Watch Dystopia, Live!

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I read somewhere that the pleasure centres in our brains light up like a discotheque every time we learn something new. You can see the logic behind it from an evolutionary point of view. We were just another animal in a scary dark jungle and were sharing the house with a lot of scary and potentially fatal things. What you didn’t know could literally kill you. And I think news publications, TV channels and social media plays off on this very same base instinct of ours: the desire to know more things.

Most of us rationalise our news cravings as a need to be aware of the world around. But we end up viewing the world and others with a very cynical lens. It definitely works for the news networks and the people who own them because happy loving people don’t make up for a subservient bunch of voters. They’re usually not good and frequent consumers and they have this irritation habit of questioning things.

You can usually guess a person’s preferred news outlet by their opinions nowadays. Although, just like we can ponder on the classic question, ‘what came first- the chicken or the egg?’ there’s also the similar: Is someone a hateful bigot because they watch Republic TV or do they watch Republic TV because they’ve always been a hateful bigot?

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The Covid-19 outbreak and the current situation has increased my scepticism of the news reporting industry and media outlets. I have been an anxious person for the past few years and the situation right now has definitely been an aggravating factor. Being a self-employed advertising professional dependent on the restaurant and event industry for income has made it inexplicably worse. But I am amazed to realise that the constant news updates and Corona-patient scoreboards were the worst.

Most news channels have these 100 headlines in 2 minutes kind of hourly telecasts. And I’ve noticed that almost 85+ news of these 100 are usually shitty news: rapes, murder, theft, corruption, mob stupidity and incompetent bureaucracy. But right now this ratio seems to have spread to all our communication. Most WhatsApp forwards these days are fear-inducing updates, fake news, heresy, bizarre immunity building ‘tips’ and a recent addition has been ‘our religion/ fitness regime is the best cure against the virus’ genre. Social media updates are no better, most of them fall into either of these categories: oh look the world is on fire, my favourite leader is the best, buy my products, the virus will be here till 2022 or the dalgona coffee challenge!

Full disclosure: I too have posted and will keep on posting things from the above categories. Some of my favourite people also do. And I am sure neither one of us is going to stop. But my problem is the fact that never before has this affected me so much. The fact that I’ve never written and published something online about other people’s posting habits is proof enough! Or maybe it was always affecting me negatively, but I had to-do lists to tick off, meetings to go to, products to sell, places to go to and other things to ignore the wounds.

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I usually try to end most of my writings on a positive note. Lately, whenever I cannot find one, or even force one, I try my best not to publish it. Because I believe that any interaction with me online or offline, should be uplifting for others, else there is no use sharing, right? I know pain hurts less if we choose to share because we might hear back from someone who has gone through it too. Their tips on how to cope or relatability might make us feel less alone. If nothing else, then, we’ll have one less scar to hide and pretend about.

But here I cannot think of a positive note. Sure, if you’re like most of us and still cannot give up news and updates I’d suggest some happy-news outlets. (GoodGoodGood & The happy Broadcast)

My actual worry is our own behaviour and not the way these media outlets operate. They telecast what they do, because of demand and supply, right? So all of us, or at least a majority of us have made it possible for them to be profitably in business even when every primetime bulletin brings us nothing else, but more anxiety. As a copywriter one of my proudest moment was coming up with the line: ‘Everyone wants to change the world but they don’t even want to change the channel’. It has never felt more apt.

Do you think if the apocalypse comes, news-readers would come on screen and just say, ‘That’s it from us. Shit just got real. You’re on your own. You’ve always been’. Or would they try to sell their advertising minutes at jacked up prices while claiming that it was their channel that brought you the news of the apocalypse first? Do you think they’ll have sponsors for the chaos and its live telecast? Will our favourite Instagram influencers Livestream the end? And most importantly, will you like, share and subscribe if I guarantee to bring it to your screen before everyone else?

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Thank you Internet !!

Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: entire relationships flourish, friendships prosper…there’s a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet. – J. G. Ballard

I would like to dedicate this particular post to the medium that has made it possible for a needy person like me to blab about random stuff to get the attention of some jobless person  enlightened soul like you.

I think, if you want to become ‘famous on the internet’ nothing really helps more than a unfulfilled dream.

Wanted to become a writer but had to give up on your dream for something important, like earning a livelihood? Not to worry. Now we’ve got a number of websites like wordpress.com, blogger.com etc. which let you to set up your own domain where you can write about anything ranging from how you blame the government for your irregular bowel movement or a poem about the same, (basically stuff which no one probably cares about). If you use the right ‘tags’ and pimp your blog enough who knows you might find your own audience, a following of a sort who sometimes eagerly wait for your next blog-post.

Remember the earlier days when the only prerequisite to becoming a photographer was carrying around a SLR camera & clicking 1 or 2 mandatory pictures of the hills, the sky, a river or the sewage-line which opens into the river? And top it off with a little photo-shop? Well it’s become much more easier now. All you need is a smart phone, a dish of something which looks fancy & drum roll …… INSTAGRAM ! In some parts of the world it is now mandatory to post a picture of the meal on instagram before starting with the main course. Btw, if you’re on instagram do check out Photo of the Day. They have some of the best photographs on Instagram. A close second is this account owned by your’s truly.

