Social Media (SM)

This scribe is not a member of that tribe which believes in holding the cards too close to the chest, so that others are kept guessing.  Experience has taught that some such cards have deadly, serrated edges they nick you painfully and I am so averse to seeing blood, especially my own.  My dear wife revels in ticking me off periodically for going over the top with an exaggerated play of openness and painting myself into some notoriously uncomfortable corners with unerring regularity! What? No, sorry -  historians have failed abysmally in their duty to quench the curiosity of readers, by not recording that periodicity of such rebukes.  True to this track record, ascribed by my dear wife to a serious `genetic disorder' (she contemptuously dismissed my bleating plea to use `character flaw' instead - it sounded better, nothing else - because she opined the latter imparted more dignity than deserved, to the personality and issue at hand), I would begin with a disclosure.

I am an ardent fan of all kinds of cynical non-disclosures that masquerade in the media nowadays in the name of disclosures.  Just for the sheer audacity and temerity of the marketers and programme producers in taking the audience as well as the regulators completely for granted. They are fun but seldom disclose anything useful or even comprehensible.  This is because (a) the diabolical print media chooses the smallest possible font to publish them, leaving you in dire need of a custom-built, dome magnifier so large that no one has thought of manufacturing it yet; (b) TV channels show the disclosures for part of a fleeting nanosecond so shoddily that the text is fully submerged in grey mass of grains even in HD channels; (c) radio ads fast forward the recorded disclosures so much that they sound like some seriously garbled mickey mouse stuff.  Against this background, my disclosure should stand out in its clarity and honesty - `I am not a fan of the various Social Media (SM) platforms at play today'!!

I have gleefully kept myself away from Facebook (FB), despite many friends and relatives trying to goad me into it, with tears welling up in their eyes.  Tears, not from any intense emotional experience involving FB or from the futile exercise undertaken with me, but induced by the irritation from the unremitting glare of and excessive exposure to FB screens.  What else does one expect when someone spends the better part of every single day, ogling at photos posted by various very remote associates of thrice-removed cousins of old acquaintances' wives one had not seen or heard from in decades!  I do have my quota of photos forcibly thrust under my nose by my wife, trilling excitedly `Oh, look, do you remember the lady standing at extreme right?  We met her at a new year party in Hong Kong in 1987.  She has bloated so much, I would not have recognized her on the street'.  If I had not seen my wife since 1987, I would have problem identifying her, so where is the question of recalling the rather vague mug of a complete stranger, with a face as undistinguished as my own (I concede I am exaggerating here, she looked a bit better - anyone would, I guess)?  But, life teaches intelligent and perceptive individuals, specifically writers, some valuable lessons, always with large-fonted, screaming, red warnings that they be ignored at one's own peril.  That learning kicks in reflexively in such times of need and I promptly say `Yes, yes, I know.  She has changed so much', hoping to ward off the looming ordeal of going through a slideshow of 186 more photos on the same subject.  Thus, even after assiduously avoiding FB like the plague, I am subjected to the painful ritual of resurrecting unknown ghosts from the past every single day.

The next day, I am put under the yoke and led to look at some other page on FB and I see that someone had posted an exuberant comment on the same photo that `shocked' us the previous day - `Oh, Suma, you know what.....you look as divine and lovely as you were thirty years back, not a change in you'.  And, this is the true blue reason for FB's popularity - its inherent and unfailing support for prevarication at various levels.  I realise I am suicidally wading into deep and murky waters because retribution is going to be swift and clinical closer at home. But honesty and integrity are of utmost importance to any scribe and and I will have to take the consequences!!   Here it is.  From the comfort of one's home, one can lie through the teeth all one wants on FB without being `embarrassed' or `discovered'.  Simply because that is truly par for the course. The grainiest of photos gets fulsome praise - `Wow, that is an awesome photo; such clarity and a beautiful angle' with the small but seemingly harmless barb at the end `but where are you in that and who are the others'??  The ubiquitous idli or parantha someone had made and posted pictures of, attains epicurean status based entirely on visuals and becomes the stuff Greek gods and goddesses should be fine-dining on.  This, even as folks at home are using chain-saws and other heavy-duty implements in tandem to break down the rock-hard idli into edible pieces or tear the rubbery parantha into bits!!  Why would anyone display such photos? Prior to FB, did you ever hear of anyone taking a photograph of a sandwich or chapatti and showing to friends visiting home?? When did such things become singularly photogenic all of a sudden?  Just because there is a platform and there is an audience - come on, give me a break!!   Every single dress, however tawdry and garish it is, worn by some friend is `lovely' if not `gorgeous', when the actually muttered-under-the-breath response is `why would anyone pay oodles of money to buy something like that'??

