A lot of us who regularly use social media might be aware of the Facebook list of people in academia who have allegedly sexually harassed a student. It allows the said student to anonymously add the name of the academician to the list, and anyone can see the list. Here’s a link to an article on The Quint, talking about this – Facebook List Naming Profs as Sexual Harassers Sparks Fiery Debate.
Image courtesy – The News Minute
A fortnight ago, there was an uproar on Facebook. A website called The Quint had uploaded a video with its team member criticising the viral video ‘Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya’ by (rapper?)OmPrakash. The video by The Quint, was particularly critical of the lyrical content, citing phrases from the song and linking it to sexual harassment, rape threats and sexism and demanded its removal from YouTube. To say that it polarized viewers, would be an understatement. The woman who made the video received a harrowing amount of death and rape threats along with harassment online. The comment section of the video was rife with people divided into three noticeable factions – the ‘pseudo-intellectual libtards and feminists’, ‘misogynistic, patriarchal trolls’ and a bunch of people tagging others to spectate the argumentation. What was clearly a battle of opinions, soon devolved into a battle of ideologies.
The original article that was uploaded by The Quint. It has since been taken down on account of excessive abuse that the website and the journalist has received.
The year is 1997 and Titanic has just released. People are rushing to the theaters to watch it, not caring that the movie, just like the real life incident it was based on, would end tragically. If anything, the tear jerking end became one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. People couldn’t stop gushing over it, even if it meant they were also gushing tears while doing it. In fact, the sad finale became such a huge phenomenon, that it actually landed up in the BBC’s list of “Movies that made men cry.”
In my constant quest to discover new pages and reading material to follow online, I stumbled across the page of Akshay Dalvi. Akshay maintains a page on Facebook called ‘Words of Akshay’ which deals with micro-fiction. With over 96000 people following the page, I was certainly intrigued. I approached Akshay for his opinion on micro-fiction. He was kind enough to respond. Reflecting on his success, Akshay shared,”I tried writing micro-fiction 2-3 years back but I did not get the attention I wanted. Nevertheless, I carried on with my blogs, poetry and short stories. Upon my father’s passing, I started expressing my emotions via short stories. I started getting positive reactions. Within 3 months, my page went from 3000 followers to 96000+ followers.”
After the roaring success of her previous singles ‘Swag Wali Topi’ and ‘Daaru Daaru Daaru’ (sigh) ,Dhinchak Pooja has been kind enough to grace all ‘Dhinchakians’ ( a term that she has coined for her followers) with her latest artistic endeavour ‘Selfie Maine Leli Aaj’. The video on her YouTube channel, which has 70,000+ followers, has well over 11 million views. It doesn’t surprise me that the comment section has been disabled. I doubt it has anyone recommending her a good voice coach or lessons on songwriting. Nonetheless, 11 million views is no joke and it makes me wonder about two things – A. What’s so Dhinchak about Pooja? B. Why does everyone love to hate her?
Dhinchak Pooja in one of her videos
In what has become one of the most baffling trends to have taken over Facebook in recent times- the offensive, unfunny, insensitive and downright nasty memes asking people to tag Rahuls/Ankits/Sameers et al in posts carrying pictures of women who don’t fit the ideal image of perhaps a Photoshopped model on Vogue, has left not just myself, but many with a bitter taste. One cursory glance through the comment section of these posts is enough to make you question the value system of people who are actively engaging in these memes. What’s even worse is that many don’t even grasp why jokes like these are extremely deleterious.
I am walking to my class, when I hear someone shout from above, “Topi Wali! (The one with the cap) I love you!” It didn’t take me a second to recognise it as a man leering from inside the police custody bus, coming back from the Court nearby. It was quite unsettling, more so because of the uncomfortable proximity I was forced into with the bus. Standard, crowded Indian road conditions applied there. Mercifully, I was getting late for a class and it left me little time to think about anything else other than hurrying. And hurry I did, with as much false bravado as possible.
