Hanoi’s pollution not as toxic as online discussion of pollution

Ba Đình, Hanoi – While the skyline of the Vietnamese capital has become a hazy mess of angry particulate matter farted directly out of god’s ass and into our lungs, the inhospitable atmosphere outside has tragically, yet predictably been mirrored inside the hive mind nexus of Hanoi’s Facebook groups.

Once again, familiar faces opened their primary face-holes to fire jets of hot gaseous gibberish directly into the eyes of casual scrollers and anyone taking a dump. This bilious outpouring was prompted by a profoundly simple solution to the worsening pollution implemented this week by Hanoi authorities.

Without planting a single tree, banning a single vehicle or completing a single Metro line, the government’s pollution solution appears to consist of removing air quality index (AQI) app, AirVisual from app stores in Vietnam and in a characteristically unedifying act of apparent censorship. Data provided by AirVisual consistently highlighted the fact that Hanoi’s environment is more eager to choke you than that dominatrix on popular dating app, ‘Lay a Tây.’

Addressing the issue from a well-ventilated room full of treated air was unnamed government spokesman #7481, who read a press release unblinking as he stared soullessly into the camera.

“We have reasons to believe that AirVisual was propagating false information on the severity of pollution in Hanoi. The issue appears to stem from mendacious sharks chewing on relevant AQI equipment, resulting in lamentably high readings – readings that, if true, would really prove critically harmful to the general population.”

“But only if true, which they’re definitely not. It’s the sharks. Again,” he added before marching off-screen.

Despite the government’s most plausible public service announcement since the great lightbulb fire of last month, many netizens remained deeply troubled. The toxicity of the air was matched only by the level of debate surrounding the issue online which one onlooker described as being “as nuanced as an assault in a nightclub toilet.”

Numerous noxious spores were released into the digital atmosphere by a range of highly-informed individuals, all taking time out from their busy schedules to once more bear down on the caps lock on their laptops with the ferocity of a rabid mongoose in their bid to convince others of the validity of their opinions.

Hanoi Humongous Community was once again engulfed in a topical debate that raged around the issue of pollution, with many taking to the internet to assert their intellectual dominance.

“The pollution might not even be that bad for us,” wrote one local user. “If you allow yourself to be sucked into the liberal Western notion that PM 2.5 is harmful then you’re just going to be another sheeple pawn in the greatest scam of our generation. Shut up and enjoy the weather, idiots.”

Other users added insights that simply fanned the flames of fiercely erratic debate.

“Think of pollution like your waistline, if you get really, grotesquely – and I mean hideously, hideously fat – and you have to go to special shops for clothes and be hoisted out of bed by a complex system of pulleys and levers, if you get that fat and then I show you a picture of somebody even fatter, does that make you thin? Obviously not, so shut up and panic about being killed by the air, morons.”

Speaking exclusively with The Durian environmental researcher and Head of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Dr Nguyen Hiển Nhiên offered an illuminating insight.

“You don’t need an app to tell you shit’s fucked mate.”