Monday, May 18, 2015

Explain and simple

People love calling me tweleb (Twitter celeb) although i don’t see why. It’s neatly OK but still, if you sit down to analyze all the cogs in place, you’ll learn how hype operates so effectively on social media. There are so many embarrassing instances of ignorance that tweleb would start sounding like an insult (if it ain’t already) to you.
So.
To begin with, numbers define our position, right? How much do you earn? How many years of experience? How long is your penis? How long can you fuck? How long before you retire in Shimoga? How many hairs left on your pate? How many followers do you have? Apparently, having more than 20K+ followers (when human population recently crossed 7.2 billion) is a big deal. A lame tweet getting 15 RTswhich happens to be my average—is supposed to be celebratory. A heavily-posed DP receiving 200+ likes on Facebook makes you revel while a dipped-in-fancy-filters images garnering 50 hearts is supposed to be a sign of fame.
Bullshit.
We don’t even know what popularity is.
Tip of iceberg, huh? Big deal?
Staph.
It’s not.
What truly seems to be happening is we as individuals have lowered our expectations to such a level that we crave validation from absolute strangers. Who are these people? Will you ever be able to connect with them? Is there any scope for building a relationship that lasts longer than a trend on Twitter? And speaking of validation, what if every single person who comes across your tweets agrees with you? What next? What will you do? Consider yourself a celebrity just because your thoughts (read: jokes) are being celebrated?
I don’t think that’d be appropriate.
An advisable move would be to just keep doing what you like doing without worrying who’s noticing and who isn’t. That should suffice. I’m saying this not because i’ve worked towards creating a space for myself where i don’t stand accountable for what i share online. I write and i disappear. End of discussion. But at the same time, i appreciate the time the aforementioned ‘absolute strangers’ took to pay attention. But engaging them in an exhibitive and trivial conversation would be stretching it too far.
Sounds fair? No.
OK.
I also acknowledge that people have a short attention span. They might applaud you or troll you mercilessly for one goof-up of a one-liner but they are not permanent. And neither are you. Both your admirers as well as your detractors will forget you if you don’t log in for 2 weeks.
Trust me on this.
It has happened to a lot, especially those who thought that the timeline would scroll in the opposite direction if they deactivate their account.
Were these handles twelebs? Some of them, yes.
Did that change anything? Nope.

No comments: