An Australian quiz show has come up with a sure-fire antidote for the clusters of angry men who’ve acquired an uncontrollable urge to get mad at a child whose last name may or may not be Thunberg.
There may be no easy way to cure them. But “if you’re a grown adult who needs to yell at a child for some reason, the Greta Thunberg Helpline is here to tolerate you,” states the voiceover to a roughly 2½-minute video.
“Hi, I’m a middle-aged man with an embarrassing problem,” an anxious-looking actor admits in the opening sequence. “I get irrationally angry at a Swedish girl who wants to save the planet. Luckily, there’s now a number I can call.”
“She’s just fuelling needless anxiety,” one caller complains to the help line. “She’s making the end of the world sound like the end of the world!”
“This charade’s gone too far,” another caller says. “Now I see she’s speaking in front of a mock UN.” “Sir, that was the real UN,” one of the help line staff helpfully explains. You’ll have to click through to the video to see what happens next.
As of Sunday afternoon, the video had garnered 13.4 million views on Twitter.