Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.06.2019, Síða 4

What Are Icelanders
Talking About?
The everlasting fire of Icelandic
social media
Words: Andie Fontaine
Social media has been
ablaze these past couple of
weeks, and one of the hottest topics
amongst Icelanders on Facebook
has been the Centre Party fili-
buster against the third energy
package. This has constituted all
nine MPs for the party engaging in
protracted mock debates about the
EU legislation, sometimes extend-
ing well into the night. As a result,
every other bill pending discussion
and voting into law had to wait
while the Centre Party tied up hours
of parliamentary time. Plenty of
people were angry at these MPs for
their antics “they’re holding Parlia-
ment hostage” was a common
refrain—but Icelanders also saw
cause to point out the complicity
of other members of Parliament;
most notably, parliamentary presi-
dent Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, who
possesses the power to move the
issue to elsewhere in the discussion
lineup, make a deal with the Centre
Party to postpone it until the
autumn, or to go for the “nuclear
option” and have the matter put to
a vote. Ultimately, the matter was
postponed, which the Centre Party
have taken to mean that they won,
but the most recent polling shows
that the filibuster had no effect on
their level of support one way or
the other.
Icelanders are fiercely proud of
the unspoiled beauty of their coun-
try, so naturally, few things upset
them more than when someone
fucks it up. Last week, that some-
one was Alexander Tikhomirov,
a self-described filmmaker and
photographer, who deliberately
drove into the protected geother-
mal area around Mývatn, getting
his vehicle mired in the soft soil in
the process. As if that wasn’t bad
enough, he then decided to post
several photos of himself posing
with his stuck vehicle to Insta-
gram, bragging about having been
hit with a fine. Once Icelanders
started pouring into the comments
section of the pics berating him
for his blatant disregard, he made
another (now-deleted) post asking
why everyone was so angry at him.
Police reported that they had to
rescue his vehicle, and fined him in
the process, to the tune of 450,000
ISK. If there is any heartwarming
part to this story, it’s the fact that
several Russians also berated the
guy, while imploring Icelanders not
to judge all Russians by his actions
alone.
Remember those fishermen
who cut off a shark’s tail and
laughed about it on video? Terri-
ble behaviour, to be sure, but the
backlash has risen to a whole new
level. Enter Jason Momoa, star
of Game of Thrones and (appro-
priately enough) Aquaman, who
decided to chime in on the matter
on Instagram. Not only did he post
the infamous video; he also posted
screenshots of the personal Face-
book pages of two of the fishermen
involved, calling them “pure evil”
and ominously warning that they
should “get what the shark got.”
Numerous comments on the post
soon followed, many of them call-
ing for physical violence against the
two men. And look, we get it. What
these two men was disgusting and
inexcusable. At the same time, a
sense of proportion would probably
dictate that calls for bodily mutila-
tion and death might be going a tad
too far. But such is the nature of
social media at times.
4The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09— 2019First
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