What happened to Facebook? I logged in after almost a year and it looks like an airport trashcan.

I know. It is competing with the Times of India now.

Why? Just a year back, it was full of interesting articles, intelligent view-points and emoticon riddled discussions. We had good jokes, incisive articles, useful personal updates and lots of cat videos. It used to feel like a nice relaxing dinner party with intelligent conversations. Now it is mostly litter spat over by people redeeming gift coupons, store sale reward points, massage parlour offers, phone recharge discounts, travel tickets, vacation packages, and movie ticket stubs… Is there an end to this sociopathic trend of celebrating consumption?

You sound pissed.

I thought you at least had to be a Facebook tourist to be proud of your shopping based achievements but this guy just posted a picture of his wireless modem with the caption “My new wireless modem :D :D :D :D”!

Yeah, I know that guy. He did a whole photo shoot titled “My first External Hard drive :)) :)) :P :P” sometime last month. It was self-shot and he also applied an Instagram filter to make it look like 1967.

And these social readers… God, I hate them. I clicked on a webpage to get a better look at the cleavage in the thumbnail and er… it… it might’ve been posted all over your wall.

That was you? How many times have I TOLD you NOT to use my Facebo…

Oh, puh-leeze! You’re worried about privacy now?

Everyone probably thinks of me as a non-biodegradable plastic bottle of sleaze!

I am sorry, okay? How was I supposed to know that the default privacy setting would be set to public? Besides, thousands of people fell for the “social reading” thing.

What the hell is “social reading” anyway? Since when is “reading” a social activity? Reading is something you do when you sit in peace, introspect and expand your understanding of this vast and wonderful universe in the privacy of your toilet.

Exactly. 300 curious humans clicking on a link titled, “Is Aishwarya Rai’s daughter actually a son?” on Washington Post Reader within the same two hour window is not reading, it is just mouse-clicking!

Mouse clicking – now that’s an activity that doesn’t get much credit.

Then there are apps that share your “activity”. Borderline porn clips on Dailymotion, shitty music on Spotify, free chewing gum coupons on Groupon, checking into a second hand pani-puri store on Foursquare… since when are all these things important enough to be shared with 600 other people?

Facebook realized that people willingly share only one or two articles out of every ten they read. Natural filters like “personality” and “thought” were filtering all the bullshit. But “thought” and “personality” are not good for the advertising business. So they essentially said, “Look it’s not who you are or what you like. It is about what you do.” And what we do is order pizza, watch item songs and read celebrity gossip.

A Facebook profile was like having an alter-ego where everyone did their own thing. People shared their interests and hobbies. Some folks were into sports, some got all worked up about politics. A few vehemently defended their favourite tech company while others worried about endangered reptiles. Stock market scams, science news, suicidal cotton farmers, art movies, and pretentious personal blogs… there was even this guy who both loved celeb gossip and quantum loop-gravity and how one affected the other!

Yeah, I got to know a lot about mere acquaintances and distant relatives just based on what they enthusiastically shared and friendships formed quickly on that basis.

It wasn’t perfect. There were too many DSLRs and HIMs but it still was an eclectic collection of information, entertainment, knowledge, silliness, and emotion until the marketing cockroaches came along and started taking over.

The root of the problem is that Facebook became “Facebook Inc. – the publicly traded hundred billion dollar company.” Going public means that their loyalty now lies only with the stock holders, not the users. The stock market doesn’t care about the quality. The only thing it cares about is more profits every quarter. When there is a virtual monopoly in a saturated market, the only way you can show increasing profits quarter after quarter is either by reducing costs like Walmart does, thanks to easily available slave labour all around the world, or by monetizing your users like product placements in sports, increasingly intrusive ads on Youtube, “Trending articles” on Facebook etc.

But let us not entirely blame a corporation’s quest for quarterly profits for the mess. You humans suck big time. You are the ones sharing fake inspirational stories, Satya Sai Baba blessings, photos of kidnapped children, pity posts for impoverished African kids, prayers for people with weird genetic diseases, and “share if you love your ” statuses.

Can’t argue against that. I once saw a status that said “Share this post within 3 seconds if you really love your Mom.” Three seconds? There is a time limit for this shit now?

At least the marketing people are making some money off the shit they produce. What do they get out of sharing these things?

Twenty three likes?

Yeah. We cats may do a lot of disgusting things when you’re not looking but we never annoy fellow felines for fake attention. Only humans do it. You’re the ones who don’t think twice about annoying 80 other species if it gives you 8% off on AA batteries. You people are more than happy to trade your online identities for some extra mayonnaise on our garlic bread.

