We can all relate to the “This Is Fine” meme where a cartoon dog sips coffee in the center of a burning room — but none can relate more than this Belarusian fisherman, who continued angling for the best catch despite a fire blazing across the nearby field.
The blaze broke out this week across a floodplain of the Sluch River near the Belarusian city of Slutsk. This did not bother the fisherman, who stayed put while firemen extinguished the fire.
Video shot from a different angle shows a fireman trying to extinguish the flames as our stoic hero remains unbothered and continues to do what he does best.
While the video quickly went viral, racking up over 1 million views, the fisherman himself doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.
“These fires happen every year. There is nothing new here. And every year these firemen are called and called all the time,” the fisherman, who asked the press to withhold his name, told the local Kurjer.info news website Wednesday.
It’s not the first time someone from the post-Soviet world has emulated the “This Is Fine” meme — in 2019, a boy in Russia’s Arctic went viral for continuing to play on a swing set while a major fire burned in the distance.
