In a stealthy swipe at his fellow centi-billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg has jumped aboard a popular Internet meme criticising Jeff Bezos over his Tuesday trip to space.
The Facebook founder’s personal Instagram account hit “like” on a post by meme king Tank Sinatra that calls out the wildly wealthy Amazon founder from the perspective of Amazon’s hourly wage workforce.
The meme centres on an image of actor Joaquin Phoenix in character as The Joker, the impoverished party performer cast aside by Gotham.
“Amazon workers listening to Jeff Bezos thank them for sending him into space,” the meme reads along with the extra caption, “You’re welcome? Can we have a raise?”
The post played on some of the backlash Bezos received after he emerged from his New Shepard capsule Tuesday and thanked Amazon’s staff and customers for funding his 66-mile trip to the edge of space.
“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this,” Bezos said while beaming at the postflight press conference. “Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It’s very appreciated.”
Bezos, 57, said the flight fulfilled a childhood dream. Some critics say the millions he used building his Blue Origin rocket company could have been used pay Amazon workers higher wages and fight poverty and global warming back on Earth.
Bezos has pushed back saying, “We have to do both.”
“We have lots of problems in the here and now on Earth, and we have to work on those, and we have to look to the future. We’ve always done that, as a species, as a civilization,” Bezos told CNN this week.
He said building a “space tourism” company offering so-called joy rides to the wealthy will allow humans to “practice so much that we get really good at operational space travel.”
Considered the richest man in the world, Bezos has stressed he also is committed to fighting climate change, giving hundreds of millions to his Bezos Earth Fund.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Zuckerberg’s endorsement of the meme. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
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