The Best Memes and Reactions to the Presidential Alert Test

Andrea Park
Updated
"Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by the Presidential Alert."

On Wednesday, around 2:18 p.m. ET, you may have heard a loud alarm come from your phone and looked down to see — surprise! — a message from none other than President Donald Trump. You may have felt bewildered, baffled, or like the only appropriate response was the always-reliable "new phone, who dis?" Whatever your reaction, though, you definitely weren't alone. Immediately after the alert went out, Twitter was flooded with posts about it, immediately turning it into a hilarious meme, some with an undercurrent of distaste or confusion.

But before we get to the reactions, here's what you need to know about the alert: As the message stated, it was a practice notification sent by the president and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to test a possible new emergency notification system. More than 100 mobile carriers in the U.S. were previously reported to be participating in the messaging system, with no way for individual cellphone owners to opt out. According to FEMA, the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) could be used in the future to notify the public about "dangerous weather, missing children, and other critical situations."

After FEMA announced its plans for the WEA system, many Americans expressed their discomfort at Trump having the power to send messages straight to the phones of millions of people across the country. Some shared concerns that the president would abuse the system; which would be a direct violation of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Modernization Act of 2015. The law states that federal alerts like these can be used only to transmit messages about actual emergencies. A FEMA spokesperson also confirmed at the time of the announcement that the system could not be used to track the location of the recipients of the alerts.

While we have yet to see the alerts in actual action — and we hope we don't need to anytime soon — we have plenty of reactions from the test (including from cats that we can have a laugh about now. "NOOOOOOO THE ALERT. IT HAPPENED," everyone's favorite tweeter, Chrissy Teigen wrote. Two separate people, meanwhile, referenced Mean Girls in their tweets. "I will always remember the day the President texted me," one wrote alongside a gif of the classic "October 3rd" scene. Another referenced a different iconic part of the movie with a gif and the caption, "Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by the Presidential Alert." We guess the president should've seen that coming when he scheduled his test on Mean Girls Day.

Related: Donald Trump Is Facing Twitter Treason Accusations After His Meeting With Vladimir Putin

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