The clip above aired Thursday night on The Daily Show, a relatively innocuous joke about the fanaticism of a vocal group of fans of the boy band. Fans, however, took it as an insult against One Direction member Zayn Malik - who is of Pakistani descent. By Friday, angry fans had hashtags globally trending on Twitter:
Not seen here? #ZaynDefenseSquad, #ZayneSavesNotKills, and other smaller hashtags throughout the day - which our friends at Know Your Meme have kindly gathered up! Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that over 114,000 tweets have been tallied under the popular hashtags.
The moral of the story, as always, is to never underestimate the power of teenage girls on social media.
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