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
2. BLAME THIS GUY!
3. WHY DO I KNOW THE FCC CHAIRMAN’S NAME?
4. WHAT’S HIS PHONE NUMBER?
5. GUY WHO MADE PHONES UNUSABLE
6. IMPACTED COVID FIGHT
7. EARLIEST EVILS OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
8. ASKING HIM ABOUT HIS CAR’S EXTENDED WARRANTY
9. LOSE THEIR HANDS
10. LEGACY OF SPAM