Okay well here's what I was planning to write in my old post before the subject of facebook stealthily creeped into it (I'm serious- That was not what I was planning to write about!). Anyway, that's the thing, I was so clueless about what to write to at least motivate myself to start blogging again. I thought long and hard and looked everywhere for some inspiration. The best way to get that, as I thought, was to look for it by watching TV and scanning through the latest newspapers. And just when I was reading, reading, reading for a new idea to get those juices flowing- it hit me; Why the standards of the public media in India piss me off.
Yeah, really they do and for good reason. To begin with, I hate the newspaper reports because they are so unbelievably standard. And I guess I'm a total weirdo for thinking this, because apparently, that is the accepted, professional format of writing for their papers. Total, useless crap. I mean, the first thing that crossed my mind when I was comparing 'The Hindu' articles to the stuff I read in books and on blogs etc. was how much difference they have between them. BIG TIME! Let's take a look:
"When it rains, it pours in Goa. The city, so famous for its beaches and parties, pauses to take a breather when the heavens opens up. A weekend getaway is rewarding nevertheless if you love being in an idyllic setting. As you drive down the airport all you get to see is lush greenery."
You're probably reading this and thinking "she's mad". Yes, I know this is beautiful and totally elegant but seriously, this kind of stuff is all over the papers day after day, don't you think it's a little overused? Wait...Did I say 'little'? I meant criminally overused. The fact is that writing bucketloads of meaningless articles full of big, flowery, flamboyant words is not gonna make a difference! My point is, most of the stuff that goes into the public newspapers these days are plain, irrelevant and just downright fake. It would really help if they talked about things in Goa we didn't know about...the little insides stories, written with a little more of an exciting perspective. That's why the "free/opinion column" in NXG is always a bit more interesting to read.They say writing is a window to the soul, but some of the trash that's supposed to be entertaining us is nothing more than a window to a bunch of deadline-ruled careers and a sheer lack of imagination.
Something else that cracks me up at times but sometimes really gets under my skin is the multitude of stupidly fake movies. Or rather, fake concepts in movies. I'm usually the one to advocate fantasy, illogical stories and go against people who want fiction to be based on realism because of the fact that you're not celebrating the freedom and limitlessness of fiction by giving it the restriction of reality. But the fact is, sometimes we take this freedom a bit too far on the pretext of which we happily transgress the bounds of sensibleness and class...and we end up with a sorry work of stupidity. A far fetched idea is one thing, while a far fetched, completely moronic portrayal of an idea is something completely different. Movies and TV shows of all languages are guilty of this, but as far as the entertainment used in India is concerned, Hollywood movies are a bit better at obscuring their stupidities than their Indian counterparts.
In the olden days, the movies were supposed to be extra-dramatic just like theater but that's supposed to have tone down a bit over the decades. Some movie casts forget about this and we still have a lot of phoney roles on the big screen. You know, the sleazy superheroes, secret agents and businessmen or the wayyyyy too laid out "gangstas". The most cheezing off are the I'm-way-too-cool-to-act-anything close-to-human so called "sophisticates". The kind who have something elegant to say all the time, the kind who never slip and the kind who are fascinated by nothing. Sometimes, these phony characters are adorably funny but at others times they can just be plain annoying.
Indian movies take this a notch higher and make every little love affair the most empathetic melodrama you've ever cast your eyes on. Enter destiny, flower petals, romantic music and the crying. We even have fixed roles for the guy and for the girl and it goes a bit a like this; The Romeo is always flawless, get's a bit angry and reckless at times, can lift a monster truck and beat ten muscular gangsters silly without messing up even a single lock of hair. The Juliets have a longer and more tedious list of qualifications. She has to be dazzlingly beautiful, super well dressed (even if she's handling a pig-sty), have a beautiful voice, amazing dance moves and have the ability to be attractive to every human being in the vicinity. What's even more sickening is that not only does she have to be elegant and poised, but also extremely bubbly, child-like, adventurous, down-to-earth and never, ever ridiculed. It's a cute way to represent a girl, but every single time, you happen to turn on the TV you have these oh-so-glamorous beauty queens who are flawless, bubbling angels. Now that gets very sickening.
The list of "phonytics" is never ending, but my blog or my energy isn't so I'll stop talking at this. Now your turn; what do you like or dislike about the media? Idiotic concepts? Mundane articles? What would you change ?
