Kent was shaken by a 4.3-magnitude earthquake on Thursday night, which woke local residents and led to a stream of sarcasm across the South East.
It wouldn’t be a proper UK earthquake without Twitter pointing and laughing, in much the same way that barely a single football transfer window passes without someone revisiting that over-familiar joke ‘Liverpool Sign Bent’.
The #KentEarthquake has left a path of overused tweets in its wake pic.twitter.com/FFfA1xGNOY
— Felicity Morse (@FelicityMorse) May 22, 2015
This might be the quickest recorded path from seismic activity to stale jokes, proving that events like this bring the best out of the British population.
We quickly learned that the earthquake originated near Sandwich, and the location – coupled with breaking news tweets from the ‘BBC Breakfast’ account – only served to make us really hungry.
Earthquake in #Kent http://t.co/kk3rvbPNlk – did you feel it? Tremor originated near Sandwich at 02:52 #bbcbreakfast pic.twitter.com/BNgBOlC18o
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) May 22, 2015
That hunger wasn’t helped by some of the first jokes to emerge in the aftermath.
https://twitter.com/monty425/status/601676485578067969
It didn’t take long for people to recall Nigel Farage’s comments about UKIP causing a “political earthquake”, and the combination of that soundbite with the party leader’s election failure in the same county was a perfect storm for some (pun intended, and immediately apologised for).
https://twitter.com/JonathanHaynes/status/601618720390311936
Although some saw it in a slightly different light…
Kent rejects Nigel Farage. God sends an earthquake. #ukipgeomorphology
— Jonathan Healey (@SocialHistoryOx) May 22, 2015
Even his own former party members got in on the act, with noted climate change denier Godfrey Bloom continuing his questionable understanding of natural phenomena.
Ah, Farage was right after all, an earthquake in Thanet !
— Godfrey Bloom (@goddersbloom) May 22, 2015
Of course, it wouldn’t have been a British earthquake without the usual line-drawing to which we have all become accustomed.
*thinks of earthquake joke, gets on with day*
— 𖦹⃤⊕️ (@Tetrisdroid) May 22, 2015
