A total of three individuals have been killed and fourteen injured in the aftermath of the US elections during skirmishes between two sets of memes in Pakistan.
“Yes, I can confirm that the Pakistani memeverse has seen some terrible violence in the last 48 hours,” said Saima Hassan from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
The two sides: one broadly saying that outgoing US President Donald Trump is behaving childishly after losing the elections, like Imran Khan after the 2013 polls; the other, saying he is behaving like Nawaz Sharif after the 2018 polls.
From laying over Imran Khan’s ‘chaar halqay’ audio over Donald Trumps visuals to conflating Ivanka Trump and Maryam Nawaz through deepfake AI technology, the current skirmish shows no signs of slowing down.
“Both sides felt wronged in each of the aforementioned years, hence the deployment of memes,” said Dr Umair Javed, a political sociologist at LUMS.
“One side is protesting against what seem to be the most glaringly engineered elections since 2002. Whereas the other side was protesting against the other side getting more votes in 2013.”
