Idiot Thais try to knock Pluto |probe out of the sky

YOU’D THINK THAT most Thais would be social-media-literate by now, given their gratuitous indulgence in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But if the rest of the country knows how to behave in virtual public, there are still embarrassing knuckleheads living among us.
Several of these “nakleng keyboard”, as they’re known in the hybrid vernacular, caused upset during a global educational session hosted on Tuesday afternoon by Nasa, the American space agency. People around the world were excited to be participating live in the YouTube webcast that featured images of Pluto just beaming in from the New Horizons probe whirling past the ex-planet, and it fell to a posse of idiot Thais to spoil the online scientific chat and a truly historical moment.
Plenty of Thais were taking the session seriously. On Twitter, #plutoflyby was the second-most used hashtag that day, with almost 360,000 tweets, while the Thai transliteration of #pluto surpassed 180,000 tweets. Unfortunately, a lot of their countrymen thought the discussion wasn’t “fun” enough and started tossing in all sorts of nonsense, knowing their ill intent was safely hidden behind their faux user names and ISPs.
So Nasa administrator Charles Bolden, being “interviewed” by the fans live on the social networks, had to put up with inane questions from Thailand like “Is there any weed on Pluto?” and “When’s the Liverpool match again?”, as well as the ancient and deliberately disturbing curse “Your father’s dead.”
No one else was the slightest bit amused, of course, but what was worse was that, seeing the thread descend into troll hell, a lot of viewers gave up, stopped posting and tuned out, thinking there would be nothing more of interest.
To say that the vast majority of Thai participants were embarrassed would be putting it mildly. Those commenting afterward on the debacle tended to use words like “guilty” and “ashamed”. On Facebook and Pantip.com people posted screen captures of the dumb intrusions, sparking a lot more fury and many calls for social-media-illiterate Thais to stay the heck offline until they can appreciate the benefits offered by the Internet.
This could be a poisonous development for the country, someone pointed out at Pantip. “We could be blacklisted from Nasa’s future broadcasts if they ban all Thai IP addresses.” Learning of the trolling, many Thais rushed to the Pluto chat platforms to apologise, using the hashtag #SorryForThailand, while others posted appeals, threats and warnings to their compatriots – and yet the stupid questions continued.
Criticism of these numbskulls quickly outflanked all discussion on the social networks about the drought, political affairs and a certain celebrity break-up that we’re trying hard to ignore. Somehow, though, it was difficult to agree with an attempt by Facebook user “Panuwat Thai” to find an upside – he said there’s nothing to be ashamed about because Thais have done much more embarrassing things.
Anyway, the incident serves to remind us that not all Thais are as Net-savvy as we’d like to believe, and certainly there are some who fail miserably at Netiquette 101. Before the trolls strike again, perhaps the government’s Web watchdogs can take a break from the porn and find ways to educate the public. Or maybe Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha could do a live YouTube webcast – the trolling that ensued would surely result in some fast action.