One government agency |that’s genuinely funny

AMONG THE MULTITUDES of private businesses maintaining a presence on the social media, a few – like KFC and Hot Pot Buffet – can be quite entertaining, earning fans with their humorous uploads. It’s rare, though, for a government agency to be as playful as it is informative. 

The Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) currently has more than 100,000 followers on Facebook thanks to the witty items posted there. Recently it announced that it was hiring, but the ad drew chuckles with lines like “No application fee, no health check-up needed”, mocking the kind of lures that private firms lay. Applicants, it said, must be able to “peel lychee dry” – not spilling any of the juice. 

A lot of people asked if the ad was for real, but regular followers knew the page administrator is always coming up with clever stuff like this. 

It’s the sort of content the Department of Intellectual Property would elsewhere be working to protect against copyright thieves. The DIP actually patrols the social networks as well for violations of copyright. It recently shut down one Facebook page that was offering pirated movies (prompting whines about stool pigeons in the crowd). One of that page’s fans offered to “follow” the admin to a new address, a comment the DIP captured and posted with the caution, “Would you follow me to jail too?” 

As of last week the DIP is now on Instagram too (@dipthailand), debuting with a threat: “Well, we now have IG too, so don’t think you can get away with selling counterfeit products. We will stalk you everywhere!”

The hashtag was “#I’d like to be fak ran”, referring to the nasty habit of utilising the comments section on celebrity social-media feeds to sell your own stuff.

Lost in translation

English teacher “Ajarn Adam” Bradshaw, who’s also usually pretty entertaining on the social networks, turned serious on Sunday after someone called actress Araya “Chompoo” Hargate a “joke” on Facebook – “a Thai-American who speaks English poorly”. 

Adam, who has as his slogan “chad ver” (extremely clear accent), had heard Chompoo being interviewed in English and decided, “I think she speaks fluently and there’s nothing wrong. 

“It’s more likely that person just wants to pick on her out of jealousy,” he told his own followers. He would have stayed out if it, he added, except that “that person” (whose name he concealed in his screen capture) claimed to be an English teacher and able to speak three languages despite having never travelled abroad. 

The critic declared that “the American in her [Chompoo] should have been more prominent”. Adam, who’s fully American, suggested that, as a teacher, “that person” should be trying to inspire others to learn, not blowing her own trumpet. 

“If English teachers look down on students and try to bluff, Thai students will continue to be scared of speaking English and will never be inspired to learn,” he wrote. They won’t want to speak in English because they’re afraid of being mocked by fellow Thais!