So, FB comes through as nothing if not a platform for narcissistic groups of relatively jobless friends and acquaintances who want to be scratching and massaging some their collective backs incessantly in the name of communicating.  Access is given selectively so that those who are likely to be honest, if not critical, in their opinion, are blocked or kept away. If you notice, no one has anything negative to say - it is almost like Utopia - because that would be like insulting someone in the midst of others.  Not done, terribly uncivil and impolite, we would rather do lip-service.  I wish people are really that nice to each other always.  And a lot of junk to go through, to boot, tirelessly.  You never know when and where you will miss one nice little juicy nugget of gossip or whatever, so sift through everything carefully!! Based on what I have seen so far with majority of users, FB is used to glorify the absolutely mundane, satisfy the urge to see oneself on the screen incessantly and glibly express shallow and blatantly false opinions to keep others happy, so that they can reciprocate.

I use Whatsapp, only because it helps me send messages to people overseas without a charge, for now.  I am also a member of a group of prankster friends, who used to email extensively earlier, to be communicating.  Since this group formed, there are less and less email messages, more and more videos and forwards of jokes.  And, throw in some 7 close friends who are in a perennially chatty mood and are looking for things to do, there are lots of messages flowing through, criss-crossing a few subjects at a time, since each participant begins something new, lest he not be left behind.  The result is unadulterated confusion that parallels Arnab Goswami's prime time shows with people bawling out from eight different square boxes on the TV screen - make it nine, I forgot the prime mover, who bawls the loudest!!  This can be injurious to health and reputation, as I found out recently.  One post showed a photo of a one group member's puja room on the Chittirai Vishu day.  I was doing parallel processing on the PC and the phone, so it took a bit of time to send an one-liner in response to that photo, saying `Nice one, I wish I am with you!'.  And I unsuspectingly went back to work on the PC.  After half an hour I checked the phone again and there were a flurry of messages, most of them jeering and leering in tone - having a hearty laugh at me for my response.  What had happened was, between that photo of the puja room and my response, someone had forwarded a D-grade photo of a F-grade semi nude actress, with the customary morphing and my comment appeared as a response to that.  The wives of friends in my whatsapp group have their own whatsapp group and they had their share of merriment when they came to know.  I survived my wife looking daggers at me and escaped further punitive action - bless her soul, she had an off-day I think! We continue to use Whatsapp for frivolous stuff and honestly, if it is yanked off, we will all go back to email without too much fuss.  And the quality of communication will probably improve!

Content-wise, tweets have the potential to be pithy, funny and engaging in the right hands, but that happens pretty unevenly, I am told - I do not use Twitter at all.  A friend with serious antipathy to Twitter says the quality of comments is rather low-grade overall and he insists on holding up a placard saying `Twitter is for Twits'. Going a bit too far, I think.

Professional networks superficially seem no different.  People who hated my guts while working together are now seeking me out to be `linked' and insisting on unilaterally endorsing me for the same skills/capabilities which caused them to take umbrage earlier.  I recall the days when they fiercely sought divine intervention for deliverance from me because they thought human intervention was not going to be adequate.  I would like to believe they have changed, but actually they are just trying to be nice now that they are out of reach, I guess.

Well, I am told SM platforms have uses beyond the frivolous in other spheres like business and commerce and their reach is obviously a humongous plus! I have also read that FB is ruining the lives of youngsters by exposing the vulnerable ones to exploitation at a tender age and by moving them away from real world contacts, thereby rendering them relatively reclusive in their dealings with others.  I confess I am not qualified to comment on these aspects of SM.  I wanted to share the impact of SM, as I have felt and have done that.  I also realize I could be way off the mark!!

Those of you who worship all the above SM platforms, engage with these robustly for the best part of your day and are hurt by my insensitive observations, please go ahead and stick a photo of mine you may have (if you dont, stick something and imagine it is me) and throw darts at that till your angst dissipates!!

Following Your Dream

A callow, young man was hyper-ventilating on the TV show.  Going blue in the face, exhorting other youngsters to be passionate in `following their dreams and reach for the skies', as he had himself done.  To `aim for the stars' and not become exemplary symbols of mediocrity by settling for something far short of their dreams.  He could afford to crow, because he had tasted success (he never mentions the few lucky breaks he got, but then that is part of the package!) and was on TV - one of the few who dream and also succeed, among the millions of defeated aspirants.  When he had exhausted all the catchy phrases, pressed all the hot buttons and triumphantly expanded his chest before taking questions, a sleepy voice from the back wanted to be heard.  The owner of the voice, slouching in the last row in a rather languid position - his dream would appropriately have been never to lift himself even partially from horizontality -  felled him with this innocuous missile: `That is all very well, but how do I know I am dreaming right'?  The gun that was booming till now seemed to be silenced because there was no immediate response and then only a feeble `I guess only you can tell'.  The exuberant young man did not bargain for something as fundamental as that.

