How Twitter killed the blog star Or How Social Media affected the millennials

Well first off, it is fairly appalling I return to my blog after about a year and half however in the interim I have been dabbling in more corporate blogs on Linkedin and give out doses in shorter forms via Twitter ( Damn who thought 140 characters could be so addictive)

Coming to the topic on hand, honestly blogging as a medium has lost its shine but some things do bounce back so quick recap of social media trends and how we desi's responded over the years.

The fun of being a millennial ( born in the 1980s) really gave us a range of technologies to experience. you know VHS tapes, audio tapes (Side A and Side B), Floppy Disk and off-course Yahoo messenger

2000-2003

I guess most Indians got online and experienced hot mail, yahoo messenger on dial up connection ( the speed was nothing to speak about however the telephone bills escalated quite fast)

People still had secret identities so folks had email ids like loverboy_27 or angel16 as user names :)  and crumby desktops where you always had 2 fingers on the  "Alt-Tab" button to maintain your privacy

2004-2008

I know Facebook and Orkut released around the same time but Brazilians and Indians really took to Orkut like Fish to water, every one who had a net connection was on it and the things which mattered -  No of scraps, No of Fans and No of testis --- monials that it :P

Orkut was the first time people let their guard down, engage in private conversations on the scrap-book (wall for Facebook junkies) which really changed how one reacted to electronic medium ( the word social media didn't really catch on)

Yahoo Groups - By 2008, it was no longer cool to have secret identities and social discussions happened via groups.  It was a radical thing to share email forwards even at work.

Facebook was catching up but it was still for the cool kids ( NRIs, or MS students) not true blue desis who were seeking Fraanship

2009-2012

As smartphones began to evolve and better internet speeds + Wifi, the internet truly became personal , you didn't need to fight with a sibling to get online

Facebook got better and addictive, Google didnt do much for Orkut so it died. thankfully it was pretty fun having friends on Facebook, folks on Gtalk - ( This was Facebook before hyper fast news feeds and attack of Famville and Candy Crush requests)

This was the time every one had blogs and people who would religiously get and monitor comments :) - I quite liked that phase to be honest.

2012-2014

The attack of "Selfie" - This truly marked the Phase 3 of social media where the focus of interaction moved from one to one to actually one to many .... all emotions conveyed through sappy status messages, pics of self  (imagine a giant head with pimples and all with a small effiel tower in the background) and this is where the disconnect actually began.

People had more than "800-1000" friends on the network but would speak to less than 10 on a regular basis. since people keep broadcasting their lives on Twitter and Facebook, there was liite incentive to even catch-up

Blogs also a causality, then you get addicted to social media, you lose the urge to write in the long form, I really believe our future generation kids will be ADD (attention deficit disorder) because we are always online but not really connecting with people in the ways of the past.

Now people are so bored rather than communicate how they feel, i guess they did just post a "sad selfie" on Facebook or Snapchat.

2015 & beyond 

With the older folks (Parents, Uncles and neighbors) coming online and invading facebook, the youth are retreating to new technologies like Whatsapp, Viber etc.

Whatsapp groups are the new yahoo messengers and I am also seeing the resurgence of blogs on cooler sites like Medium / Quora and Tumbler.

Video is becoming a strong medium - Vine, Youtube, Meerkat & Periscope ( Video selfies - ugh :P )

The  "Dark Social" is pretty much Social Media Phase 1 on the mobile which only reinforces the fact - what goes around comes around.  
The only casualty in this evolution is the ability to communicate in long form - from letters, email chains and long chat conversations is becoming short form, statuses and pictures 

The churn but just the beginning ...

The recent uprising of the Indian middle class especially the youth in protests against the Delhi gang rape case and earlier the Janlokpal movement shows an interesting shift in the social consciousness of modern India. Media pundits and sociologists are describing this as a final change in the typical Indian apathy driven mindset. If you are following Indian media and news papers reports, a lay man would form the following opinions:- 

• The Indian government has failed in the Indian state and there is complete breakdown in law and order, Indian women are not safe anywhere
• The Indian middle class has completely awakened and this is Indian equivalent of Arab Springs 
• The misogynistic views made by certain religious and political leaders are been condemned across the nation
• The accused should be given severe punishment like Arab nations or castration 

Although the above statements are true in partial measure, there are shades of grey in all aspects of the points discussed, although the Indian government has failed in protecting the victim in Delhi and many other cases, but unlike the Arab nations which deny many freedom particularly to women.

