Hanging by Threads- How the Public Shape Social Media Platforms

All are on Threads. Didn't you hear about the latest addition to the (anti?) social media bandwagon? I had a peek into it last night. I didn't find it any more interesting than a new stationary shop opening in the neighbourhood. I can see many items lined up systematically and beautifully on its brand new racks, and the newness gives it a novel aesthetic look. But I can buy exactly the same items in other shops too, and I have already built a personal bond with that shopkeeper. I feel like Threads right now is Twitter during a Holi celebration. It is important to see how it transforms and finds a niche for itself in the coming days.

Actually, how does a social media platform find its own niche? It should be interesting to look into the dynamics. The developers of the platforms have certain ideas and aspirations about what kind of Frankenstein's monster they want to create and who its victims will be. They put certain pathways in the app for its users to interact within themselves.

For example, Twitter started as an SMS-like microblogging platform with a 140-character limit for the messages that could be shared through it. Though people used it and still use it for personal messages and updating their lives, Twitter predominantly became a news sharing platform. It is used by news portals to share breaking news and by organisations, governments, corporations, and celebrities to announce their messages. If the President of a nation shares a message simultaneously on Twitter and Facebook, the tweet will automatically have news value. The developers of Twitter, when they found out about this evolution, facilitated this trend in their updates.

Similarly, we can observe that every social media platform evolves and finds a niche organically. Take the case of Telegram, which started out as a poor man's WhatsApp. It went on to become a poor man's go-to place for illegal downloads. It is like the mall that the builders thought would cater to the affluent elites but ended up being a sleazy market thronged by pimps and peddlers.

Facebook evolved to become an intimate cyberspace for all to unburden themselves. It projects the vibe of a person getting home tired after a hard day and, over a beverage shot, emptying every accumulated frustration on society. On the contrary, happiness and celebration are the hallmarks of Instagram. You won't find a sad face over there. All you ever find is a hunky-dory, made-up world. I sometimes think of Facebook and Instagram as the yin and yang of the internet. I was ecstatic when I heard that Facebook had bought Instagram. Eventually, in a curious turn of poetic justice, yin and yang converge to complete the puzzle of existence!

It is evident that any social media platform undergoes an organic transformation and reaches its destiny by way of its users' preferences. There is no observable rationale for this phenomenon, which depends entirely on the whims of the public. That is the reason why Reddit became a youngster's forum and Quora ended up being a retiree paradise. That is the reason LinkedIn ended up as a glorified Naukri alternative. That is why  certain kinds of creatures ended up usurping and dominating TikTok.

That is precisely the reason why Google+ is no longer talked about. Google, in their eagerness to upstage the Facebook behemoth, created a mini version of Facebook and insisted that every Gmail user automatically get a free account. It resisted every effort from the public to reconstruct Google+ into something that they actually wished for. The end result was the grand failure of the entire project.

Coming back to Threads, only time will decide if it will end up being the jewel of the Meta throne or a Cinderella after midnight.

 

Book Review: Pleasure of Thinking by Wang Xiaobo

Suppose that somewhere in history there was a great sage who suddenly discovered all novelties and things interesting, revealing the ultimate truth such that there would be nothing left to be discovered, then I would prefer to be born in a time before such a great sage existed. The reason is that if the ultimate truth has already been discovered, then the only thing left for humanity to do would be to judge everything based on this truth.

 Wang Xiaobo is a Chinese writer whose novels and essays are very popular in mainland China. Some of his novels, like Golden Age, are already translated into English, and now his collection of essays is translated for the first time with the title Pleasure of Thinking. The translation is done by Yan Yan, who also has the translation credit for Wang's novel Golden Age. This upcoming book was provided to me by Netgalley and its publisher in exchange for my honest feedback.

Wang Xiaobo was born into a family of intellectuals. But he was forced to work on a farm in Yunnan as a part of the Cultural Revolution. It is evident from these essays that his experiences in the commune and his later ones as a teacher and factory worker were critical in shaping his unique perspectives on life, literature, and culture. He married the famous sociologist and activist Li Yinhe. Several essays in this collection have sprouted from the sociological works of Li Yinhe about homosexuals, marginalised communities, and villagers in China. He went to the US as a student for a short period and then returned to China. He worked as a lecturer in sociology until his early death in 1997.