This has always been the crux of the problem, as most of us would have seen in life.  While rhetorically we can say 'sky is the limit' and encourage someone to reach heavenwards, serious consideration ought to be given to the character and attributes of the individual involved and the chances of the dream being attained.  However desperate the seeker is to reach the destination, the mentor/advisor should match skills, capability, potential and staying power with the objective on hand.  Not to become a stumbling block in the path of a young aspirant, but for a simple and basic validation of the dream and to right-size it, so-to-say, so that the poor chap does not embark on a never-ending wild goose chase.  I hear some purist-dreamers tut-tutting because in their view, such attempts essentially clip the wings of dreamers, constrains them.  This is akin to asking dreamers to fly, while forcibly tethering them to earth, they sarcastically remark!  But that is only because they think of the dream as an end in itself whereas in reality, it is just the beginning of the travails for the youngsters.  All well-wishers should be concerned more about the arduous journey to be undertaken for the realization of dreams.  Otherwise, despite all the bluster, fire and brimstone about following dreams, unwittingly the seeds of a minor or major disaster may be sown right at the `dreaming' stage because of a fundamental goof-up by the mentor.  This could end up hurting the ward grievously.

A college mate of mine was a pretty good singer.  His passion for music and singing were indiscriminately fanned by those around him, with wildly exaggerated statements like `you should be singing for the movies', `you are as good as TMS and SPB' (famous playback singers in Thamizh movies).  This boy's music teacher, an utterly unsophisticated and humble man who had not stirred out of the small town we lived in, could not fathom the grind required to walk this raw talent to the threshold of stardom. He giddily got into the heady melee, swept by the accolades coming their way.  While his intention was good, as a mentor he got turned on by the `passion' part and completely ignored the fact that the boy and his family were just not equipped to sustain themselves through the long struggle. And also that there were thousands of such pretenders to the throne, thirsting for recognition and greater opportunities.   Result was that the boy really lived a hard life for the next thirty years, before reconciling to the fact that he would forever be an also-ran, having to eke out an existence by singing in third rate road-shows and the like.  He had no other qualification to speak of, having devoted his entire life to music, so had to rely on singing, however disgusted he was with what he loved passionately earlier!  If only he had someone to calibrate his dream with his capability and set realistic goals!!  He might have been enjoying his part-time singing, while earning his bread comfortably through some other means!  Hence my belief that dream-setting (however conflicting and contrived it sounds) is as critical as goal-setting in corporate life is!

Year 1987.  Thamizh movie, `Nayagan' was released - with Kamala Haasan as the hero, a rebellious kid who gutsily grows up to be an underworld don in Bombay and zealously protects his tribe from harm, wielding immense power derived from his shady business activities.   There was no dearth of young men who pretended to be Kamala Haasan those days, as they strutted theatrically everywhere.  I was visiting a friend's family and conversation veered towards the film.  Suddenly the handsome, adolescent younger brother of my friend made the rather grandiose declaration that Kamala Haasan had fired his imagination in the movie and had lit up his own path to the dream destination.  Contextually, it must be placed on record that this was a rather heavily fortified, conservative family and the patriarch ruled with a heavy hand to keep his clan in line.  He had a rather healthy distaste for show business and all its appendages.  When his younger son outed himself thus, he promptly went on an overdrive,  vehemently denouncing the rebellious effort by his son to become an actor and frothed at his mouth for some twenty minutes.  All of us watched this family tussle in stunned and embarrassed silence.  When the father finished the harangue, he looked sternly at the prodigal son expecting an abject apology, the latter haltingly said `You got me wrong; I dont want to be an actor'.  The parents seemed very relieved and almost smiled for a moment when the son dropped the bombshell, `I dream of becoming a powerful don, who can take care of his people'!  The father reacted with a paroxysmal exercise of opening and closing his mouth, with assorted sputtering noises emerging therefrom; finished by gaping like a fish, as a nutty character in a P.G.Wodehouse novel would.  And the mother had passed out (and probably had a couple of dreams of her own?) - it was too much for the tender soul to imagine her son as a goon-don!!  Mercifully, that lad did not inflict further agony on the family by lingering in his own la-la land, desisted from pursuing his 'dream' under duress and is now a happy and successful entrepreneur in life.

Without straining our memories too much, each one of us can recount horror stories of girls who dream of being film stars, get duped into a life of prostitution, ruthlessly exploited by the flesh trade and completely jettisoned by the family.  Many a good college cricketer, starry-eyed with reasonable success at lower levels, embark on a massive struggle to be the next Dhoni, without realizing that the mountain they are climbing is actually a huge pile of failed cricketers.  They invariably end up without a decent vocation to fall back on eventually, because it turns out they are not good enough when it comes to the crunch.  Not to mention hordes of young men fancying their hands in business and plunging headlong with borrowed finances, hoping to come out like Ambani, but ending up in ruins.  Not to forget the parents who ambitiously `dream' for their reluctant children, pile on unrealistic expectations and resultant pressure on them, the saga ending up in tragedies of Greek proportions for everyone.  All probably because the dramatis personae are only aiming for the stars literally, forgetting to look where they are going on the ground and walking into the landmines their paths are strewn with. 

My dear wife has a very valid query: `Does this mean youngsters should abandon dreaming about their future and timidly accept what comes along? If it is, you will make the world more boring and unadventurous than it already is'.  No, absolutely not. All they and their mentors should do is to balance their capabilities and aspirations to decide how far they should fly.  May be a bit boring, but at least one is alive - to try again!! After all, it is suicidal to fly into the stratosphere if your wings would be torn asunder in the attempt, right?