Day 13 : Chat Room Fiction

Internet is an extraordinary thing. I can't even imagine a world without it. We are surrounded with tech and internet wherever we go. Almost every waking moment of our lives is chained to the web.

They are actually researching some sort of psychological condition where people actually dream about posting on Facebook and browsing the news-feed.

That is just like this article I read the other day - List of diseases blamed on the Internet.

I frankly think the internet gets a bad rap. It is really not that bad guys. Imagine a time when you had to actually stop your car and ask someone for directions to that hip Thai restaurant. 

God forbid, us asking our colleagues directly if they have been to that place and what they thought of the food there? What if they invite themselves over into your dinner plans? 

WTF guys, you are talking about me aren't ya?

Ignore. The internet has saved us a lot of such confrontation and emotional confusion. 

Yeah, dude. We could all very well do without actually sitting and thinking about how we feel about our own lives. Or others.

Time that could be easily better spent watching the latest season of the House of Cards.

Go Team Claire! 

Claire is a wuss.

Your a wuss.

It is spelled you're. Diphit. 

I just read the link you sent, maan. That's some cray s*it right there. And them seniors say THEY had it bad. The atom bomb, the Kargil war, WTC.

Heck, they were even scared shitless of the number 2000 during the Y2K panic. Bunch of pussies. 

Exactly. We have far more serious thing to worry about. 

Like. Darn it, ya'll see my birthday party photo I posted up last week. How the heck did I get only eighty goddamn likes! And how the hell did only thirty damn people commented on it!!!

I liked I commented, dude. For real!!1 

None from my Pune team mates did. Bunch of pricks I tell you. Always hated them, yes TJ, I am talking about you. 

Yo, not cool man. I wasn't online all week. 

Ya, nobody believes you Teej. 

Seriously dude, I tell you. People get no love these days. What does a guy have to do get a few likes? Damn. 

And yo. Heard of that new Apple commotion about doing away with the encryption in their smartphones?

WTF. OMG. Do you think they'd get into those pictures, boo?

Dude! IM me pvtly. 

Seriously, guys?

Damn man. Just when I am about to switch from android to iOS. If they do it in their markets, they'd do the same everywhere else 2. 

Thanks, Feds. Thanks, real kind of you. 

Last one hour in a fic group chat. Pretty awesome way to spend time, right. Whining about the internet. Some people have way too much time on their hands.

Oh wait, a new like on my GOT tweet. Yay!

Day 77 : Your Year in Review

As has become the norm for Facebook, they released their 'Year in Review' feature this week. This tool enables you to get a 'Top 10' of the most significant (mundane albeit popular) things you posted in the past year. Last year it made a slideshow video of your most liked/commented status updates and images, scored to the exciting tune of elevator music. This time it seems they decided to do away with a video, and just put up a bunch pictures you got tagged in onto a webpage. Getting lazy are we, Mark?

Anyways. I think they've accomplished what they were aiming for. They got me thinking about the past year on basis of those images. Which I confess aren't all that amazing to begin with. I only did two decent vacations this year, both with the same set of people I know and most of those pictures were taken during that duration. Apart from these there were a few pictures of the books I was reading (yes I take pictures of books while I read them, don't ask me why) and a few taken on a colleague's birthday. That's it. Crap, isn't that disappointing! Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy those vacations. I was in dire need of them. Also I know I am not exactly the jet-setting kind - by virtue of wallet size. But still, it is sort of disheartening to know that after spending most of the 365 days making plans to do amazing things and at the end you have nothing to show for it.

I am not kidding. I have made plans for more travels and milestones this year than I care to remembe anymore. I honestly lose track of half of them in a fortnight. I've picked up two technical courses to attend through this year, stopped them in a week. Made plans to meet up a lot of old and new friends for night outs and stuff, most of those get cancelled by the end of that very same day. Most of the things that I do get around to do are things that have somehow managed to attract a sizable crowd of friends to ensure that I don't get bored, and that we look like a hip crowd. That is another thing that I am never able to understand. Why do I always have to have a big mob of friends when we go tripping. I want to go to that hill station up North, why don't I just pack up a toothbrush and a book and just leave.

Well. I'm a classic procrastinator. I make big plans of the grand things to do the next year and end up accomplishing approximately quarter of them. Case in point - this blog. I started this Ledger at the beginning of this year making an 'unbreakable vow' to myself that I would write something here each day religiously. How many have I managed to publish so far? Around 70 so far, that comes up to just 20% over the span of 11 months! How's that for an 'unbreakable vow'.

So.. this was my 'Year in Review'. A ton of plans and commitments made, most to myself. Most of those go unmet, most to myself.

I know a lot people who would agree they feel the same way each year. Every New Year's Eve we find ourselves make a bunch of big plans to do big things the next year. Really follow our passions and lead our lives to a decidedly glorious turnabout. We all believe that our lives are largely in our control. That we are on the control panel of this spaceship. Nah.. What really happens is that we discover that we have hardly made a dent to the trajectory that our lives are in. You are just hanging along for the ride. Most of the things that shape our lives are the things that we make no note of until the shit has transpired. You don't plan for none of them, but they do go down with or without your bidding. It sure is optimistic of us to believe that we can do something about it. And so yet again we plan for another wonderful year ahead. Promising ourselves to do grand things in 2016.

Good luck with that. Really.