That is quite condescending coming from a species that can be tricked into chasing its own tail.

Maybe you’re just a cheap species and Facebook just made easier be “yourself”. Think about it. The creators of Facebook knew your weakness all along. You think they were giving you an account and all that space for freedom of expression for free? Bullshit, no one does that. If you’re not paying, you’re the product being sold.

I guess. It’s same case with newspapers. It takes about 8 rupees to publish, print and deliver a copy of Times of India. We pay only a fraction and bulk of it is paid for by advertising. Not just the Times of India, any newspaper for that matter.

The sales pitch of the newspapers is, “Look, we have a large number of uninformed readers who have an affinity for cleavage, do you want to sell them some Axe deodorant?” The newspaper is not selling you ads. It is selling you to the advertisers!

They’re not newspapers anymore. They are advertising companies. They are all advertising companies. Facebook, Google, all the news channels, music channels, movies, sports… they’re all in the business of showing us ads. That is their primary duty. That is what drives them. Everything else they do is a by-product.

Comic books icon William Gaines and Editor Harvey Kurtzman created the MAD comic magazine which went on to become a highly-acclaimed masterpiece in American culture. Those guys had just one rule: NO GODDAMN ADS. For decades, that policy helped them become pioneers in satirizing everything about the shallow materialist culture free from any conflict of interests with their funding sources.

I think it is time for Facebook to retire as yet another impressive subculture that got sold out because of our soul-selling, opportunistic behaviour.

Of course, after 5 decades of taking no shit from nobody, the old owners along with their values retired. MAD magazine started allowing the ads. The ad guys always win in real life.

Only crowd-sourced or subscription based outlets like EPW, and NewsClick etc. have managed to inculcate and maintain standards. Everyone else is sold out. Maybe that is the way ahead.

You don’t even have an independent sub-culture that shows the finger to the ‘Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate power’ establishment dictating the mainstream narrative of your country and you’re dreaming of a future where Indians pay for high quality stuff?

I am just saying that the media and the arts need to be decentralized and democratized if we are to move forward as a society.

I am honestly surprised you still have hope on humanity. Remember, you are the same species that inherited this beautiful planet and now you’re burning down the homes of polar-bears for insurance money! Forget about it. Now, scratch me on my head like a good boy… also below my neck too. And make it quick, I have to step out.

arbit

[Enter Post Title Here]

R.I.P: The Sunshine days on Facebook.

C2: What happened to Facebook? I logged in after almost a year and it looks like an airport trashcan. 

G2: I know. It is competing with the Times of India now.

C2: Why? Just a year back, it was full of interesting articles, intelligent view-points and emoticon riddled discussions. We had good jokes, incisive articles, useful personal updates and lots of cat videos. It used to feel like a nice relaxing dinner party with intelligent conversations.

Now it is mostly litter spat over by people redeeming gift coupons, store sale reward points, massage parlour offers, phone recharge discounts, travel tickets, vacation packages, and movie ticket stubs…  Is there an end to this sociopathic trend of celebrating consumption?

G2: You sound pissed.

C2: I thought you at least had to be a Facebook tourist to be proud of your shopping based achievements but this guy just posted a picture of his wireless modem with the caption “My new wireless modem :D :D :D :D”!

G2: Yeah, I know that guy. He did a whole photo shoot titled “My first External Hard drive :)) :)) :P :P” sometime last month. It was self-shot and he also applied an Instagram filter to make it look like 1967.

C2: And these social readers… God, I hate them. I clicked on a webpage to get a better look at the cleavage in the thumbnail and er… it… it might’ve been posted all over your wall.

G2: That was you? How many times have I TOLD you NOT to use my Facebo…

C2: Oh, puh-leeze! You’re worried about privacy now?

G2: Everyone probably thinks of me as a non-biodegradable plastic bottle of sleaze!

C2: I am sorry, okay? How was I supposed to know that the default privacy setting would be set to public? Besides, thousands of people fell for the “social reading” thing.

G2: What the hell is “social reading” anyway? Since when is “reading” a social activity? Reading is something you do when you sit in peace, introspect and expand your understanding of this vast and wonderful universe in the privacy of your toilet.

C2: Exactly. 300 curious humans clicking on a link titled, “Is Aishwarya Rai’s daughter actually a son?” on Washington Post Reader within the same two hour window is not reading, it is just mouse-clicking!

G2: Mouse clicking – now that’s an activity that doesn’t get much credit.

