Trial by #Hashtags

Someone once said – “Data is the new oil”. Whoever said it made an understatement. No one carried petrol/diesel to their toilets every morning, but people find hard to leave aside their data munching smartphones even when visiting those places. Most of us, excluding the ones who are on the path of greatness, switch on the data of our phones first thing in the morning and scroll through social media. On an average, a person spends about four hours on their phone daily.

While the time we spend on phones/social media has increased, our attention span seems to have come down drastically. How would you otherwise explain that reels and tik toks are more popular than blogs and stand-up comedy. People aren’t too busy to watch or read time-consuming content. We are spending more time in front of screens than ever, right? It is just that we would like to consume something that does not require us to apply our mind too much, and get on with our lives. A stand-up comedian or blogger would build up a story in some minutes, a reel/tik tok on the other hand would complete its story in a few seconds! We’re becoming too good at engaging our intuitive thinking, rather than critical thinking. Also, I find it difficult to fathom that you will ever be able to engage in critical thinking while sitting on your toilet seats. It’s just not the right place.  

A few days ago, a self-declared “beauty and fashion influencer” posted a reel alleging harassment and violence by an employee of a food delivery company. This caught national attention (in spite of a million other things we could worry about), things went viral and even mainstream media covered this incident. The delivery guy (“DG”) lost his job (allegedly), with the company desperately trying to avoid a PR blunder. Within hours, DGs photos were all over the media, along with the influencers broken nose. Social media had passed its verdict, and the man was held guilty by millions, including people taking a dump who were like – “Yeah, definitely guilty”. What got lost, in the midst of all this conundrum, is perhaps that no one tried to know DGs story. He perhaps didn’t know much about making reels, I am sure most people with such intense jobs don’t. IF (and only IF) he is innocent, imagine the plight and trauma of not only him, but his entire family. I can understand if people are not getting any assistance from the authorities and they use social media to raise their voice. However, if you’ve taken the recourse of law, why would you decide to shame someone publicly and have them prosecuted by people, some of whom would take five hours to purchase an underwear, but pass their judgement here in two minutes. Anyway, now people are covering DGs story and the “influencer” is being made the villain. Ah shit, here we go again!

I fail to understand the concept of influencers. I mean, why in anyone’s rational mind would I want to get influenced by how someone is dressing up or doing their make up? Shouldn’t you be getting influenced by ideas, rather than the superficial, artificial and exaggerated imagery that people create of themselves? There could be some other word we could use for them, but I think calling them “influencers” is too much. Would you not call Mahatma Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln influencers or someone who was crying on social media rather than taking the due recourse of law? Curious what would be the Mahatma’s social media bio in these times.

Mahatma Gandhi – First cry on Oct 2, 1869 – Wanderlust (India, South Africa, England) – Lawyered – Dil se Indian - #Swadeshi #CivilDiobedience #QuitIndia – DM for inquiries ??

I hope not.

Same week, we also had a Meghan Markle and Prince (not anymore) Harry give an interview to Oprah about some affairs of the royal family. Everyone’s again heard one side of the story and passed their judgements. Most of them would gladly get adopted by the Queen if she ever put an advert. Not gonna lie, even I would.  

Our law follows a principle – “1000 culprits can escape, but one innocent should not be punished”. I am not sure the Honorable Judges on Social Media, who give their verdicts based on hashtags, would ever be able to follow this principle.

Until then, let us just hope and pray that this happens to the none of us. I hope that if you are ever prosecuted, it is by the due course of law and not by people taking a dump (this joke was too good to be not used multiple times).

 

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.

Generation O

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon. I’ve decided to add some grease to my arteries, and I’ve got two apps in my phone to help me with that. A difficult hint, but the apps rhyme with “Tomato” and “Piggy”. I get on these apps, and check which ones offering the best discounts. I chose one of them. Another difficult choice to make: what do I eat. Pizza? Thin crust? Thick crust? Hand tossed? Cheese Burst? Wheat thin crust? I am on a diet, so wheat thin crust perhaps, which has wholesome goodness of wheat. I am a vegetarian, so non-veg options are ruled out (easy call). I also need a soft drink to wash the pizza down my throat. Let me order a diet coke (I am on a diet, remember?). They charge Rs. 60 for a Rs. 40 can – should I go and get the coke from downstairs? Chuck it, this app is giving a great discount, so diet coke gets added to the cart.

