NATO’s Twitter account was flooded with thousands of derisive replies on Thursday after the military alliance compared the situation in Ukraine to half a dozen fictional films.
“We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo,” the widely-mocked message insisted.
“We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.”
As of publication, the original Twitter post had already been viewed over 16 million times in less than 24 hours. But judging by the replies, social media users weren’t exactly impressed by the jumble of seemingly-random pop culture references.
“Russia should win for this tweet alone,” read one popular post that had quickly racked up nearly 16,000 likes – almost four times as many as the original message. “This is a real tweet from the official NATO account,” another incredulous user pointed out.
“We're being forced into a third World War by people who write tweets like this,” Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar mused.
Hundreds of other sarcastic replies mocked the aggressive transatlantic military alliance for being “cringe” or displaying “Reddit” behavior.
But a handful of users responded more seriously to the sheer absurdity of the situation, pointing out the propagandistic logic of the films being referenced by NATO.
“Those stories are all carefully written fiction designed to entertain audiences and generate billions of dollars in profit,” cartoonist George Alexopoulos noted, before asking NATO: “...What are you trying to say?”
It’s far from the military alliance’s first digital fiasco over the past year. Last March, NATO’s official Twitter page uploaded a photo of a female Ukrainian militant adorned with the Nazi ‘Sonnenrad’ to celebrate International Women's Day.
The photo was hastily deleted after outrage from users, with a spokesman for the organization reportedly saying that NATO didn’t notice the symbol before uploading the photo.