C2: Then there are apps that share your “activity”. Borderline porn clips on Dailymotion, shitty music on Spotify, free chewing gum coupons on Groupon, checking into a second hand pani-puri store on Foursquare… since when are all these things important enough to be shared with 600 other people?

G2: Facebook realized that people willingly share only one or two articles out of every ten they read. Natural filters like “personality” and “thought” were filtering all the bullshit. But “thought” and “personality” are not good for the advertising business. So they essentially said, “Look it’s not who you are or what you like. It is about what you do.” And what we do is order pizza, watch item songs and read celebrity gossip.

C2: A Facebook profile was like having an alter-ego where everyone did their own thing. People shared their interests and hobbies. Some folks were into sports, some got all worked up about politics. A few vehemently defended their favourite tech company while others worried about endangered reptiles. Stock market scams, science news, suicidal cotton farmers, art movies, and pretentious personal blogs… there was even this guy who both loved celeb gossip and quantum loop-gravity and how one affected the other!

G2: Yeah, I got to know a lot about mere acquaintances and distant relatives just based on what they enthusiastically shared and friendships formed quickly on that basis.

C2: It wasn’t perfect. There were too many DSLRs and HIMs but it still was an eclectic collection of information, entertainment, knowledge, silliness, and emotion until the marketing cockroaches came along and started taking over.

G2: The root of the problem is that Facebook became “Facebook Inc. – the publicly traded hundred billion dollar company.” Going public means that their loyalty now lies only with the stock holders, not the users. The stock market doesn’t care about the quality. The only thing it cares about is more profits every quarter.

When there is a virtual monopoly in a saturated market, the only way you can show increasing profits quarter after quarter is either by reducing costs like Walmart does, thanks to easily available slave labour all around the world, or by monetizing your users like product placements in sports, increasingly intrusive ads on Youtube, “Trending articles” on Facebook etc.

C2: But let us not entirely blame a corporation’s quest for quarterly profits for the mess. You humans suck big time. You are the ones sharing fake inspirational stories, Satya Sai Baba blessings, photos of kidnapped children, pity posts for impoverished African kids, prayers for people with weird genetic diseases, and “share if you love your ” statuses.

G2: Can’t argue against that. I once saw a status that said “Share this post within 3 seconds if you really love your Mom.” Three seconds? There is a time limit for this shit now?

C2: At least the marketing people are making some money off the shit they produce. What do they get out of sharing these things?

G2: Twenty three likes?

C2: Yeah. We cats may do a lot of disgusting things when you’re not looking but we never annoy fellow felines for fake attention. Only humans do it. You’re the ones who don’t think twice about annoying 80 other species if it gives you 8% off on AA batteries. You people are more than happy to trade your online identities for some extra mayonnaise on our garlic bread.

G2: That is quite condescending coming from a species that can be tricked into chasing its own tail.

C2: Maybe you’re just a cheap species and Facebook just made easier be “yourself”. Think about it. The creators of Facebook knew your weakness all along. You think they were giving you an account and all that space for freedom of expression for free? Bullshit, no one does that. If you’re not paying, you’re the product being sold.

G2: I guess. It’s same case with newspapers. It takes about 8 rupees to publish, print and deliver a copy of Times of India. We pay only a fraction and bulk of it is paid for by advertising. Not just the Times of India, any newspaper for that matter.

C2: The sales pitch of the newspapers is, “Look, we have a large number of uninformed readers who have an affinity for cleavage, do you want to sell them some Axe deodorant?” The newspaper is not selling you ads. It is selling you to the advertisers!

G2: They’re not newspapers anymore. They are advertising companies. They are all advertising companies. Facebook, Google, all the news channels, music channels, movies, sports… they’re all in the business of showing us ads. That is their primary duty. That is what drives them. Everything else they do is a by-product.

C2: Comic books icon William Gaines and Editor Harvey Kurtzman created the MAD comic magazine which went on to become a highly-acclaimed masterpiece in American culture. Those guys had just one rule: NO GODDAMN ADS. For decades, that policy helped them become pioneers in satirizing everything about the shallow materialist culture free from any conflict of interests with their funding sources.

G2: I think it is time for Facebook to retire as yet another impressive subculture that got sold out because of our soul-selling, opportunistic behaviour.

C2: Of course, after 5 decades of taking no shit from nobody, the old owners along with their values retired. MAD magazine started allowing the ads. The ad guys always win in real life.

G2: Only crowd-sourced or subscription based outlets like EPW, and NewsClick etc. have managed to inculcate and maintain standards. Everyone else is sold out. Maybe that is the way ahead.

