The massive round that Airlift managed had a lot of people whispering and others shouting from the rooftops in celebration (including the Prime Minister) that Pakistan is truly open for business. The $85 million is obviously a good thing, even if it was good news in the middle of an otherwise heavy week for this country. Accents, wannabe socialists, memeing capability, and more all feature, as Ariba Shahid brings you this week’s social media roundup.
Startup mania
All of a sudden everyone is looking at the Pakistan 🇵🇰 startup ecosystem.
Spoiler Alert: you are already a year behind everyone else 😊. Not late, just behind and have A LOT of catching up to do 😎
— Rajive (@raj1ve) August 21, 2021
There has been a lot of startup talk this week. Are we complaining? Absolutely not! It’s always brilliant seeing Pakistan get the attention it deserves, especially when it comes to fostering the startup ecosystem. What can this all potentially mean? More investment, more employment, and hopefully more disruption. That is something we are all for over here – and we’ve been saying it for a while too, the startups are coming and the incumbents better be ready.
Rolling your Rs
Little or no value is given to good English by either clients or the boss. They just care about getting work done.
Just focus on your technical skills and rest will follow. https://t.co/jSUg7Ipksi
— Rasheed Narejo (@narejo) August 20, 2021
Your fancy accent shouldn’t matter if you’ve got the skills required for the job. Sadly, people do tend to get impressed by accents. Probably because of the colonial hangover we’re all suffering from. Someone with a private school education and a slight tilt in their tenor, and a few rolled Rs means they are more likely to get a job at E&Y or McKinsey than their possibly more qualified university classfellow that sounds barely comfortable in English. At the end of the day, the loss is going to be for these companies.
Streetcorner socialists
Should be space with the topic: problems with Capitalism. Surely there would be more to talk and agree about over there.
— Elon Mast (@HadesInShades) August 21, 2021
Elon Mast needs to realize that on twitter there are more capitalists masquerading as socialists. And no one likes to agree on twitter. Reminds us of the time a certain red-hearted and red in every other way, guitar wielding professor from LUMS used to host socialist gatherings in his massive house which had in its basement a high-end furniture store that their mother owned – which of course paid horrible wages to its workers. On a side note, what was up with people on twitter this week? Don’t you guys have jobs?
Stolen data
Long story short, the FBR was using a pirated version of the Microsoft software.
Jugaar ki hadd hai 🤦🏻♀️ https://t.co/BsvKNFMGz6— Amber Rahim Shamsi (@AmberRShamsi) August 20, 2021
Gotta love Pakistan. You can get expensive software worth hundreds of dollars for a mere Rs 100. The downside is you may get hacked at some point. So what if precious data gets in the hands of the wrong people? Who cares after all, especially if the data is someone else’s.
Playing it cool
😂 (via @hyzaidi ) pic.twitter.com/hgjwMHwCXF
— farid alvie (@faridalvie) August 18, 2021
Did you get any calls this week? Our prime minister sure did. How do we know? Well the PM Office made sure to share tacky infographics to inform everyone of the calls he got. Sadly, no call from Biden yet. We’re assuming that particular infographic will be the best of them all. Unless of course the Prime Minister is trying to make Biden jealous with all of the calls he is getting. In that case, when(if) the call eventually comes, we advise that the honourable PM play it cool and answer with a sultry ‘hey’ and not post any infographics. In the meanwhile, here is some Ali that got a call from his dad to get yoghurt. Twitter doesn’t get any better than this.
Bollywood business
Next year, Akshay Kumar will make a movie on how he evacuated all the Embassy people from Afghanistan. Specially, Rahim Chacha (Muslim Uncle) who would be working as a cook in the Embassy. https://t.co/QPgMIpa7iI
— Sameer Siddiqui (@SenatorSameer) August 17, 2021
Geopolitics aside, Bollywood knows what sells and is able to profit off of it. They’ve got the right special FX teams and don’t base all their movies on the army. Bollywood truly is good at business.
Gold medal in memes
Waooo, got featured on an English vocabulary book 😆 pic.twitter.com/ihkcMGosC2
— Sarim Akhtar (@msarimakhtar) August 17, 2021
Pakistanis are famous for their memes. Gone are the days of us parading our mangoes and footballs as our prime produce – it is the memes that make a mark. If making or being memes was a business, we’d be the top performers. No questions asked. If there was an Olympic sport called Memeing, we’d bring back Gold. Then again, the Pakistan Sports Board might find a way to mess that up to.
Could you repeat that please?
Have to admit I’ve started actively used WhatsApp voice messages, in what is a huge u turn from my previous stance. Also people sound like crackheads when you play their messages at 2x
— Zarrar Khuhro (@ZarrarKhuhro) August 17, 2021
Whatsapp voice notes at 2x speed is a game changer. Makes it easier to avoid our bosses on phone calls because you could just send a voice note to explain things. Sadly, it doesn’t work with people that speak too fast. For some, might we even suggest a slow down option?
A note on being wrong
Journalist.
Af-Pak scholar. https://t.co/UbsTYgtsXB— Waqas (@worqas) August 17, 2021
Waqas didn’t have to do us dirty that bad. Ouch, our feelings are hurt. But we’re glad we have some sort of job security. We would, however, like to say in our defence that while appalling editorial standards do exist in many places, journalists also take on a lot of the messy work that no one else wants to do. Yes, we mess up, and when we do hopefully we have it in us to recognise it – at least that is how it should be. We’re trying guys.
