Indian-American man Ajit Pai is the most hated person on the Internet. For spam calls!
Remember that Indian-American man who dressed up in a cringe Santa Claus costume and waved a lightsaber around in an official PSA video on net neutrality? Yeah, he got trolled for that and was also sued by whosoever’s music he danced to.
We are talking about Ajit Pai. And if you know this man and what he was, then you are definitely cursing him for being so memorable – of course for the various irritating results he left behind.
Who is Ajit Pai? Ajit Pai is the former US Federal Communications Commission Chairperson during the Trump era. He became one of the most hated men – other than the former US President Donald Trump himself of course – on the Internet in the US. Back then, it was due to his obnoxious stance on net neutrality.
Why are we talking about Ajit Pai now? Pai is once again being roasted on Twitter after quite some time after he left the government office. The legacy he left behind has been too much for people to handle. And the legacy he left behind, according to Twitterati, is those unending spam calls.
Yes, SPAM calls! Heard of those? Whether you live in the US or elsewhere, how many times a day do you get a call from someone asking if you want to sell your car when you don’t own one or those calls asking you to invest in stocks?
The latest data from RoboKiller, an app that blocks spam calls and texts, reveals that the US is drowning in spam.
SPAM TEXTS: Average of 42 spam texts received by an American in March 2022.
SPAM CALLS: 14 spam calls per person in the US in March 2022.
Then, there is online spam, like emails and other messages.
As a person living in India, we should know how awful these spam calls and messages are; after all we ranked no 4 in 2021 and the US came in at 20th position, on being spammed, according to Truecaller.
Why does it matter? Spam calls and messages aren’t only irritating when they clutter your inbox or wake you up at 2 in the morning. They are also the source of many scams. Americans lost $131 million to fraud schemes through text messages in 2021, an increase of 50% from 2020.
How is Ajit Pai related to this mess? When Ajit Pai was the chair of the US FCC, an Obama-era anti-robocall (or spam call) rule was struck down by a court. Pai at the time celebrated the news instead of standing up for it. He later proposed a new rule, which would require service providers to block spam calls by default rather than wait for customers to activate an opt-out basis, though it was nothing new than what the previous administration had proposed.
Nonetheless, the US Congress implemented a rule, which doesn’t seem to have worked. Now, people are trolling him on the elephant-memory internet for his deeds, whose price they are still paying.
Here are the best ones:
1. WISHING AN UNBLOCKABLE ROBOCALL
May every call @AjitPai receives from now until eternity be an unblockable robo call. https://t.co/gD4I78XyEn
— ??? Valerie Bertinelli (@Wolfiesmom) April 17, 2022
2. BLAME THIS GUY!
Ajit Pai, Trump’s FCC chairman, opposed the Obama Era Rule to limit robocalls, and refused to appeal an industry-backed court ruling to let you phone become an unusable cesspool of unknown spammers.
— Jeremy Flood ? (@_Floodlight) April 16, 2022
3. WHY DO I KNOW THE FCC CHAIRMAN’S NAME?
I don't think I've ever known the name of an FCC chair besides Ajit Pai and the only reason I know him is because on appointment he gave a speech to the effect of "I am going to destroy every protection you have as a consumer, don't be a pussy about this.:
— Jen and Tonic (@JenYetAgain) April 17, 2022
4. WHAT’S HIS PHONE NUMBER?
What is his phone number? ?
— ?❤️??FeedMeHoney?❤️?? (@FeedMeHoney) April 17, 2022
5. GUY WHO MADE PHONES UNUSABLE
Ajit Pai is really funny. you have to screw up bad to be a memorable chairman of the FCC. no one outside of very niche regulatory and telecoms circles should have any idea who he is but he is now known more broadly as they guy who helped make phone calls basically unusable
— Jake Eberts (@wokeglobaltimes) April 16, 2022
6. IMPACTED COVID FIGHT
As a side note to all of this -- Ajit Pai's deregulation of telecoms in the US most certainly had an impact on the country's response to the pandemic. By creating a system where robocalls effectively paralyzed an entire form of communication, contact tracing became impossible. https://t.co/aUwTttG9Uk
— Erik Thurman is illustrating for a better future (@ErikThurman) April 17, 2022
7. EARLIEST EVILS OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
shoutout to ajit pai for being one of the earliest evils of the trump administration's reign
— octoturt (@tentashell) April 17, 2022
8. ASKING HIM ABOUT HIS CAR’S EXTENDED WARRANTY
Ajit Pai blocks everyone who replies to his tweets to ask him about his car's extended warranty. Despite his best efforts, there are always more people picking up the mantle. We are capable of incredible things as a species.
— Owen Webster (@sowenwebster) April 19, 2022
9. LOSE THEIR HANDS
I hope Ajit Pai and whoever else was involved lose their hands pic.twitter.com/lh3iV5nwzx
— ExxM (@Exxmaniac) April 15, 2022
10. LEGACY OF SPAM
Now you let people get spam calls 17 times a day. Proud legacy.
— Our Lady of Perpetual Thirst (@our_thirst) April 17, 2022