The Indian govt. definitely missed a great opportunity to connect with the youth and instead resorted to water cannons and lathi charges which only helped in reducing their already limited credibility to further shambles and in the current social media and sensationalist news media had a ready story in hand to exploit. 

Although the middle class has shown a change and shown signs of participation, it is still an urban camera friendly protests which only identifies with the causes close to its psyche and cannot identify with causes like caste discrimination and vast social inequality or even  crimes against women in rural India.

Although I cannot agree with most of Mohan Bhagwat's statements but definitely there is a Bharat and India emerging which share the same geography but heading towards different economic opportunities available to them. The misogynists and old age view held by many draconian minds will not change over night , it will require sustained focus by the people. 

The media has as an invested interest in the social protests and state of unrest, it gives them ready fuel and drama to run a 24X7 news channel and their true interest is only tapping into the unrest of the Indian masses and not in actually solving any real problems.

The churn in the youth has began which is encouraging but it still needs further direction and also reconciliation with the rural India to have an effective pan India movement which will drive true change. The Indian constitution has enough freedom and laws to enable this change but this requires a new kind of leadership needs to emerge from civil society and ordinary walk of life to make this happen. 

Gangnam Style, Kolaveri and Innocence

If you have an existence on social networking sites, you could not have missed a portly Korean man prancing around in extraordinary goofy style which is now "Gangnam Style" the most viewed and liked video in the history of Youtube.  

Some time back, another video sung quiet off-key by Southern Actor Dhanush "Kolaveri Di" was  the talk of town, this very ordinary piece of singing reaching a far greater reach than imagined.  Clearly in this era of the highly networked world, an Internet connection and social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, ideas both good, bad, ugly and funny can resonate across the world. 

Takes me back to the song Friday by Rebecca Black which was derided by people all over the world, imagine the kind of rejection the poor girl would have faced.  Still the criticism stayed virtual or the trolls who hound celebs, journalists with vulgar and crude language. 


Sadly another video found a much larger audience than it should have, "The innocence of Muslims" a disparaging video made by mischievous elements with extremely poor production values and the voices overdubbed so even the actors were taken for a ride. 

Such an ugly video, found credence and has been circulated by the same social media channels which promote so much of mirth to become a weapon of hate, leading to deaths and damage to people and property. A mob killing an envoy, bomb killing Russians and South Africans in Afghanistan and attacks on Norwegian embassies and protests worldwide.

The Innocence of Muslims is not the only ugly video on the Internet, there are lots of hate videos against Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. 

The violence has promoted many nations to block social media sites. Censorship will only take the world on a slippery road, and violence over hate speeches and thoughts will only increase the fault-lines in the society. 

Social Media is not the cause of unrest but only an medium for amplification. I hope in not so distance future only Kolaveri ( Murderous rage) is reserved for the likes of Dhanush and people learn to take things in stride and live life "Gangnam Style".

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. In fact have the wisdom to reject hateful thoughts.

Trouble in Eden !

There was once a magical land named Eden where the Demi-gods lived, where dreams came true, it was a place where wishes came true and for little efforts, rewards were huge. The Demi-Gods were kind and admitted the mortals freely and for devotion, mortals were rewarded with gold, plush houses.

The mortals from earth could come visit Eden and live for a few years, earn huge fortunes and go back to their land much wealthier and influential. The Demi-Gods just wanted the mortals to make statues and to glorify them.

As the story of the mortal artisans making the trips to Eden became more and more well known, the mortals realized this was an easy ticket to ride. Several schools to train and deploy artisans began to spring up. Other trades began to be ignored, the sole motive of mortals was securing a gateway to Eden.

Like all good things, the good times at Eden also had to come to an end. By the curse of the sages, Eden was struck by a series of natural calamities like quakes and storms. Suddenly the demi gods no longer had the luxury of entertaining the mortals.  Suddenly the demi-gods wanted the mortals out, they began to see the mortals as parasites feeding on their great society.

The mortals were concerned, and once the gateways to Eden began to close, politics and opportunism began to take over, it was no longer easy for people to reach Eden. The journey to the promised land of Eden has just become a nightmare, with thousands and thousands of mortal artisans waiting for their turn to enter Eden, life just got tougher.

As you might have guess, this story was a thinly veiled reference of the Indian IT services industry and the situation in the Western World. India was fortunate to have an army of English speaking programmers who could take on the Y2K problem. Any one who was lucky enough or smart enough to catch the IT wave became quite successful, however the same cannot be said for the young engineering graduate passing out of college today as circumstances have become much more challenging.

