Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad became an instant internet celebrity on Monday, after unknowingly tweeting the real time account of the attack that americans did, that killed Osama bin Laden.
Athar who uses the name “ReallyVirtual” in Social networking site twitter, started to tweet the happenings in their location, complaining about helicopters hovering around their place early morning, which he said is annoying.
In his tweet at the San Francisco based microblogging service, Athar said “Go away helicopter, before I take out my giant swatter,”.
After the first post, succeeding tweets were done by Athar telling that there are window-rattling blast, a helicopter crash, a family dying, and then soldiers cordoning off part of the neighborhood and searching door-to-door.
He only then realized that he is tweeting about the attack to Bin Laden by American soldiers when he eventually connected the ruckus to an announcement by US President Barack Obama that bin Laden was killed by US Military in a surgical strike at a mansion in Abbottabad.
After knowing the real happenings, Athar tweeted,”There goes the neighborhood,” Athar tweeted. “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who live-blogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”
Being an instant internet celebrity, number of people signed on to follow his message which reached to more than 15,000. His tweets were then re-tweeted continuosly by other users and a lot messages were sent to him asking for interviews by the media.
Athar said that people in their place dont usually use twitter, hence, they dont usually know the attention they are getting, the statement also refers to himself as a simple tweeter user, who happened to woke up when the action broke up in their place. He also added that “Ignorance is bliss.”