Politician Mistook GTA V Footage for ‘Miraculous Save’ by Pilot

Video Shows Near-miss Collision Between Jet and Petrol Truck

Politician and video games often do not mix very well. Although thankfully, sometimes this results in the most hilarious scenarios. Case in point, we have Pakistani politician Khurram Nawaz Gandapur who found himself as a viral sensation over the weekend.

Mr. Gandapur is the Secretary General of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) political party. He mistakenly thought that a footage from Rockstar Games‘ Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) was real and tweeted it out to the public. It wasn’t the usual GTA V footage perpetuating street crime. Instead, it is a footage involving a near miss between a jet landing on an airport and a petrol tanker truck driving across.

The politician has since removed his Tweet. However, the internet never forgets and you can still see an archive of the whole thread here. Needless to say, netizens online had a field day. Just read all the reply comments on that archive thread above. Sadly, it appears that he was also not alone in believing this to be a real-life footage, judging by some of the comments.

Where Can I See the Original GTA V Video?

After some digging, it looks like this is the original video that Mr. Gandapur saw.

To be fair to Mr. Gandapur, it is understandable that some politicians might not be very technically knowledgeable with computers. Furthermore, the original video did not have a heads up display and was not the typical “gameplay” scenario one would expect. So it might be difficult to put into context for those who are not familiar with video games.

However, expecting them to be able to tell apart videogame rendering from real-life footage is not too much to ask for any adult. Especially when ‘deepfakes’ and computer graphics are just getting better.