Thirty minutes in, looks like I am set. I place an order and have to choose my payment option. AmazonPay? Paytm? Credit Card? Debit Card? Net Banking? Cash on Delivery, perhaps, because I have trust issues? But wait, there isn’t any discount on COD. So, I get one of my credit cards out. Just before I am placing my order, I have this mini guilt trip. I have been trying to be on a diet and have told everyone about it. People were mildly impressed by my commitment after six days. I won’t be able to handle the sheer burden of shattered expectation if I have this pizza. No, I can’t. I decide against pizza and in my health consciousness, I end up ordering Dal Khichdi. This is literally a proud moment for me. People who can resist their dire temptations are elite personalities, and I might become one of them. I have my Dal Khichdi, which cost around Rs. 150, and mom walks in. She looks a bit mad, and I fake a smile at her. Apparently, she too had cooked Dal Khichdi for lunch. She asked me how much I paid for my order, and walked off unimpressed. A decade and a half back I would have received a flying chappal for this kind of decision.

Welcome to my world, and most of you are a part of it. Together we’re Generation Overthink (“Gen O”). We’re spoilt for options. Everything is so convenient for us, and we still fret over the most immaterial of all decisions. Just like the example quoted above, so many of us waste so much time on simple tasks like ordering food. It is as if convenience has made our life more difficult, rather than easy. Paradoxical, isn’t it?

Communication, for example, is more convenient but no less complicated. Love letters used to be a thing and people used to be patient. They relied on Indian Postal Service, and used to have patience for breakfast. However, now you get hurt when she is online and not replying to you. Had an argument with a person? Delete their number and please block them on WhatsApp. It is more convenient than discussing issues and sometimes venting out your emotions. Feeling low? Remove your WhatsApp display picture. More convenient than sharing your feelings with someone. Wanna date someone? Download an app and left/right swipe them based on the way they look in a few filtered pictures. Fall in love with faces, not personalities. Personalities are a little difficult to find.

A friend who had arranged marriage told me that he knew his wife was the right person for him the first time he met her. I took one and a half month to decide on the phone that I am using right now. We’re so much better off right now, that we don’t want to lose this place of convenience. Tomato and Piggy kids would not know what it is like to walk 10 minutes to your favorite wada pav shop, and being told that there was nothing left. At least we were getting lessons in rejections back then. Today, we do not want to initiate our actions just due to the fear of rejection. Getting things are so easier, that we dread the day when we would not get something that we want.

The “O” in Gen O isn’t just overthink, it’s also over complicate. But congratulations, at least life is easier, apparently.

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.” – Charles Bukowski

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M

It’s not you, It’s me

If this blog sounds insensitive, I can’t do much about it honestly. I am not responsible for your scarred life (at least for most of you).

It’s almost wedding season, and almost everyone, other than people in my friend circle, are getting married. Love doves are putting up their wedding countdowns on social media, and singles are making an Excel tracker of every countdown. I really love these countdowns, it’s similar to what FIFA does for the Football World Cup, albeit FIFA doesn’t do it as grand as these folks getting married. Very soon, most of the weddings would have a theme song to go with the count-down, just like there was Shakira’s “Waka Waka” for the 2010 World Cup. Weddings are serious here, and I am sure if the “2010 Commonwealth Games” was called “2010 Commonwealth Wedding”, Indians would have taken the organization of the event more seriously.

Anyway, weddings need to be special. We should always remember what SRK said about marriage in one of his movies where he got married twice – “Hum ek baar jeete hai, ek baar marte hai, shaadi bhi ek baar hoti hai.“

While our movies are giving such important messages on love and marriages, they fail to cover break-ups properly. There aren’t no legendary dialogues, at least on the back of my mind. However, there is one popular song. Here are some lyrics of “The Break Up Song” –

Kuch din to rona dhona bumper kiya

Aur phir delete uska number kiya

Aansu jo sookhe seedha parlour gayi

Parlour mein jaake shampoo jamkar kiya

Might also add “market jaa kee aalo liya aur raat ko daaru piya” and this song would still make sense. 

These lyrics are actually worse than some of the stuff Lil Wayne used to sing. And Lil Wayne once had a song which said – “She licks me like a lollipop”. Yikes!

This leaves people in very awkward situations when preparing for break-ups. You can’t learn about handling break-ups from movies. The trigonometry you learnt in school isn’t helping either. You can’t approach your parents for advice. There aren’t no mentors in this field either. There are love-gurus on radio, but no break-up gurus. The entire system is flawed; it believes things would always work out. Hence, we do not have anything to fall back upon when things go south.

