X

Chinese rocket crashes to Earth, brings payload of jokes and memes

It didn't hit us, so it's OK to make jokes about it, right? Right?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
See full bio
Gael Cooper
rocket

Cloudy with a chance of rocket.

It might seem odd to find humor in an out-of-control Chinese rocket that slammed into Earth, but welcome to the internet. Debris from the discarded body of a Chinese Long March 5B rocket reentered Earth's atmosphere Saturday night, falling just west of the Maldives. Naturally, both before and after the crash, social media passed the time with jokes and memes.

What's in the weather forecast? "Partly cloudy with a chance of #ChineseRocket as we head into the morning."

Some familiar memes naturally were repurposed for the purpose.

Some people really saw the rocket pass by, and some ... well, didn't.

And before it fell, there was plenty of wondering about where exactly the rocket would crash. "Honestly if this #ChineseRocket doesn't land on me, I'm going to be disappointed," wrote one Twitter user.

Was it Tom Petty that sang, "the waiting is the hardest part"?

And once the rocket made its appearance, a fresh crop of jokes hit social media. "We were on the edge all day for the Chinese Rocket to end up landing in the Indian Ocean," said one Twitter user."