Remember the ice bucket
challenge? You probably don’t, given how, while everyone says that life is transient
and fleeting and all that, it’s the social media fads that are truly transient
and fleeting, and thank goodness for that. Still, back before the days of
Pokemon Go and Prisma and Dubsmash videos, the ice bucket challenge was the
first of the big social media fads that really made you wonder how crazy (or
cray-cray, as the more with-it lot would say) people could really be. I
suppose one should be thankful that the capacity for human lunacy is being channeled
into absurd social media fads as opposed to, say, starting a world war, but
the ice bucket challenge was still a strange phenomenon, whichever way you
looked at it. One minute all seemed well with the world, the next, people were all
over the Internet having a bucket of iced water poured over their heads. Something
that should’ve died a quick death with the first case of pneumonia instead went
on for months with celebrities, ‘fifteen-seconds-of-fame’ type internet
sensations and even normal, sensible people dunking a bucket of iced over their
heads and, for good measure, filming the whole damn thing. If you tried that
now, randomly pouring a bucket of iced water over someone, they would probably
beat you to pulp and swear never to talk to you again, but back in the day, for
one glorious summer, someone was grateful if you did that to them.
While I was perfectly happy
with the world dunking itself in iced water as long as it left me out of it, I
was worried about what the ice bucket challenge was doing to the Internet.
Think about it – at that point, if for some reason an alien species had decided
to vaporize our entire planet and destroy all physical proof of planet earth,
the only thing they’d be left with is the Internet. Consequently, the only
thing the aliens would know about us humans is that we loved pouring iced water
over our heads. Is that really a good legacy to be remembered by? It would not have extracted even the slightest pang of guilt amongst the aliens
over destroying the human race. If an alien army inquiry into the destruction
of planet earth did ever take place, this is how it would’ve played out:
Alien Commander: “What? You vaporized Earth? Have you no conscience?
You just killed all life on an entire planet – there must’ve been millions of
life forms on that planet, and you just vaporized it all! How could you?”
Alien Soldier: Well, they anyway spent all their time pouring ice cold
water over themselves – that’s all they ever did.
Alien Commander: What nonsense! No race could be that daft – you’re
just making it up to save your skin.
Alien Soldier: I swear it’s true. See – I have proof! Look at their
Internet – all you see is humans having iced water dunked over their
heads.
Alien Commander: Oh, all right. Then it’s fine. I probably would’ve
done the same thing.
Perhaps someone should take
on the responsibility to curate information about humanity for posterity, just
in case the planet is vaporized by aliens or melted into oblivion by a nuclear
holocaust. Sure, the ice bucket challenge is now history, but if you just let
the Internet be as it is, the future generations will only see us as these
massive perverts, because about 90% of the Internet is porn. Or they’d see us
as this eccentric race that spent all its time looking for monsters on their
mobile phones. At best, they’d think that we worshipped cats, because most of
the videos on YouTube and photos on Instagram are of cats. It’s just like the
way we think the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats. Perhaps the ancient
Egyptians didn’t really worship cats – maybe they hated cats and that’s why
they seized the opportunity to bury a cat or two whenever someone died. But we
misinterpreted it to think that they loved cats so much that they buried their
dead along with a cat.
The whole matter of
legacies is why I was glad that somebody finally made a movie set during the
Indus Valley Civilization. Here was an ancient civilization that must’ve been
pretty cool in a lot of different ways, yet all I could remember about the
Indus Valley Civilization from history books were two things:
1.
They loved
making terracotta figurines. Every photograph in the history books about
objects from that time was a terracotta figurine/object/artifact. I’m sure
there would’ve been much more to the Indus Valley people than making terracotta
figurines – for all you know they would’ve made music, played sports or even
devised an elaborate cuisine that was way ahead of its time, but thanks to none
of that being found, everyone thinks that making terracotta figurines was all
they ever did.
2. Life started
with the Indus Valley Civilization. Ok, and the Egyptian, Chinese and
Mesopotamian civilizations. Of course, we were later taught that we all evolved
from monkeys, and that humanity first began in Africa millions of years ago. But
for a few years before that, history always started with these four
civilizations – it was as if there was nothing at all until they all just
sprung up around the same time. But while the Egyptians had the pyramids, the
Chinese had the Great Wall and the Mesopotamians invented the wheel; the Indus
Valley’s claim to fame was terracotta. I like terracotta, but it’s not exactly the wheel in terms of civilizational contribution, is it?
The initial joy of a movie set in the Indus Valley Civilization
quickly turned to deep despair when it turned out that Hrithik Roshan and
Ashutosh Gowariker, the team behind Jodha Akbar, were responsible for the
movie. Still, I thought I’d at least go ahead and take a look at the trailer,
just to expand my knowledge of the Indus Valley Civilization. Thanks to the
trailer, I now know that there was so much more to the Indus Valley
Civilization – unarmed combat with crocodiles, elaborately choreographed dance
sequences, Mediterranean dresses, Viking hats, Roman-style gladiatorial battles,
greed, corruption and evil dictators. It’s the sort of stuff that’s too
interesting to go into a history book, so maybe that’s why they only told us about
the terracotta figurines!