Typically, watching the broadcast of official government proceedings rivals only paint drying for sleep inducement. I firmly believe that the only people tuning in are those suffering from insomnia, and law students being punished for being habitually late to class. Sure, it’s important that those proceedings be televised and recorded for the sake of transparency and posterity, but that doesn’t make them riveting TV.
However, a broadcast in Pakistan might have stumbled on a way to get more folks watching.
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The digital age has brought us more ways to reach and interact with our governments, and them with us, but not without some hiccups.
Usually that means little more than a connectivity issue, but when a provincial government in Pakistan tried to broadcast its proceedings live on Facebook, something happened that couldn’t have happened on a more traditional broadcast — the cat filter got turned on.
Pink kitty ears and whiskers popped up on the heads of at least three of the officials during the broadcast.
As CNN reported, the idea of the broadcast had been to brief local constituents about government issues, but viewers were immediately distracted by the feline antics on the screen.
With the officials unaware of their online cuteness, the proceedings continued as people at home started commenting.
“There’s a cat in the cabinet,” one person commented, according to The Telegraph . “Shaukat Yousafzai looks like a cat — meow meow meow,” wrote another.
Although the video was quickly deleted once the party realized what had happened, screen caps were taken in abundance.
And of course they were shared around social media. How often does an opportunity like this come along?
The party chalked it up to human error by a “hardworking volunteer.”
“All necessary actions have been taken to avoid such an incident in future with a great emphasis on strict enforcement of SOPs and protocol for live coverage by the ground teams,” the party said in a statement .
However, many folks on Twitter and Facebook are hoping that this wasn’t actually the last cat filter broadcast.
There’s no official word on whether adding the cat filter improved ratings for the livestream
However, it certainly earned many fans after the incident, and why not? Although the politicians might have been left a bit red-faced, they did bring a lot of joy into people’s lives.
As social media blunders go, it could have been worse, but probably couldn’t have been much funnier.
Now if only C-Span would turn the cat filter on for the next Senate debate, amirite? Maybe then folks would at least tune in!
