Romanians are not feeling the “Bern.”
Some citizens of the Eastern European country took exception to a Tweet by the presidential hopeful this week.
“Today, people living in Bucharest, Romania have access to much faster Internet than most of the U.S.. That’s unacceptable and must change.”
The social media reaction to Sanders’ tweet was fast as Romania’s apparent web surfing speed.
“Why is it unacceptable for other people to have nice things? That’s just mean-spirited,” Twitter user A. Stephen Getty wrote.
Journalist and self-described skeptic Teodor Tita took a different approach: “dear @BernieSanders the nice people of Bucharest are happy to welcome you here. If you wanna check your email that is”
Three young Romanians took the online buzz a step further.
“I was at the office and I saw his (Sanders’) tweet and all the reactions that came along and I thought what would Bernie think about my Internet speed since I have at home a 90 mbs?” Mihnea Gheorghiu said.
A half-hour later (too fast, Sanders?) Gheorghiu met with Bucharest entrepreneur Bogdan Savonea and programmer Mihai Pocorschi and berniespeedtest.com was born.
The site allows users to check their speed against Romania’s average internet speed of 50 megabits per second.
‘We have a sense of humor’
“We only wanted to show him that we have the sense of humor,” Gheorghiu said of Sanders.
“I just saw he is interested in world speed Internet so I want it to give him a hand and create a useful tool that can help him rapidly find out how fast the Internet is,” he told CNN.
Now you too can see how “Sanders” might react to your Internet speed.
“You’re surfing at the speed of LOL,” says a grinning photo of Sanders for users at below 20 mbps. While the highest speed shows him stunned, with the subtitle, “Mother of Internet connections.”
The website quickly went viral in Romania with users sharing links on Facebook and Twitter.
” :)))) useful life tip: never mess with the ppl who own the internet,” Ioana Covali commented on social media.
“Noi suntem Usain Bolt la Internet” (We are the Usain Bolt of the Internet), Horatiu Manea, another Romanian Facebook user said.
It was unclear whether Sanders’ own Internet connection has allowed him to get a speed test result at the time of writing.