Here are some of the things people generally say, which are quite interesting.

 

1)      It’s not you, it’s me

Why would you do that? Do you have self-esteem issues where you constantly end up blaming yourself?

Alternative line: It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s us. Both of us together are a disaster.

 

2)      You’ll find someone better

Lame. It’s like saying we are a mess now, but at least you have a bright future. Sounded like a proper politician there.

3)      I’m so sorry

Clearly displays lack of creativity, efforts and respect. These are the kind of people who will win the Academy Award and just say “Thank You” in their acceptance speech, when they were expected to say so many things.

 

4)      I hope we can still be friends

You should have only been friends in the first place. 

5)      I never meant to hurt you

… but accidents happen all the time, and there’s collateral damage always.  

6)      This is hard for me, too

You are feeling terrible. But the fact that even I’m feeling terrible, should make you feel less terrible.

 

7)      We’re just friends

Friendzoned, actually. Can feel just like break-up because it ends your imaginary relationship, and hence honorable mention.

This isn’t an exhaustive list. What you say will actually depend on your creativity, and how smooth you want the break-up experience to be. No matter if you are driving a Ferrari or a Nano, it would always be a tough ride since the road is difficult. And if you break up during these times, all the best on finding anyone during the middle of a pandemic.

I am glad I could write after a long time. I have been able to touch upon a very sensitive issue of our society, which people are afraid to talk about. It’s time to start a conversation.

Wishing fireworks in your relationships (interpret this as you may want – this could mean anything). Happy Diwali.

 

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.

P.S. - Thanks to Archita for suggesting this blog idea. If you folks want me to cover other sensitive issues affecting the society, please feel free to reach out.

 

Garbage Consumption

Just a week ago, Indore was declared the cleanest city of India. Our country hasn’t become clean overnight. We, as a nation, have consumed a lot of garbage over the years. We still continue to do so. You will know how.

You grow up being highly influenced by everyone you interact with, including the one-sided interaction with TV and movies. You watch the commercials of “Slim Sauna Belt” with a man saying, “I used to be FAT and UNHAPPY.” You watch the popular fairness cream advertisement where a girl lands a lucrative job because her skin shade becomes fairer after applying fairness cream. You watched those deodorant ads where a guy becomes a chick magnet after applying a particular deodorant. I used to apply four of them, all at once, for advanced effects.

Of course, we did not believe these ads, in the literal sense. However, in some way, what we watch does influence us one way or another. This is especially the case when we are young and naïve. To illustrate with the slim sauna belt ad: although you may not believe that the belt will make you slim, you start believing that being fat will have you bullied and make you awkward and unhappy. The fairness cream ad exaggerated the importance of looking fair, and penny for thoughts for anyone who was watching that ad and had a darker skin. Awkward, right? The deodorant ads made you believe that having a pleasant artificial smell will make you attractive to a person. You never realized that your body odor releases pheromones, which have a better chance of attracting someone than any deodorant. When you use a strong deodorant, you destroy the smell of these pheromones.

To sum it up, these ads made you believe that overweight people are the unhappiest, dark skin was a disorder, and smelling human was a turn off. And these are just a few examples.

Oh, don’t get me started on movies. I will need at least a 1000 words for each of them and still wouldn’t be able to reach their depths of stupidity. The songs used to be next level. If ever you want to determine how creative the lyrics were, you need to just translate them to English. There’s a particular sad song picturized on Govinda, which makes me laugh. A couple of lines below –

Original version – Tum hi ne meri zindagi, kharab ki hai,

Tumhare liye hi maine, sharaab pee hai

 Translated – You have ruined my life,

And just for you, I have consumed alcohol

Govinda gets slapped at the end of this song by the way (link below), and rightly so for singing such disgusting lyrics.

Just randomly pick some movies from 90s. The blame of a failed relationship was put on the female lead most of the times, if not all the times. The female actor moves on, but the male actor is left all gutted. Why is it that most sad songs in movies are shot on male, but not female actors? Mildly sexist, eh?

Even the serious content we produce is sometimes so garbage. Look at our news channels. They are busy reading the Whatsapp chats between Mahesh Bhatt and Rhea C. One news channel which broke the news of his death headlined – “Sushant out hit-wicket”. Hit wicket is a dismissal in cricket where the batsman gets himself out by hitting the stumps with his bat. A very sensitive analogy indeed.

