Sunday, August 23, 2015

Supply and reprimand

I've spent about seven years on Twitter, eight on Facebook and a bit more on this lame blog you're wasting your time on right now. I can safely claim that i'm old enough in the online world to shout "Yeh pehle ho chuka hai!" to almost every second tweet that enters my timeline. I don't just because it's not really worth the effort, time or energy. Social media, the way it is today, has become a showbiz. Everybody is performing there whether there's an audience or not. Nobody has normal conversations anymore. It's become a skit where one has to up another with a lousy pun or innuendo in the form of replies. Redefining cool, they say. A splendid drama with no lights to switch on or off in the background. Jokes, memes, GIFs, clips, etc are the natural extensions of these performances. Everybody is dancing for everybody. Similarly, nobody is dancing for nobody. It's a strange but an intriguing setting. You like my tweet? Great. You don't like my tweet? Neither do i. You like my pictures? Awesome. You don't like my pictures? I'm blind. That's just the way it is. Except for some people who have placed upon themselves the mantle of demanding high-octane performances from others, conveniently forgetting that they are supposed to perform at those levels too—which they obviously can't. Economics parasites on the balance between supply and demand but social media is more about demand and less about supply. Which might explain why almost everybody is SO demanding on a daily basis as if the online world owes them entertainment every passing second of their existence. In such a scenario, what role can criticism dare to play? If at all, that is. Let's converse about this in private, shall we?

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