This will please cat lovers. The entire world has heard about the terrorist atrocities in Paris which have now led to a police lockdown in Brussels, Belgium, while the authorities search for terrorists and prevent an imminent attack. The city has gone quiet. The schools and universities are shut. The underground is not running and the citizens of Brussels have been asked by the police not to report police movements on social media websites.
In response to that request the citizens of Brussels have decided to post pictures of cats as an act of defiance against the brutality of the terrorists. It’s a nice touch and it’s very nice to see cats becoming useful in this way. That may sound a bit peculiar but this really is a very nice, positive use of pictures of cats which as we all know been on the Internet for a very long time now entertaining people. Now the pictures are a symbol of defiance and a statement of normality.
Social media specialist Mateusz Kukulka said that he has not seen so many lolcat pictures on the Internet for a very long time. It appears that the first person to have the idea of posting cats on the Internet rather than reports about police movements came from Hugo Janssen, a cameraman for a Dutch television channel who tweeted, “instead of tweets about police activity in Brussels, here is a picture of our cat Mozart”.
It didn’t take long for many others to catch on to that idea. People started to post pictures of cats looking suspicious or scared. And then this evolved into cats becoming Star Wars storm troopers, in a surrealist touch.
Lieseth Corens tweeted: “antiterrorism action = Brussels lockdown. Belgians asked not to report on police movements, so they…Post cat pictures. My people, I love you.”
Jan Van den Bulk tweeted: “Police asked not to tweet, Belgians obliged by only tweeting funny pics. We broke Twitter. Brilliant.”
There was international support from other countries including Ireland. The Belgian authorities thanked the citizens for complying with their request:
“The federal prosecutor and the police services must thank the press and social media users for taking into account the needs of the ongoing operation.”
Source: Daily Mail