Mental Crutches

Last week, as my boss mentioned the new Smart Art graphics in power point presentations is making most presentations look the same. I had to agree with him, in the name of improving productivity the dependency on tooling is only dulling our creativity and other mental faculties.

Number Crunching - Thanks to caculators and excel sheets, even basic arthimetic has become impossible, both shop keepers and customers alike are clueless without technology.

Birthday Reminders – There was once a time, I could remember the birthdays of all my close friends and family members, then with the advent of social networks facebook and orkut, the dependency on social networks to remind us of birthdays leading to a large gap in memory.

Spelling – the most disturbing dependency I have fallen prey to is the spell check options in MS Word or even on google search. Now there are words for which I dont ever know the right spelling, just depend on auto corrections. My biggest fear now, writing an written exam on pen and paper.

Limiting Social Interactions – This is the most disturbing dependency which we have grown so fond of , when we could meet face to face, we have moved to cell phone conversations, from cell phone conversations, we have moved to text messenging and most uncapable to making human contact anymore.

Tablets / Smartphone fixation - Steve Jobs proudly claimed the iPad is the definitive post PC device and it is the end of the desktops and laptops. Although I agree desktops and laptops are clunky devices but typing on a glass surface is even more difficult. It is scientifically proven, devices like tablets and smartphones are more suited for passive consumption rather than comfortably typing or creating inputs.

Although technology is definitely taking humanity ahead, there are several de-humanising and limiting effects as well so that mental crutches we have grown to depend on needs to be reduced if not eliminated altogether. 

Pointless things people (even me) did on Orkut

Last week, I got a blast from the past; I received an orkut friend request from an old acquaintance, its been ages since I accessed orkut page much less connect with anyone. This made think about the old days when orkut was a rage and how Indians got the first taste of social networking ( it was simply called orkutting back then :P )

How many scraps do you have ??

People actually kept count of the scraps on their profile and cheered on when they hit land marks like 1000, 2000 etc. Any guy/gal with 5000 scraps was popular but someone with 10,000 scraps was a orkut super-star.

Profile visit kiya but scrap nahi kiya

The creepy feature of orkut allowed you to note people who visited your profile recently, and people took serious offense to not been scrapped when someone left their digital footprint on their profile.

Sugary sweet testimonials

the extension of the how many scraps syndrome was how many testimonials do I have, emotional blackmail and quid-pro-quo ensured. But on the other hand, it did make for cheap thoughtful birthday gifts ;) get it “on your birthday, I really wanna share ….”.

Increasing Fans on orkut

I know one particular friend of mine who would become fans of all people in the friend list, so that even 50% reciprocity would ensure he/she would become the most Fanned person.

Wanna be fraindship

as a guy, I wasn't so bothered but girls got hit on so often with unsolicited friendship requests from English murdering desis :)

Today, orkut has become a sort of relic, with facebook and twitter ruling the roost today, but orkut had its dream run in the days of clunky assembled desktops and seedy cyber cafes. Now we have neat 3G and GPRS smartphones. 

Cheers to the initial heady days of social networking!  

Once upon a Time ...

There was once a time, when I was first introduced to the term “generation gap” and I was on the right side of it. I was the young generation and parents never understood us. Now as time has passed and the new Facebook generation taking over, I have already started feeling the effects of being on the wrong side. I grew up as a kid in late 80’s and all through 90’s. I had my first computer only in my second year of engineering and learned about yahoo messenger in as late as 2004 (total technology laggard J ).

Life has changed a lot in India since 1991, and liberalization has touched our lives profoundly. So here goes.

Friends

Then: We had 1 best friend and 4-5 good friends and a dozen hi-bye friends

Now: we have 500 friends on orkut, 350 friends on facebook and some lost souls who still use yahoo messenger or hotmail God knows why?

Television

Then: I had one television channel Doordarshan and my black and white EC TV had only 1 channel, so to watch Thunderball and Johny Soko and the Giant Robot I had to go to my neighbor’s house to watch DD II.

Now: We have 32 inch LCD TVs and DTH connections, but who watches TV today it’s the boring same old Saas bahu and Reality shows crap. We watch only sports or new channels occasionally.

Relationships

Then: If you liked a girl, you had to call her landline and pray to god, her Dad didn’t pick up and you had to identify yourself. Getting into a relationship was a big deal and you had to face lots of parental pressure.

Now: you can IM her, sms her, scrap her, leave her a message on FB and if things move voice / video chat with her with no fear of Dad Mom or bhaiya ! Although life is much easier, the thrill of the older days kahan ! Breaking up is so easy; falling in and out of love is very common. Your parents are glad you aren’t gay and you have found a person of the opposite gender.