On the internet, I rarely engage in social/political/religious discussions. That’s not for a lack of opinion. On the contrary, I am constantly reading up on various issues plaguing the world. Recently, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in social and political developments, developments that have reverberated around the globe, affecting most of us via the ripple effect of globalization. Naturally, people want to discuss and deliberate over the nuances of what is going on. So far, so good. The trouble is, the nuances of the nuances are privy to only a handful.
It’s tough being a cricket fan in India. There are so many talented players to keep track of. Obviously, there are a few that you aren’t so fond of. But dare you vocalize that sentiment! There will be ardent supporters of that person at your throat quicker than Hannibal Lector can say ‘Fava beans and Chianti’.
You know what’s tougher though? NOT being a cricket fan. AT ALL. Not even ‘walk past a TV, watch an over and leave’ type viewer. To all those out there, here are some words of wisdom from someone who has no credentials to offer advice. But when has that ever stopped anyone, right?
RULE 1: Thou must be mentally prepared.
You must brace yourself for the storm that’s about to hit you. Read More
Post Number 4: Unresolved Resolves
At midnight, on 31st December, as the minute hand went past 12, indicating the onset of the year of the Monkey, my Facebook wall was inundated with an annoying amount of “New Year, New Me” posts and people behaving as if the increment from 2015 to 2016 was nothing short of the New World Order with Inspirational quotes to an extent that would give even Oprah Winfrey a complex. And amidst all this chaos of creating an occasion out of something that should seem ordinary, the passing of time, the common theme in almost every declaration of attention seeking (a.k.a XYZ is celebrating the new year with his/her profile friends, their pets, the entire city, Superman, Batman, E.T., the creatures from Avatar and 50 others) all of them mentioned one particular thing, Resolutions!
AH! Resolutions. A wonderful yearly reminder to oneself of one’s uselessness and lack of ambition and dedication. How among everything else, we fail at pursuing the most mundane of things, that too decided by us only! Now, who doesn’t like that? To be nudged not-so gently periodically and be told “You know that thing you wanted to do and should have done WAY ago, yeah you should ‘try’ doing that again.”
I got off my laptop without posting ANY DAMN New Year nonsense (where’s my medal for courage in face of social expectations?) and scavenged through my unkempt bookshelf to find what I wanted to, my dust laden, slightly cobwebby (I should really clean more….maybe I could make that a resolution?….LOL who am I kidding?) ‘Resolution Diary’ . And as theatrically as I could manage, I blew off the dust and opened it with a dreamy nostalgic look on my face. Now it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I hadn’t managed to accomplish most of my resolutions- most of which involved physical exertion(SHOCKING!!). But there was a saving grace- I had managed to fulfill one task, that involved reading around 20+ books in the year. I was ecstatic. 2015 hadn’t been THAT useless after all. I did ultimately pull off one resolution, although the rest peered back at me like sad, neglected children that had been overlooked for their more loved sibling. Why couldn’t I manage to do any other task? If I had managed one, theoretically I could have managed the others as well? *emphasis on theoretically* Why wasn’t I as motivated for the rest of the resolutions ? Why didn’t I end up in better physical shape by the end of the year? Why hadn’t a reunion for F.R.I.E.N.D.S released exactly 10 years after the last episode? Why hadn’t ‘Fetch’ become a genuine English word? QUESTIONS! QUESTIONS!
As much as I wanted to analyze the psychology behind my actions and inaction, I had other urgently important stuff to do such as judging people by their social media antics and commenting witty one liners on their posts to hoard likes ,so I found myself a new pen and neatly scribbled 2016 RESOLUTIONS in fancy cursive writing and very cleverly extended arrows from the 2015 page to the 2016 page ( Genius I know!) . With a grin on my face, I kept the diary back on the bookshelf, slighlty hidden because I didn’t want anyone else to see it and have a good chuckle on my account.
I was glad to have taken the initiative to resolve the unresolved resolutions. And so I have decided and I’ll let you all know, that in 2016, I will learn a new language, lose weight, start exercising, eat better yada yada ………….. starting next Monday!
Candid Wallflowers 