Now this is how you respond to a terror threat. Authorities in Belgium put the city of Brussels under lockdown over the weekend as they looked for suspects following a credible threat of attack similar to Paris. As part of the lockdown, civilians were asked not to update social media with sightings of police or security forces, presumably to avoid alerting terrorists. The good people of Brussels responded by flooding Twitter with cat pictures. Lots and lots of cat pictures.
The hashtag #BrusselsLockdown is now synonymous with cat memes, showing that Belgians are determined to keep their sense of humor and continue life as normally as possible. The social media response is bizarre and surreal, which really shouldn’t be surprising. After all, Belgium is the home of absurdists like René Magritte.