C2: You don’t even have an independent sub-culture that shows the finger to the ‘Advertising, Bollywood and Corporate power’ establishment dictating the mainstream narrative of your country and you’re dreaming of a future where Indians pay for high quality stuff?

G2: I am just saying that the media and the arts need to be decentralized and democratized if we are to move forward as a society.

C2: I am honestly surprised you still have hope on humanity. Remember, you are the same species that inherited this beautiful planet and now you’re burning down the homes of polar-bears for insurance money! Forget about it. Now, scratch me on my head like a good boy… also below my neck too. And make it quick, I have to step out.

comedy is the opposite of poetry

poetry is a destructive force

A lot of people write poetry in their blogs. I don’t read any of them. I don’t read poems at all. It is because I find most of the poems to be incomprehensible, kind of inexplicable, sort of unclear, very unintelligible, sometimes dark and pretty obscure, often puzzling, lost or may be missed.

The problem with poetry lies not in the art but with the artist. It is the poet who wants to be perceived as enigmatic, unfathomable, complicated or lost (often in deep melancholy :p). Poetry is such a self-centered and narcissistic exercise.

The luxury poets have is that you (as the reader) do not understand the poem. You think you do, but you don’t for it is not meant to mean anything. The bigger luxury the poets have is that you are afraid to admit that you do not understand anything. And they exploit it and use it almost like a power that forces you into finding a meaning in something that was intentionally made to be meaningless. In a lot of ways it is no different than the symmetric inkblots psychologists use to experiment on you.

In this respect, comedy is in many ways the opposite of poetry. Comedy has to be approachable, comedy has to be clear and simple, comedy has to be succinct and more importantly, it has to be funny. Comedy has to be all of these in 30 seconds. Thirty seconds is all you have to make a joke.

The primary difference between comedy and poetry is that in poetry, the responsibility of entertainment is transferred back to the reader. Entertainment is a big responsibility, and the comedian has to carry it on his shoulders every thirty seconds.

And so poetry sucks.

P.S: Fans of poetry and amateur poets, you might want to defend your views.

the cartoon

 

Muslim is the new Jew

    A lot of recent events suggest the increasing xenophobia everywhere in Europe. It has by and large become acceptable to make ignorant and degrading statements about Islam in the media. The statements made by some of the high profile politicians, news anchors and instant opinion makers routinely have words like “strange”, “spooky”, “weird”, “offensive”, “creepy”, “wrong”, “evil-looking”, “sinister” which in my opinion are not words a civilized society should use about other human beings. For the sake of experiment, if we replace the word Muslim by Jew or Black, I am sure they will face criminal charges in their respective countries.

    An Italian minister has reasoned that Burkhas should be banned because they can be disturbing to small children. Now, let’s be honest with ourselves. Haven’t we all, at some point of time saw someone right in the face and wished they wore a Burkha? On a sunny day at the beach, would you prefer a 55 year old in a Burkini^[meaning] or a two piece bikini?

    If anything we should encourage Burkhas selectively. I made my own little list of people who might scare the hell out of those very kids (they occasionally scared me). The toppers in the list are shaven-headed-heavily-tattooed weirdoes. Next in the list are people who have piercings on their body anywhere other than ears and nose. And a close third come gangs of drunken youth wearing hooded sweatshirts. 

    I am “friends-in-law”^[meaning] with a couple of girls in Hyderabad who wear Burkhas to college. They wear Burkhas only when they use some sort of public transport and as soon as they are inside their college campus, they are in their comfortable jeans and sleeveless tees. Their parents know about it too. When I asked her, “why wear it at all ? She said that it is the best way to protect her skin from the sun and also saves her money on sunscreen!

*****

Dictionary help (for people like me):
Friend-in-law: A good friend of a good friend who at best qualifies as a "treasured acquaintance".
Burkini: A portmanteau of burqa (body) and bikini.
Portmanteau:  A word used broadly to mean a blend of two (or more) morphemes and their meanings into one new word.
Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.
Semantic: In computer science, semantics reflects the meaning of programs or functions.
Function: Function may refer to:

• Diatonic function describes a music term
• Function (biology), explaining why a feature survived selection
• Function (computer science), or subroutine, a portion of code within a larger program, performs a specific task
• Function (engineering), related to the utility/goal of a property
• Function (language), in linguistics, a way of achieving an aim using language
• Function (mathematics), an abstract entity that associates an input to a corresponding output according to some rule
• Function model is a structured representation of the functions, activities or processes.
• Function object, or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriented programming
• A formal event such as a party or meeting

Wikipedia: Never user it as a dictionary.