite some tinelt criticism), who were invited to meet the PM and question the new finance minister. Like any regular PR exercise they were given the chance to ask questions, which in Pakistan is good enough to win these people over and eventually return back to their homes singing the praises of the government for giving them some attention. Influencers? More like influenza. Sadly, this wasn’t voluntary, it was the government using them knowing very well what they were doing, as @rogueonomist points out.
- Another one? Seriously?
IK is setting a great example of how to run a Federal Minister Trainee Program.
— Bilal Moon (@serialinvestor) April 16, 2021
We don’t mean to shame the government for having a fourth finance minister in 30 months, but that is definitely a high rate of turnover. Bilal Moon, a serial investor (as per his twitter), thinks that Imran Khan is running an MT program. Well, does that mean this reporter could be finance minister for a day, maybe an hour? Regardless, the government has had 4 finance ministers in 30 months. God only knows how many more are to come. Similarly, Osman Mohiuddin, ex banker and startup founder, says the situation we’re in is reminiscent of 2010. So if you’re wondering where the tabdeeli went, and came and went in 19 days in the shape of Hammad Azhar.
- Important lessons
https://twitter.com/daninomics/status/1382740321575055366?s=19
Dr Adnan Haider from IBA karachi comments on investment in unproductive assets that bring up capital gains on sale only. These assets do not produce any output as a result do not bring economic benefit and are just merely held.
- CFAs, it’s nothing personal
The ratio of finance resumes with some level of CFA completed vs knowledge retained is quite shocking. It would appear that the focus remains squarely on passing exams / collecting accreditations rather than learning. My advice: use that time investment more productively.
— Azam A. Khan (@AzamAKhan2) April 15, 2021
Just because you have a CFA doesn’t mean you’re a finance guru or even good at finance. Azam Khan shares his hiring woes with twitter. We also might point out that while Azam takes a more analytical approach and mentions retention and what is being taught to them, we would venture as far as to say most people claiming to be finance gurus are not really finance gurus, despite any qualifications that they may hold. Then again, this holds true for most things, there are countless talking heads out there.
- The state of the memes
People in 1980: “I bet we’ll have flying cars in 2021!”
2021: A dog-themed cryptocurrency has a market-cap larger than Ford.
— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. 💸 (@ParikPatelCFA) April 16, 2021
While this isnt Pakistan centric, the Pakistani admiration for dogecoin, a meme inspired crypto is not a surprise considering the country is meme obsessed. We haven’t had this much fun since GameStop.
- Internet, we have a problem
Mobile communication status in certain areas of #Karachi pic.twitter.com/P4xDYKI055
— Usama Qureshi (@UsamaQureshy) April 15, 2021
No internet. No social media. Is this second degree censorship? That said, how would we have done this roundup without the internet? VPN maybe? Of course not, we would never do something like that. We at Profit are all law abiding citizens to the greatest degree. We don’t even know what a VPN is. We would also like to apologise to all internet providers unfairly cussed and shouted at before everyone realised it was the government blocking social media sites and not PTCL’s fault (this time).
