Fleeting Fame: Meet the man who live tweeted the OBL raid

Sohaib Athar, an independent software consultant and coffee shop owner based in Abbottabad, hit instant stardom on social media when he inadvertently live-tweeted the US raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound. His most famous tweet is perhaps reflective of what he had accidentally stumbled onto: “Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”

At the Pakistan-India Social Media Mela, Athar sat down with Ayesha Tammy Haq to discuss what had happened that night last year – from facing facing harassment from journalists, to how his life had changed and what an army officer said about his tweets.

“When Obama made the announcement on TV, that’s when the emails started coming in.”

By the next day, Athar had a few hundred emails in his inbox. A day later? Dozens of phone calls. And few weeks in, more than a hundred thousand twitter followers.

For the quiet coffee shop owner it wasn’t the accidental fame he was worried about, but rather what may happen to the small peaceful town he calls home.

“I was afraid for the town of Abbottabad,” said Athar, explaining that he feared the Taliban might carry out some revenge attacks in the area.

Other than that the only thing that phased him were the journalists continuously harassing him for an ‘exclusive’ interview.

His solution to that? Publishing all the answers to the questions asked. “I wasn’t getting paid for any of these interviews...so asking for an exclusive interview was absurd”, said Athar, who thought it fair enough to just put up the answers for everyone.