Music /Movies

Then: You had a 2 in 1 National Panasonic or Sanyo player; you purchased cassettes and heard them over and over again. If you are well off you had a VCR and played VHS tapes on it.

Now: You have DVD players, VCD players which you hardly use, you have laptops and external hard disks but you end up watching movies and listening to music on you new shiny Apple iPod.

Cinema Theaters

Then: Single screens ruled the roost, 30 rupees stall and 50 rupees balcony seemed expensive, 20 rupees for pop-corn which looks pretty oily and manufactured from a sidey location. To watch an English Movie, you had to go to Regal or Sterling in South Mumbai. The only English movie we knew was Terminator and Rambo and Arnold and Stallone were our favorite English Actors J

Now: We only go to multiplexes now as low brow crowd go to single screens and playing 200 bucks per ticket is no big deal, pop-corn looks much better but it costs twice as much a balcony ticket in the old days. The theatre name is no longer a brand nowadays its PVR, INOX, Fun Cinemas or IMAX. Sadly Metro, Basant and New Vijay are closed now to become shopping centers and surviving few relegated to screening Bhojpuri movies.

Sports /Games

Then: We all played cricket in the summers and when it rained we would be miserable and play football for a change. Our first and cherished video games were Mario, Contra and Duck Hunt.

Now: Now hardly kids play outside and are glued to the computer or the cell phone. Multi player games like Counterstrike or games like God of War, Grand theft auto rule the roost. The era of couch potatoes is truly upon us.

Although I agree life has gotten lot easier since I was a kid, but the simple pleasures of life have been robbed from this generation. Kids are experiencing failures in relationships and peer pressure in whole different ways than the past. Social networking sites have made people lives so open to strangers to the point of becoming a tamasha. The business of relationship status or discussing personal life thread bare on a social networking site is frankly beyond me. That apart, spending money in malls, restaurants or branded clothes has become little too easy, the pocket money comes more easily as parents have little time to spend with them.

Today whenever I see a teenage guy sitting with his girl friend and having a fight in a food-court in a mall somewhere, I feel glad to have grown up in the early 90s J when life was lot easier.

The illusion of reality ….

Surf any channel you shall find reality shows for every possible genre song, dance,comedy,eating insects and worms,staying locked for 90 days, romance and even swayambar of Rakhi Sawant an item girl turned adarsh bahu. The latest to add to that list is the controversial Sach ka Saamna which even sent the Parliament in a tizzy.

When the saas bahu K serials ruled the roost, slient prayers by youth across the country yearned for something new and something refreshing. The channel owners hit upon the magic formula of Reality television,

There are people who are increasing finding the shows becoming more voyeuristic and making a bad impact on young children watching these shows. There is a group of member who believe in the freedom of expression and abhor any kind of censorship.

Song/dance Shows Indian Idol/ Sa re Ga ma

The first few shows were the simple harmless song and dance shows, people sing and you the audience can decide the faith of these contestants. Slowly this genre degenerated into asking for votes from the people of your region. Slowly the North East began to assert their presence in India by en mass voting. Then the hosts themselves would mention Bengal ke Debojit needs your votes, Punjab ke Sandeep needs your support etc. If that wasnt enough people started doing melodrama, crying fighting in order to create an impression, talent is not a prerequiste, it is the likeability of a contestant that matters.

So you have hearts of talents crushed and talentless singers getting their 2 minutes of fame and then fading away faster than they even ascended to the stars.

Roadies / Spiltsvilla/Big Boss

Nothing can be more infruitating that a show which says it potrays the youth of the nation, so you have a classic stereotype, a delhite fake english accent, lots of gaalis, tantrums and flirting on the show. You have a bald man, who thinks he is god's gift to humanity and the only thing he loves is run people down. Put people in situations, people fight and say hurtful things with a lot of beeps. Put the show at 7 pm prime time and repeat shows throughout the clock. The host/makers say that they respect women but the tasks and contestants reduce women to mere sex objects. These shows can impact the thought of entire tween generation, the pre teens who are trying to grow up too fast.

The myth called free will....

When there are any calls for regulation on these reality shows, the simple answer the show makers tell us is you can switch off the television. Easier said than done. The same shows run at different times, similar shows exist across different channels. Children cannot be supervised all the time, and temptation and curosity to explore some new stimulus often gets the better of common sense. The kids today are growing up too fast and infact the information fed to them isnt objective. The vices are packaged as style statements, being rude/crass is shown to be cool attitude. The loss of innocene in the future generation is what disturbs me a lot.