9 years ago Facebook literally changed the way we use internet, or why we use the internet. I kid you not, but I remember going to certain places just so that I could get a profile picture for my Facebook account. I also recall one or two incidents when my friends came to my house, and after the customary pleasantries were exchanged I got a notification saying XYZ tagged you in a post & uploaded a status update saying ‘Bored at Pratik Doshi’s House’ & checked-in on Facebook. This one time, I swear I saw a status update reading ‘My dog died 😦  Please don’t like this status.’
And what’s with people tagging you in random photos just to get your attention? And while we’re talking about facebook, can I also get the conversion rate for likes on a post to food for African kids ?

But Facebook is also very helpful. I swear I would’ve never been able to wish “Happy Birthday Bro !!” to that guy who sat next to me in grade 4 & with whom I haven’t talked ever since.

A very helpful feature that I found was that you don’t need to sign-in or create a separate account for each website. Instead you can use your Facebook account to sign-in. Once I had logged in a ‘video-sharing’ website which had an option saying ‘Share the videos you view with your friends on Facebook’. ARE YOU KIDDING ME ?? Why would I want to do that ? I can’t think of anyone who would choose that option on this particular site I am talking about.

Facebook has also been a reason for a lot of stress for me recently. Have you ever been in a situation where some girl uploads a picture & it’s only after you’ve done naming your future kids in your head that you realize that this might be your one chance to hint at how you feel about her. This is exactly when your brain, which always had a penchant for getting you embarrassed in remarkable ways & scales; convinces you that the possibility of a scenario involving rejection on the internet, which you’ll never be able to erase & will be stored in some server till the end of time; is nothing to be worried about.

You convince yourself that if things go too bad there’s always the story ‘how your account got hacked & you’ve already launched a complaint with the cyber crime cell’.

So you take the leap. You click on that ‘like’ button. And you think of a ‘comment’ which you’ll recount when you tell your version of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ to your kids.

But it’s too late now. You realize that she has a little green dot in front of her name, meaning she’s online & has already noticed that you clicked like. Now you don’t want to come across as a creep who clicks ‘like’ on the photo & then stares at it for half an hour & then comments on it, though that is exactly who you’re deep down.

So you brain-storm.

But most of the lines which you can think of are already taken.

Some guy has already written “Hey looking hot. Howz U ? Long Tym. We shud meet.” What a looser! you think yourself.

Some other guy who has a photo of his bicep as his profile picture says “Looking hot as usual.” Is that his bicep in real? Who Cares? What if he’s her boyfriend? What if he hunts me down & beats me? So you open his profile, & after 10 minutes you find out that it is some guy who actually looks like a kid from those posters about Malnutrition.

You get back to the photo but you notice a recent comment with the exact lines from that Altaf Raja song that you were thinking of using.

It’s at that exact moment when you realize you’re running out of time. So you type :

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Scarlett Johansson is very hot,

And so are you.

And then, you wait. Some 15 minutes later she replies ‘LOL 😛 ‘

And you tell your imaginary kids in your head.  ‘And kids, that’s exactly when I realized she was not my type.’

But well, Facebook has also been very helpful for stalking checking for other prospective ‘mother of your-kids’. If you don’t agree with the last statement I am pretty sure you probably haven’t used Graph search yet.

And how can I forget twitter? A social network where you crack jokes to get Retweets from strangers. And once you gather a substantial number of ‘followers’ it becomes very easy to get some traffic for all the above-mentioned things. Do you remember how earlier you used to get Spam which would be titled ‘Congratulations, you’ve won $ 5 million’ or in some other cases promised photographs of certain ladies in certain degrees of undress. But few days back I got a mail saying ‘Get more followers on twitter.’ Clearly something has changed. Apparently people are so self-obsessed that twitter has also come out with an option where you can download the whole archive of your tweets till today & read them & wonder how did it benefit to think about stuff to tweet & then phrase the sentence such that it is under 140 characters.

I’ve always wondered why social media has been such a revolutionary idea. What’s the reason for it’s success?

I think I’ve found an answer finally.

Since time immemorial man has been fascinated by the idea of other people reading or looking at his thoughts, ideas, dreams or imagination. How else do you explain the cave paintings or writings dating back to some hundreds of thousands of years ago? Why did somebody sit in a cave, painting what the sky looked like, or tried to reinvent a hunting day on cave walls? Why did someone go through the pain of painting how their cities looked in excruciating detail ? Or why did someone paint & engrave detailed descriptions on rock, bark, leaves or animal skin of what they imagined their gods to be ? Why have wise men, across all eras all over the world burned the midnight oil to write to us ? The answer might be same as the answer to the question why Graffiti artists paint the walls, or why as kids one of our earliest instinct is to scribble on walls, or as adults we prefer writing on virtual walls. Or why we tweet the links to videos/articles we find interesting? Or why do we turn a critic on twitter every Friday even when you have only 40 followers out of which 12 look like twitter bots.

I wonder how would future generations react when they find out these virtual caves that we’ve built here, at least before we screw up the planet beyond repair & make it impossible for any kind of life to exist here.

Till then let’s keep engraving the virtual walls.