The way I'm always making false promises to myself, I took another silent oath to get off my butt and start writing. To start putting something up on blogger, reading other people's blogs and establishing that as a hobby. I've been promising myself that I'd do other stuff too, like jogging, or delving into a new novel, or practice painting. There's so much that I aspire of accomplishing and all that stuff I wanna get back to but guess what? That so called "five minutes" of facebook always gets in the way!
And that's not a lame excuse. I swear, facebook's evil, It's wasteful, destructive and all the other disciplinishic words I can think of...but whatever it is, whether any dreamy-eyed boy could do it or not- facebook has sure got me smitten.
I'm actually ashamed to say it's probably the apple of my eye. And maybe the apple of the eyes of so many other poor, helpless people. Facebook has got us all perpetually glued and there's nothing more honest that I can say or do than give the genii a complete, full-fledged hats off. They say the pen is sharper than the sword- but believe me, all the computer programming gobbledygook behind facebook is sharper than the sword, more dominating than our poor naive friend "the pen" will ever believe he is, stickier than the most expensive super-glue ever produced and more destructive than any weapon ever created.
Oh wait, that's it! The weapons of mass destruction- a product of pure genius- was not buried down some god forsaken kitchen garden in the Arabian desert! It was ingrained deceivingly in the realms of cyberspace. How could the Bush administration have been SO stupid? Not only do they go screw up half the Iraqi LEGACY but they come back home with sheepish smiles going "Well guess it ain't there. Better luck next time hey, pops? All we gotta do is throw in some CHANGE and I guess those iRacky folks'll be able to get themselves a good ol' Bud Lite or something. Sure will straighten stuff up." Believe me, the percentage of chance that these guys would get anything right is probably even lesser than the number of braincells in their skulls. Three words for you; QUIT-WASTING-TIME.
Okay, my nutty exaggerations apart, lets take a look at the stuff facebook's doing to us. I'm too tired to go into the serious, security and moral issues, so for now- let's just stick to how much shit is being thrown at the fan by facebook.
I guess the biggest of the problems is how we lose track of our responsibilities. Like homework and studying ,for example- I swear to god, at this instant, it's 11:15 and I still have two commerce essays due for tommorow. Holy crap- This is as pathetic as it gets !@! I can actually talk about where facebook is leading me and not do anything about it. I guess the temptation surpasses the guilt every time. For those of you still at school or college, you'd totally get what I mean- I'm sure everyone of you have put away studying for a freakishly important exam just because you got too carried away with facebook. They actually have these procrastination groups and stuff like "I'm supposed to be doing my homework but I ended up on facebook". How aptly in our faces...
Danger number two is how vastly facebook affects our social lives. I'm beginning to find that more and more each day, so many people's lives are being built on, made and broken by facebook. I know I said I wouldn't be touching up on serious stuff but I wanna mention that I've actually seen relationships end because of some airhead getting all hanky panky with some of his so called "friends" on facebook. Like changing his relationship to "married" to someone other than his "steady" girlfriend. What's worse is that these "other women" in question aren't always women. Of course, the vice-versa applies. The message is, whatever it you're planning to do on facebook...EVERYBODY CAN SEE IT. What's even more strange, is that exactly when you think everybody will be too busy to notice what you're doing anyway (the way so many things that were actually meant to have an audience goes away unnoticed), everybody sees it. Like everybody, meaning, everyone, meaning, all d'peeps n da hood, not only manages to see it, but also talk about it even though whatever it is, it's completely dumb and useless.
Apart from that, we fight over facebook friends, friend requests, embarassing pictures, why nobody likes us because we never got tagged in a poem or a cartoon, POKES (!?!) and all sorts of insane bunk. We have the loners who cry about their empty walls, popular people complaining about their flooding friend requests, people who get upset about their friends doing badly in "how well do you know XYZ" quizzes, and the annoying people who get ignored on fb chat (I wonder why...). The worst of all of this are the rumors that get spread on facebook, normally through facebook status updates and the really, really tabboo pictures. On a serious note here, whoever you are- if you're on facebook, please use it with dignity and respect, 'cause like I said a simple, fun tool like fb can make or break you.
So signing off; though this was just a useless rant, just me trying to kill some time by complaining about something completely stupid, and not all of this should be taken that seriously- I just wanna end this by saying that I guess it's time we reflected on what we do and just learn to be careful dealing with social networks like facebook.
Now, I gotta run, I bet my notifications are pilin' up!
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