Yesterday, Saudi women announced their intention to take to the road. Today, evidence of their defiance is sweeping through YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, along with waves of international support.
Videos like this one are turning up everywhere:
Blogger Eman al Nafjan (@SaudiWoman) said on Twitter that she was way too excited to record her driving experience to get her iPad's video settings right. The result? She recorded everything upside down, but posted links to the videos on Twitter anyway. Of course, it only took a moments' crowdsourcing to get things right side up.
The Women2Drive movement got some high profile Twitter support from Nancy Pelosi and Amnesty International.
Amnesty International called for Saudi Arabia to let their women drive yesterday, and today tweeted their support.
Twitter also showed evidence of some of the repercussions of the drive today. A photo of the "very first ticket issued," posted by Maha al Qatani (@Maha1410), quickly got retweeted.
Qatani got into her car this morning "prepared for the worst," bringing supplies and extra clothes into her car that morning, Aryn Baker wrote in Time's Global Spin blog, in case she was detained or jailed. She didn't need to use them though — her road trip with the reporter and her husband was uneventful except for the ticketing scare.
On Twitter Qatani told NPR's Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) that she "won't pay the ticket she got, she will instead frame it hang it on the wall."
Sarah Al-Bassam (@SBassam), another Saudi blogger, tweeted that some women had been pulled over and asked to sign "pledges" that they would not drive again. These have quickly made their way to Facebook.
A Kobar resident, tweeting under the handle @H_eba, is making a Twitter tally of women who drove on June 17. So far, this has grown to 43 drivers, possibly with scores more driving in Twitter-less places around the country.
For some women like @FouzAbd, who posted one of the first images in the wee hours of June 17, it's been a long day.
More on social media at msnbc.com:
- Saudi women get behind the wheel to protest driving ban
- Saudi women to take fight from the Web to the road
- How Twitter users see America
- Study: Social media users really are nice people
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about tech and science at msnbc.com. Follow her on Twitter, and join our conversation on Facebook.