One of India’s leading prime time news anchors, who is supposed to moderate debates, actually gets involved fully and makes the debate all about himself. Not only that, his command over language is exceptional, and sometimes he can be spotted using words like “chillam chilli”. If you are watching this guy debating with your kids, you might well encourage them to watch porn as well. They are going to end up with a contaminated mind anyway. For a change, there is a video of him being trolled internationally in the link below.

Make no mistake, such content has been created and continues to be created, because it’s acceptable to the majority of us. If there was no appetite for such a content, no one could be encouraged to create them. They are what we are, sadly. We clearly need to improve our tastes.

Lastly, happy (and safe) Ganesh Chaturthi to all of you. Hope you aren’t inviting to many guests over your place during the festivities. May Ganesh give you and your family a lot of immunity, in case you are.

Thank you.

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M.

Legendary Bollywood love song

John Oliver praising an Indian journalist

Shallow Answers to Tough Questions

Q) Expand – (a+b)ⁿ

Solution:  (a    +      b)ⁿ

               = ( a             +                b  )ⁿ

              = (   a                  +                   b  )ⁿ   (Final answer)

 

Here’s the thing about the above answer - while it looks to be right, we all know it wasn’t supposed to go this way. My nerd experience tells me that whenever a question looks very easy, it is a trap. If answers are obvious, math questions wouldn’t be called “problems”.

Last week, we lost Sushant Singh Rajput (SSR), a rising star of Indian cinema. Preliminary investigation has revealed suicide; perhaps more details would come out soon. The event left the entire nation shocked, and everyone was searching for answers, as to what could drive a person to that step. What was actually going in that person’s head, who was full of potential and also so successful? Tributes started pouring in, and people started paying him respect in the most meaningful way of our times – putting Whatsapp and Instagram stories.

Suddenly, the social media is bombarded with posts on mental health. Suddenly, everyone is aware, that people who commit suicides are in a dark place of their own. Suddenly, they realize that people can sometimes get bullied even in Bollywood. A lightning strikes their heads, and they realize that Bollywood is plagued with nepotism.

Since the general intelligence quotient here is so high, people did start finding answers to all the questions. They found a clip where SRK was joking with SSR in an award show and immediately identified that it was bullying. They found a clip where Alia Bhatt was playing marry, hook up and kill (Alia chose the last option for SSR), and immediately decided that she had disrespected him. When SRK dropped a condolence message on his Twitter feed, someone called him out as arrogant. While the question was difficult, people did find all the simple answers. They connected some dots, and found a ‘group’ of people (famous directors/producers, star kids, etc.) on whom the entire blame could be placed upon. While some of these folks might be part of the problem, they aren’t the problem themselves.

nepotism - the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs

Why are people even surprised by nepotism? It’s not just Bollywood, it is present everywhere. Politicians, corporate moguls, people at higher levels of management in organizations, or basically anyone who can assert an influence is often exercising it (not all of them, but a lot of them). It’s not a Bollywood problem, it’s a social problem. However, you can still choose to blame it all on one person or a group of person and close your eyes to a social issue. Easier answer, right?

I am surprised people are talking about bullying as if it’s just a Bollywood problem. Some of you would have a friend who would tell you about his or her toxic work environment or a workplace bully. A recent study concluded that 75% people become victims of workplace bullying, at some point in their life. 

I saw a lot of posts with people saying “talk to me”. Just because you posted “talk to me”, a person feeling low would not come and start talking to you. You need to look out for people who are close to you. You need to identify someone who might be vulnerable. It may be someone who might be having a difficult time professionally or as a friend suggested, someone who stays alone without a family. It may be someone, who has just had some kind of setback in life. Sometimes, you might get a hint of how they feel through their social media activity. We need to realize that things have become digital and people have become bad at actual conversations. If they feel low, they might just remove their WhatsApp profile pictures, or put a depressed sounding status update on Facebook. All of this but they still might not open up on their own. Look out for the signs and vulnerabilities and watch out for them. With 1.3 lac suicides in India in 2018 alone, I am sure we have a lot to understand on the problem, rather than pointing fingers at a person or a group of people like the twitter user below.

 And if you ever feel low, “talk to me”.

Yours bitterly,

Ashish M. 

(Click on the image to zoom) 

References- 

Did you know 75% of employees are victims of workplace bullying?

10k student suicides in ’18, highest in 10 yrs