'No oil' self-mockery reflects Global South's voice against US hegemony

"Malaysia, you've never looked more electric." When the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, posted a space-view image of lightning over the country last week, opening the post with this line, it likely did not anticipate the tone the comment section would take like this.

"What you see are bonfires. At night we lit up bonfire to ward off wild animals while we sleep safely on trees," one Malaysian netizen commented. Even more striking was another comment: "Hye, please tell your president we don't have oil ya. We only have Saji Cooking Oil," by netizen Fakhri Kamarudin, which received more than 400 likes.

Within hours, the comment section had erupted into a "storm," with hundreds of Malaysian netizens sarcastically saying that their country had no electricity, oil or minerals - only cooking oil, orangutans and durians - seemingly to demonstrate that Malaysia held no "strategic value" to the US. Where does this satire and irony come from? The answer may lie in the recent crises faced by Venezuela and Greenland.