What did we talk about when we didn’t know about Frederik the Great Horse?
Then the other day there was a dress that went viral because people couldn’t decide what colour it was. Or was that last year? It is so hard to keep up these days when the internet insists on changing the topic of discussion every day. What is it today? Something Rahul Gandhi said? “The climate hasn’t changed, it is we who have changed,” or some such nonsense the Prime Minister of this country has declared? A video of a baby accidentally saying a cuss word and being cute as babies as doing that? I haven’t logged on to Twitter yet today for the day’s gossip.
This is a nostalgia post. I am told I do that well. Here is how the train of thought chugged: I read about Frederik and saw how beautiful he was. Then, I wanted to read more and ended up reading comments that romanticised how he looked. He is a horse, let us remember that. If this were a woman and so much was written about her looks, imagine how much space that story would have taken! Never mind that. Concentrate on the horse. So, then I read comments that compared him to strapping young men with long hair that guaranteed their wildness—women have always loved the bad boys. Then, I began to think about the many, many, Mills and Boons I read in my not-too-misspent youth and how they were such a big deal back then. Are they just as popular these days? I have always wondered if the kids these days read them, or whether they are too tame. And from there I went on to wonder at “back in our day” and what we talked about. Yes, I am old enough to be saying “back in our day”.
It is so hard to keep up these days when the internet insists on changing the topic of discussion every day. What is it today? Something Rahul Gandhi said?
We talked about boy bands a lot I think. The first lot of them—Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and the rest of the chocolate-faced boys—were just getting popular and we talked about our favourites and cut out their photos from magazines to keep within the pages of our notebooks. Later on, in college we talked about careers (a bit), music and the wonderful movies we were studying and a little bit of campus politics. Not many of us agreed with everyone else but I don’t remember being outraged every single damn day. We said our bit when we felt like and tried to listen to the others and got on with life without wanting to lynch them. Yes, we truly did. We talked about trivia too, maybe not black horses but we did talk of inconsequential things too but we didn’t go on and on the whole day and involve the whole wide community while doing so.
Social media tires me, can’t you tell? There is so much noise there that I am turning an online acousticophobe. I learnt that word yesterday. My problem isn’t as much with the noise as it is about the frivolousness of every argument. It reaches a peak when the trolls come out in full swag and armour and then it falls flat when either of the parties moves on with something else. Not that every argument needs a conclusion, or deserves one or gets one. It is just the sheer amount of effort that is required to keep on top of everything that goes on online, at the cost of every other work of course, that makes me worry, about mankind, if you will allow me that presumptuousness.
Look at all that you need to do: keep track of what the influencers are talking about, decide which side of the argument you want to be on, decide who you want to back and who you want to pull down, be at least a wee bit familiar with what the topic is so you won’t feel wholly foolish (ignore if you are a troll), then think of some semi-intelligent side of the argument to make, then be constantly logged in to reply to said arguments and then figure out when to move on to what the Twitterati has already started talking about. Timing, my friend, is the most important thing.
I look at the big black horse and feel like the ostrich with its head stuck in the sand, a story that is supposedly not true. But then, what is wholly true in what you see on social media?
Back in our day, we read books or watched something or went somewhere or did something and wrote about in a journal or took pictures that needed developing when the reel was finished or talked about it with friends when school reopened. Now, unless you report all this diligently on social media, it might as well never have happened.
And yet, they own you, Gmail and Facebook and the rest. They have all your information, even if you didn’t put it there. What can you do? Even a thatched hut in vanavasa might be hash tagged and geo-linked. There is always only one way that civilisation will be headed in.
As for me, I don’t FB. Aren’t they all verbs now? I tweet only when I have to share published works. I do like IG. For now. I don’t quite know what Snapchat is. There will be something new soon that I will happily not know about. I look at the big black horse and feel like the ostrich with its head stuck in the sand, a story that is supposedly not true. But then, what is wholly true in what you see on social media?