I am afraid that choice has already been made for the next generation by the consistent bombardment of voyereutic, consumeristic lifestyle choices. I know I may seem a tad old fashioned in this post but when I look back in the days of Doordarshan, I watched Fun Time an one hour cartoon serial slot from 12.00 to 1.00 in the afternoon during summer vacations and went teary eyed when the show wound up with the end of summer vacations. Now, we have maybe 10 dedicated cartoon channels but the kids today watch Roadies/big Boss or Spiltsvilla.

The truth is complex and rarely simple – Oscar Wilde I think battle between regulation and freedom of expression is far from over !!

Pointless things people say Part II – Shaadi ke Side Effects !!

The age of 26-27 is a very interesting period of life and a very challenging one. Your peer group begins to get married suddenly and suddenly the world becomes divided into the haves and have-nots. It does not matter which group you are in, you experience a weird feeling and are awkward how to talk about the topic regarding impeding marriage. The following are the few gems which you shall hear in conversations. What they say and What they mean.

You two make a great couple / You two look cute together


Even if the guy looks like a rhinoceros and the girl looks like giraffe who could be mistaken for a ladder, you have to say this statement because it is politically correct thing to say. Alternatively It is also a nice way of saying, teri aaukat ke liye this person is more than enough.


Who is the lucky girl ?


This is a line said with least conscience, especially when you know the guy is a drunkard, constant womanizer or he is very orthodox / boring. There is no way in life, you would want your sister or friends to marry this chap, still do you really think the girl is lucky. Shame on all of you who use this line without remorse.


Beta shaadi ke baad you are so dead !!


It is extremely ironical, it is always the single unmarried man who seems to know that marriage is a deathtrap. It has been passed on from generations of unmarried men to make fun of the guy who is going to get married. I mean what empirical proof exists that states that married folks are more unhappy than whining pining single clan ?


I have found the one....

I was given this unsolicited but extremely relevant advice by a thrice married and thrice divorced person that “ Get married early in life, then you get to choose, in case you wait too late you get chosen”.

Arranged or love marriages become a stressful experience after a period of time , if you have seen more and more people without success. At first you are idealistic, you have a role model about your ideal person. With more rejections on the way, then you think there is something wrong with you , so you are ready to compromise with your dream man/woman a little.

Eventually the little compromise ended up with you are just glad that he/she is human, off the opposite gender and for some wierd reason doesnt seem to dislike you unlike the rest of her/his gender.

The sentence should actually read as I have the found the one … ( perhaps the last one on earth so Hurry offer valid untill stocks last !! )


It happened so fast … I didn't time to tell anyone


I had all the time, I didnt have time to tell you even my my 3rd cousin from Alaska knew before you. I seriously hope you didn't fall for that one. The fact is I did not want to share it with you, at least now get a hint of your standing in my social circle you loser !!


Disclaimer – The comments are exaggerated liberally so don't take offense to them
Yeah right, I have said what I wanted to really say but now,with this disclaimer, I can shirk the responsibilities for my statements ;)

Pointless Things People Say !

Considering the 'busy' lives we yuppies (young urban professionals) allegedly live with only weekends to unwind and recoup. The weekends are the only thing to look forward to in lives. But people are always wanting that piece of our time. The ever increasing modes of communication like emails, social networking sites, mobile phones and instant messengers like gtalk/yahoo has made avoiding these people even tougher!

In order to avoid such people, a new set of pointless statements have been manufactured in order to make this more platable. These have now become part of daily conversations when we really do not want to keep in touch with people but also want to seem so politically correct about it.

Top pointless lines people say and what they mean :-

We should meet up/catch up sometime !

More like next lifetime or something, I hope I never bump into you any time soon.

I am bit busy at work, can we talk in the evening ....

Never mind, I am sitting right now in the canteen with similar jobless colleagues having coffee but I really do not want to talk to you.

I will call you on the weekend pucca

yeah Right, you could die waiting by the phone ….. get a life loser !!

Dil se he/she is not bad !

When you have nothing nice to say about a person … you end up saying this !

We stay in the same city and haven't met up it is really bad !

We stay in the same city and WOW am I glad the city is so big, I can avoid people like you :)

How is life ? Bas chal raha hai tu bata

Ultimate filler statement... I do not want to tell me how my life is !! but I do not mind if u spill the beans about your life...

I am so busy re, I just don't have time for anything these days...

I am not THAT busy, it is just that I do not have ANY TIME for you these days !!

This post has been written partly in jest and is highly exaggerated but the truth lies somewhere in between.