This morning, internet media and news company ScoopWhoop posted an article alleging a “huge fuck-up” (read: scientific inaccuracy) in the design of the Pakistani flag, claiming that the star in the country’s flag was positioned incorrectly. The article itself was titled, “In 69 Years Of Independence, Has Nobody Noticed This Glaring Error In Pakistan’s National Flag?”
The author also needlessly dragged Indian-Pakistani rivalry into the mix with this gem of a quote:
“We’re not saying that we’re better than Pakistan but we’ll let the results of different wars between the two countries decide that. We can also use the head-to-head stats in Cricket World Cups but we’re better than that.
Flag toh design ho nahi paata, Kashmir lene chale hai!”
But HOLD UP.
Indians were not having this tomfoolery.
Subscribers to ScoopWhoop quickly turned against the article, citing offence based on respect for national flags, issues with the choice of words, arguments for artistic representation, the unnecessary Kashmir slag and a call to generate peace between the two countries.
The post has since been removed within an hour of its posting from all social media including Facebook and Twitter, and the link to the article now returns a 404 Error. Good luck, Pradyuman!
While the overwhelmingly negative response was predominantly on Facebook, a few people took to Twitter to criticize ScoopWhoop for the article.
https://twitter.com/angadsingh06/status/731400187546079232
Wow, this @scoopwhoop article is a different level of stupid. https://t.co/cgKrNUDH4E
— the taming of the shrewsbury biscuit (@MrNarci) May 14, 2016
The article is an expansion of Gazabpost’s blog post, which interestingly enough, takes great care NOT to slag off Pakistan’s national flag and history.
He writes, “Well we respect each country and its national symbols and the flag of another country…Here we are just paying attention to the error of his (Amiruddin’s) designing. It is certainly not intended to insult Pakistan.” (translated)
Clearly, this point was lost to ScoopWhoop. It’s great that ScoopWhoop took down the article, though. Let’s hope they’ll issue a statement acknowledging their mistake.
Let us know what you think about this.
