In addition to running one of the largest advertising companies on the planet, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg does a lot of goofy stuff — remember the only eating what he kills thing? Well, he's now trying to run 365 miles this year, and Zuck apparently felt like knocking off a few miles while in Beijing for an economic forum. There's just one problem, the air in the Chinese capital city is notoriously toxic — and the Associated Press reports that amused citizens took to social media to lampoon the Palo Alto resident for his obliviousness.
"The human-flesh smog vacuum is better when it's American-made," observed journalist Peng Yuanwen, apparently referencing a Beijing joke that the city's toxic air is filtered by its residents' lungs. According to the AP, the day that Zuckerberg went jogging Beijing's air pollution index was roughly 15 times what the World Health Organization considers safe.
"It's great to be back in Beijing," wrote Zuckerberg in text that accompanied the photo. "I kicked off my visit with a run through Tiananmen Square, past the Forbidden City and over to the Temple of Heaven."
This elicited scorn from internet users as well.
.@sharonodea @jenn1marsh @phila_siu Why has no-one made this obvious photoshop yet?..... Allow me: pic.twitter.com/nz2SzJynpW
— Tom Grundy (@tomgrundy) March 18, 2016
Others, the AP informs us, criticized not Zuckerberg's apparent obliviousness but rather what appeared to be a transparent play to curry favor with the Chinese government.
"Kissing up?" the AP reports Tom Wang, a Chinese environmentalist, as asking. Indeed, with the social media company officially banned in China, it is not outrageous to speculate that Zuckerberg's post is an attempt to portray the Capital in a positive light — something that running with a breathing mask, or simply on a treadmill in his hotel, would have failed to do.
At present, over 3,000 people have "wow'd" the photograph. Indeed.
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