Jocelyn Chia deactivates social media accounts following MH370 joke backlash

PETALING JAYA: Stand-up comedian Jocelyn Chia has deactivated her social media accounts following backlash received for a joke she made about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

Checks on Chia’s social pages on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook found them inaccessible, with users seeing blank pages instead of the usual content.

However, Chia's website remains active.

ALSO READ: Stand-up comedian no longer Singaporean, says High Commissioner

Prior to this, the comedian’s Instagram page in particular had been flooded with comments condemning her poor choice of joke material.

Similarly, the venue where the stand-up routine happened - the Comedy Cellar in New York - has seen a sudden surge in people giving it a one-star rating on Google.

This comes after Chia used the disappearance of MH370 in her stand-up comedy routine.

Chia - who was performing at a comedy club in the United States - first joked about Malaysia being a developing country that was far behind Singapore, 40 years after the island nation was "dumped" by Malaysia in 1965.

ALSO READ Malaysia condemns Singaporean's offensive jokes, says Zambry

"My country, Singapore, after we gained independence from the British, we were a struggling little nation.

"In order to survive, we formed a union with a larger, more powerful country, Malaysia.

"When my prime minister went on TV to announce that you guys had dumped us, he cried because he thought we were not going to survive without you.

"But then, 40 years later, we became a first-world country."

"And you guys? Malaysia, what are you now? Still a developing country," she says sarcastically in a video shared on her Instagram account.

ALSO READ: Singaporean comedian draws flak with MH370 joke

Chia then crudely references the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 tragedy in a joke about Malaysia seeking to re-establish ties with Singapore.

"Why haven't you (Malaysia) paid me a visit in 40 years?," she says in a monologue.

In another voice, she replies: "I tried, but you know, our airplanes can't fly," she says as a graphic of a Malaysia Airlines plane flashes on the screen.

This draws a few gasps from the audience but Jocelyn doubles down on the joke.

"What, Malaysia Airlines going missing is not funny, huh?

"Some jokes don't land," she says in an apparent reference to Flight MH370, which vanished on March 8, 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China.

The fate of its 239 passengers and crew are unknown to today.