How the Arab World reacted to Felix Baumgartner’s jump

While more than 5 million people around the world watched with awe as Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner conducted the world’s first jump from as high as 36 kilometers, many Arabs were busy commenting on the historic event on micro-blogging site Twitter with a mixture of satire and hilarity.

Most popular were tweets from Saudi Arabia, where “what if Felix was Saudi?” was trending in Arabic.

“If Felix was Saudi, he would have a basket full of notes with his phone numbers to sprinkle on planet earth, to compensate for all of the girls he has been missing,” one tweet wrote in reference to Saudi Arabia’s strict rule of separating the genders and how many teenagers in the kingdom revert to the act of “Targeem” (finding a creative way to attract female attention) to overcome this obstacle.

Another tweet read: “if he was Saudi, his mom would have sent food with him just in case he feels hungry.”

An additional tweet commented, “if Felix was Saudi, he would dedicate his jump to the Royal family and the dignified Saudi nation once he landed.”

It wasn’t long before the Lebanese caught on to the trend, tweeting comments such as "Felix couldn't have been Lebanese because his space suit was branded Armani and that his shuttle wasn’t a Porche!"

Another Lebanese twitterati poked fun at famous talk show host Zaven Kouyoumdjian who is renowned for never-failing to ask almost every guest on his show about their feelings on almost every situation they have ever faced.

The user wrote if Felix was Lebanese “Zaven would ask him: how did you feel when you jumped, scared right?”

Zaven Kouyoumdjian himself tweeted saying: “good luck @FelixBaumgart hope you'll break your record, if not you already scored Lebanon's best joke of the day.”

But there were some somber Arabs, who reflected a more serious tone.

“English are praying for him to stay alive. Arabs are too busy making jokes about him. :),” read a tweet by Abdullah AlOsaimi.