This collection contains 33 essays laced with black humour that discuss a variety of themes. It will be easy to discuss these essays if we group them under some headings. Though the contents may spill over in between these categories to a certain extent, it will make sense if we group them as essays on thinking, on sociology, on China, on abroad, and on writing and literature. It seems the pieces are placed in the order of their humour content, with the initial ones being more meditative and sober and the later ones going all out on sarcasm and black humour, the exception being the very last one, The Silent Majority, which is more contemplative.

The first set of essays ruminates about being an intellectual capable of thought. These are mostly connected with his experiences in the commune, where he had to work under army men who were incapable of any thought and simply followed orders. In the essays about sociology, Xiaobo refers to the work of his wife and writes about different marginalised communities within China. He says that even the Chinese of his time were ignorant of the homosexual community in China because they operated as a silent minority. He writes on topics like village communities in China, feminism, leftism in the USA, and cultural relativism. The essays in these two categories are more reflective and matter-of-fact accounts, though we are treated to glimpses of his sharp wit and sarcasm occasionally.

There are a bunch of essays on China that ponder the situations in the country that he observed. Razor-sharp criticism can be found in these pieces, though it is evident that he has deep love and patriotic feelings for his country. He writes about the damages caused to China from the time of Confucius to Mao's Cultural Revolution, which severely impaired the country. The writer writes in his essays about his life experiences in America and Europe. He writes about food, houses, travel, and many other facets of life in foreign nations and compares them with China. These essays are loaded with sharp observation and the recounting of several hilarious incidents.

His essays on literature and writing are some of my favourites in the collection, because here I could feel the balance of penetrating humour and profound thought. He explains the reason he chose to write, about his first novel and his writing style, about different novels with oppression as the theme, and about a book by Italo Calvino about writing. The final essay of the collection and probably the longest one, The Silent Majority, sums up the total world view of Wang Xiaobo and provides a perfect culmination to the book.

As the book is written mostly in the 1990s, the social and political situation of China and the whole world has significantly altered. The issues that Xiaobo addresses in many essays have also undergone transformations, and many of them may seem irrelevant. The pop culture and technological references are outdated. But if we take a dive below surface level, it can be observed that the essays are relevant even now, albeit sometimes in an altered context. For example, in his commentary on the internet, he bemoans the deluge of information and misinformation that it supplies to the consumer, which has escalated today when some of that information is our own.

Reading Xiaobo visualised in me a seahawk that flies far above the ocean, observing it closely and once in a while plunging into it and rising again with a fish on the beak. He gives us a general description of the subject and, when we least expect it, takes the plunge and throws towards us a surprise observation that is consistently profound and witty.

Book Review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Yes, old man, yes, eyes open to this precious land and its people, to the covenant of water, water that washes away the sins of the world, water that will gather in streams, ponds, and rivers, rivers that float the seas, water that I will never enter.

In the year 1900, at the South Indian state of Travancore, a girl of twelve is married off to a widower of forty who has a strange abhorrence to water. The girl, bought up around water and a devout Christian, survives and thrives in Parambil, when tragedy strikes and secret of a terrible curse haunting the family from centuries is revealed. Thus starts a tale spanning three generations of men and women bound by a covenant of water- the heart wrenching tale of loss, grief, anger, suffering, passion and endurance.

The Covenant Of Water is the upcoming novel written by Abraham Verghese, a Malayali doctor settled in US. I received an advance copy for reading and providing an honest feedback thanks to Netgalley and the publisher.  My primary reason to choose this novel is it being set in Kerala. There are many Malayalam novels that keep a family in its focal point and explore the social, political, cultural and economic situations of the society through its members and their relations with each other and with society. The Covenant Of Water also has a similar plot structure. But additionally there is an element of mystery that is beautifully unravelled.

