Back in June, a public >event titled "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" appeared on Facebook with over 2 million people interested in attending. The goal of the event was to supposedly break into Area 51, the highly classified military compound in Nevada — which is often depicted in fiction as an area where the U.S. government conducts research on alien technology. The event never happened.
Months later, someone in Egypt decided to create a freakishly similar event, but with a somewhat different target. This time, Carrefour, a massive hypermarket chain in the region, fell victim to a planned (but probably bogus) raid.
The Facebook event titled "Rob Carrefour and Take All That We Need" placed Sept. 24 as the date of the "sham robbery." It is said to be targeting the hypermarket's Shubra el Kheima branch located north of Cairo. More than 18,000 people have shown interest in the event.
"We will enter the hypermarket after 3 pm. We will run while singing 'Bella Ciao' and rob everything we need. We will then exit the hypermarket together and run so that no one will be held back," the event description says.
For those who haven't watched the Spanish TV series La Casa De Papel, the song mentioned in the event's details is actually an Italian folk song titled "Bella Ciao" which became a hit after its appearance on the show.
Naturally, people couldn't help but call the "Carrefour raid" an Egyptian remake of the Spanish series. Others couldn't help but call it an Egyptian version of "Area 51" because that's where the real inspiration came from. The jokes came rushing forward ever since the event went public, but that is not to say everyone took the event lightly.
"This is just straight up theft, this is what the idea of 'fun' has evolved into in this day and age," one Twitter user wrote.