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Social Media Reacts To First Presidential Alert Being Sent Out

By Lea van der Merwe
Published on: 14:20 PST, Oct 3, 2018

Just a few weeks ago FEMA announced they would be rolling out a National Emergency Alert System that would allow them to reach everyone in the country via text message on their cell phones if they needed to be able to warn citizens of something.

Today, that was tested for the first time, and people took to social media with their thoughts on the so-called “Presidential Alert” their phones received, per Cnet.

The messaged read as follows: “Presidential Alert: THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert system. No action is needed.”

Unfortunately for them, the internet felt otherwise, and plenty of action was taken with the use of Photoshop, and, by the looks of some cases, just plain old Paint. Netizens flocked to Twitter to share their own doctored versions of the text, some with hilarious results.

Mount Vernon, the official Twitter feed for George Washington’s home, decided to ask people to share what they thought the alert would have looked like had it been sent out by the United States’ first president, which rendered some historically accurate responses.

“September 28th, 1781-‘Heavy traffic moving into Yorktown, VA, please use other roads to avoid the area,'” wrote one, with another adding, “‘Hey Paul, I can handle this…PRESIDENTIAL ALERT: THE BRITISH ARE COMING!'”

Some decided to get a little sporty with the alert, offering up trash-talk and game predictions instead of a national warning system, some even coming from those in the sporting world.

Zoos also decided to get in on the fun, with San Diego Zoo, Houston Zoo, Miami Zoo, and Lincoln Park Zoo sharing their own (far more adorable) “presidential alerts” out.

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel got in on the joke as well, editing the alert to something more accurately depicting Donald Trump’s daily mantra. And he wasn’t alone either. Plenty of people shared their own edits, all of which made fun of the president and some of the strange things he has said and done during his time in office.

One even decided to use the fact that it is Mean Girls Day to incorporate their feelings about the alert into a scene from the film.

That wasn’t the only film reference either, with another seeing an appropriate Star Trek reference in the erratic behavior of Trump.

Even Harry Potter got a sniff at the jokes.

Others edited the alert to ridiculously funny things that are less intimidating than him having the actual ability to access everyone’s phones.

Some also decided to share their immediate thought the moment they realized why their phone was suddenly beeping incessantly.

There were some people who never received the alerts, and by the looks of Twitter, they are not at all ungrateful about this.

One man also shared a potential way in which people who don’t want to receive any further alerts could try blocking the Presidential Alerts on their devices, while John McAfee came forward to warn people of the dangers of the kind of access the alert system has to private citizens’ information on their phones.

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