Day 72 : Social Media Scare

Like almost every millennial out there, I also tend to lean towards the liberal sort of thinking - the usual civil and amenable principles of equality for all, pro-choice, anti-violence and such. I don't necessarily get into a deep debate over it with everyone. Nor do I post what I feel about every darn thing to happen all over the world. I have people like that on my Facebook; I cringe at the sight of their lofty phrases and holier-than-thou statements about racism, fascisms, sexism and all the other 'isms. I really don't get how you posting a scathing comment on a 9gag article or a deep righteous status update about the malnutrition in an African country are going to solve anything of their problems.

The thing that baffles me the most is the click-bait titles of some of the articles shared on social media. The culprits of this crime are mostly the usual suspects of the internet - ScoopWhoop, Cracked, CNN, FoxNews, and AskMen etc. Their crime is that they bombard your feed with so much negative and unnecessarily ghastly articles that your brain is in advertently compelled to absorb all the negative news and bad vibes into your life and in the end you start getting more and more bugged about the life around you.

We are all very much co-dependent in nature. We assume that we won't be that affected by a village getting ransacked in South America. But that registers inside of you. We assume that some wild carnivore gets poached in Africa doesn't affect your daily life. But it really does. You see whenever you see or know of something vile or inhumane happening around you. Some part of your humanity stands up and takes notice. I am not a scientist; I wouldn't what to name or define this feeling. But we have a huge capacity to empathize with other human beings. When you see Jim Carey getting kicked repeatedly in the nards, you involuntarily cross your legs and feel a tiny weird sensation that you'd been kicked down there.

A couple of weeks back there was a video doing the rounds all over the Net. A rather ghastly one. A scorned lover in some part of Asia goes to a clothing store where his ex-girl works. Gets into a heated argument with her. Then the guy gets a knife from under his belt strap and starts stabbing the woman. There is screaming and yelling by the customers who were shopping around them. They all run in the other direction, trying the get as much distance as possible from this crazed man with a knife. He goes on stabbing; the woman is now on the floor thrashing about in vain. Some men come into the aisle and start yelling at him. He stands up and starts to brandish his knife around at them shouting unintelligibly. He sees that he is now surrounded by people, gives up and takes the blade to his throat and slits it ear to ear. He falls to the ground in a heap, blood pouring from his open throat.

Now. Could you please explain to me what can possibly be the reason that you and I had to go witness all of that? What are we possibly gaining by this sort of information being bombarded on us?

The world is a strange devious place with many things to scare and disappoint you. Is there a need to add to it by clicking 'share' to such stuff?

I have seen that video, and I cannot shred it out of my mind anymore. It is like Daniel Pearl all over again.

Day 55 : Lie and Bullsh*t Continuum

Life today is like a bunch of back to back totally made-up stories of grandeur with intermittent sprinkle of cheating and pizza. We spend a lot of time inside our own made up universe, so that the outside world doesn't seem too real and disappointing to us. Inside our heads we are chic and cool, speak all big smart words, walk confidently and smell delicious. While the truth is half the words you say cannot be understood by anyone, and you walk like Cramer in Seinfeld, and you smell too much like a funeral home with all that perfume you drowned yourself in to cover the stench of sweat. People sweat a lot more than they think they do!

Every time you open your Facebook or Twitter or WhatsApp, you will find a bunch of pictures of people travelling to exotic places, throwing big parties, wishing each others on engagements or a big promotion. Then you also join in with the other cattle and 'moo' in your congratulatory words. All the while, you gossip with the person standing next to you (or the voice inside of your head) how the person who got that promotion had an affair with his/her boss. Or how the person who's been travelling to all those exotic places has a drug problem. Or how that colleague who is throwing a big party, for which you were not invited, is gay.

All that stories you yourself heard from somewhere may or may not be true. And frankly, you wouldn't give a damn either way, because lying has become such a part of our daily routine that we tend to unquestioningly consume every story about everyone. The more controversial they are, the more it spreads within the masses. We have grown to enjoy scandalizing everyone's life so much that there are some people who actually feel disappointed when they find that there aren't many stories been circulating about them of late. They begin to feel like they have let themselves down.

That's the part that I do not get. When did we all begin to worry so much of the stories that people perceive about us. Oh, you bought a new tank top? Please do take a picture of you in it and share with the 1000-odd strangers you have on your Facebook, and the couple of future stalker pervert you added unknowingly because they had mutual friends with you.

It is not only the girls that confuse me. Historically this idea of a "Man" has been to keep his feelings locked inside, and just flex his biceps and grunt his way through life. The more emotionally available and mysterious a guy is more appealing he is to the female crowd. Now, I see Twitter being used like a shrink's couch where every single guy just feels compelled to push his innermost feelings and thoughts about every single thing on this planet. No matter how inappropriately creepy or offensive they may be.

Our lying in social media is like a gateway drug for our real one. The way we portray ourselves in the Facebook, bleeds into our social like with real-life human beings. Questions like 'You seemed so smart and articulate, how come you are such a dork in real life?’ are much more common these days.

You are not what you show yourself to be in there. You cannot pack your dog poop in glitter paper and sell it to people as Sneaker bars. It just doesn't work that way. You are what you are, weird pithy and unique. Just like the 8 billion other people on this planet. You are not going to change yourself just by putting up and allowing yourself to be tagged in only the good posts in social media. Just like the billions of other people on that site.

You are never going to be all that grand in real life. But that does in no way mean that
the ordinary you are any less special.

Stop lying. Stop bullsh*tting.

Be good. That's all that counts.