Commuters reportedly broke windows due to lack of ventilation in train stuck underground tdy.sg/sVD2Rh
— TODAY (@TODAYonline) December 15, 2011
Someone recently told me that if you tried, you could find the humour in any sort of situation. Tragedies, disasters, deaths of public figures. While I am inclined to disagree, there might be some glimmer of truth in that, if the recent reactions to the MRT disruptions are anything to go by.
For those who have been living on a different continent, or under a rock, in the last week, Singapore’s MRT system has been hit with three major disruptions: the Circle Line on the 14th, the North-South Line on the 15th, and again on the 17th.
MRT service outage again in Singapore – tweets are coming in and we aint waiting for a press release. Catch the report on @primetimeasia #fb
— Timothy W Go™ (@timothygo_only1) December 15, 2011
In the last two cases, trains underground stalled on the tracks and lost power, resulting in commuters having to leave through the emergency exits and walk down the tracks in the tunnel to the next station.
gf’s sis says most prob gonna walk on tracks, cos train stuck underground btwn stations. This means its major fault
— Desmond Kwan (@DesmondKwan) December 15, 2011
smrt commuters forced to break windows due to lack of ventilation in train stuck underground. yfrog.com/nu5z99j #smrtruinslives
— KC Lee (@existentialsoup) December 15, 2011
This picture of the smashed train window quickly went viral as the apocalypse-movie-like quality of the situation began sinking in.
It was a serious situation, of course. Running out of air to breathe, that’s a matter of life and death. Literally.
That didn’t stop Singaporeans from taking the picture and running with it. Who was it, really, that broke the window?
Real #SMRT window-breaking culprit found! (via Adrian Wee on FB) twitpic.com/7twefn
— Kinmun Lee (@mrbrown) December 16, 2011
Yay! @AngryBigRedBird gets off scot-free RT @TODAYonline: SMRT: Person who broke the glass panel in the train won’t be charged
— Eisen (@eisen) December 16, 2011
Humour, in all sorts of situations.
Due to the transient nature of the Internet, the original sources for many of these are lost to the mists of 404s and content deletions. This has not stopped them from being immortalised on popular blogs.
Angry Bird, as popularised by mrbrown
Alien, from mrbrown, via jimmyliew
The Ring’s Sadako, seen on The Online Citizen’s Facebook page
The Hulk, as seen on dk
As memes generally are, of course, the popularity of these images was short lived, and the tireless satirists of the Internet by and large have moved on to other things – like cable ties, for example. Those nimble Photoshop skills can now take a well-deserved break – until the next train disruption happens.
Let’s hope not.
