Games people play on Facebook comment threads

In February, following a terrorist attack by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed that killed 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers, and retaliatory air strikes by India on a terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot, the two nuclear-armed neighbours were on the brink of war.

As tensions heightened at the border, netizens of the two nations were fighting another war on Facebook. Pakistani users flooded the comment section of some of India’s most followed media pages: they called out journalists (“Itz now officiaL, US says no indian fighter jet has capability to hit F-16. And here in india its media and iaf keeps spreading fake propaganda against PAF.”); they challenged the claims made by Indian authorities (“BREAKING: Indian Jets dropped some massive tomatoes in Pakistan injuring 5 trees.”); they heaped praise on their Prime Minister Imran Khan and ridiculed India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (“See the difference between the two national leaders An Oxford graduate And a tea seller.”).