The Covenant Of Water has a very simple and organic narration style which is descriptive to some extent. It is very atmospheric and to the credit of the writer, the reader can effortlessly envision the environment while reading. This factor becomes essential because geography is also an important character of the novel. The plot is pushed on by its colorful and complex characters and once acquainted, each of them make the reader invested in their motives, actions, consequences and the ultimate destiny. The plot is a huge jigsaw puzzle and it was interesting to see some of the pieces coming together unexpectedly to reveal a bigger picture.

Like action set pieces moving the story in a good action movie, medical procedures are very crucial in The Covenant of Water. The writer has passionately poured out his expertise as a surgeon on its pages. Detailed descriptions of brain surgery, complexities of child birth, skin grafting and more appear more than once. But all these forms integral part of the plot.

If I have to sum up the story of this mammoth 736 pages novel in a single sentence, 'this is an account of the effort of its characters to prevent repetition of history by breaking the cycles to which they are tied to.' Every character finds themselves to be part of a large cycle and are destined to replicate the fate of some predecessor. They are aware of it and are desperate to break the cycle and escape out of it.

The water she first stepped into minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they’re all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.

The Distorted Mirror by R K Laxman: Curios and Collectibles

R K Laxman, creator of common man is the most revered of Indian cartoonists. Many cartoons that he drew decades ago still resonate with the political and social situations of the country. The Distorted Mirror is a collection of his writings and includes short stories, short travelogues and sketches in prose.

After reading the book, I felt that stories are the weakest in the lot. For me they were a little bland and too simplistic. An Accident, the first and then best of the lot is a mystery about how a newspaper became a murder weapon. The Golden Frame is a story about a frame maker who accidentally spoils a revered photograph of his client and his attempts to restore it. Other stories are simple childhood anecdotes which has just a very low amusement value.

Travelogues are considerably better written than stories, though I felt more details would have considerably added to the reading pleasure. The writer just superficially touches on the aspects about the places that he visited. But we can clearly see his acute observation skills illuminating the sceneries that he describes now and then.

The third segment contains sketches about his life, career and society. The ones about cartoons are clearly great pieces, must read in my opinion because of the glimpses they give into his genius mind.

But the elements that stand out in the book are the illustrations by the author. They supplement the text beautifully lending it personality. It is not a surprise as R K Laxman is in his elements while doing what he does best.

As an admirer of R K Laxman, I am not satisfied with The Distorted Mirror. But it does not in any way takes away the greatness of the cartoonist in my mind. I have a feeling that these pieces are curios made for amusing himself rather than for public consumption, collected for commercial sake.

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It's All In Black & White

People don't have any idea what's black money. Guys remember last month when you checked out of that hotel, the receptionist asked you if you need tax bill and you said you didn't need bill with a smirk? The Rs 2000 that you paid became black money the moment it was gone from your hand.

Or that Rs 100 you paid for a pirated dvd on roadside yesterday. That became black money and is now on its way to help drug Lords & terrorists break our nation apart.

Or that medicines you bought without tax bill and that electronic shaver which you bought from smuggled goods store. The money that you handed out is black money now.

You bought a piece of land showing paper value 5 lakh and paid 40 lakh. 35 lakh that you paid has now become black money...

That donation you paid without receipt to secure a seat for your kid in that posh school and that 500 that you paid the policeman to escape from his long hands has also became black money.


What happens is that all this amount moves out of the mainstream economy. Then it starts it's journey towards its masters. Because once it moves out of control all transactions that use this money will be nefarious,  illegal ones. Finally it reaches the coffers of hoarders. For hoarding money, obviously you need bigger denominations like 500 and 1000s. Now when these denominations are banned, suddenly all these currency gets worthless. But for all those who have genuinely earned white money, government has given chance to deposit in banks after revealing source. 

But it becomes impossible for black money to get legitimised because it's tough to reveal sources. May be a small portion may escape.

Now government has a clear account of how many 500& 1000 Rs notes is in circulation. It has to just check how much is returned to it. Remaining is a deficit which government can compensate by printing new currency. And this currency can be used for developmental and beneficiary purposes.

So any unaccounted money acquired illegaly gets back to government in a single stroke.