A New Low

This weekend, for absolutely no fault of mine, I got added to a What’s App group called the ‘UPS Battery Group’. In general, I treat with suspicion any What’s App group that has more than 10 members. These are the sort of groups that start with great fanfare and enthusiasm only to slowly degenerate into a junkyard for inane forwards and tired jokes. This one was different though – from the beginning itself it seemed to have no point to it. It was created out of the blue by someone that nobody knew, and everyone was flummoxed as to why they were added to the group.  However tenuous the link may be, most What’s App groups at least have a basis for formation that is more real – a group of old friends, batch mates from college, a tuition group or even ex-colleagues that used to go for lunch together. But here was one group where no one knew anybody, or had any lingering ties to UPS Batteries.

So all that was happening on the group was people were enquiring as to its purpose, and on not receiving any reply, quitting the group. One person was even polite enough to offer that he was open to being added back to the group if it so emerged that there was a point to it, but until such a stage he would stay out. So yes, everyone was either quitting the group or staying on it simply because they hadn’t found the time to quit the group. The sort of thing any sensible person would do in today’s hectic, fast-paced lifestyle.

But not me.

Why I didn’t quit the group right away, like I usually would, I do not know. Perhaps it was some sort of idle curiosity. I mean, a group for UPS batteries? Sure, people form artificial affiliations around football clubs or music bands or film stars – a What’s App group in their name would not have piqued my curiosity in the least. But what could one possibly discuss about UPS Batteries? Perhaps if it was a group on battery technologies in general, it may have been a little more understandable, although still perplexing (and just a little bit creepy). But something as specific as UPS Batteries? Sure, there may be other specific things, like say, toast, where you can imagine people forming a What’s App group and witnessing active participation and passionate arguments. But UPS batteries? Yes, they take care of voltage fluctuations and sudden power outages and we’re all thankful for that, but what more can you say? It’s like forming a What’s App group on water taps or door handles – move along folks, there’s really nothing to be discussed here.

After a while, though, even the idle curiosity began to die down. Much as I wanted to know the possible talking points around UPS Batteries, there were no answers forthcoming. A few hours later, with everyone still in the dark, I decided to take matters into my own hands and provide some direction to all the lost souls out there. Armed with the good sense that a couple of beers can knock into any respectable citizen, I jumped right in, attempting to make this a What’s App group that was full of lively banter and hectic activity.

And then the unthinkable happened – I got thrown out of the What’s App group! Imagine – getting unceremoniously removed from a What’s App group, of all things! And that too one that everyone was voluntarily leaving anyway. Even for someone without a great track record on social media, this was a new low. I’m sure I’m the first person ever to achieve this dubious distinction – people either leave What’s App groups of their own accord, or stay on simply so that others don’t speculate as to why they left. And I was only getting started – I was all set to initiate a discussion around everyone’s top 5 UPS Battery moments, where UPS Batteries would rank among things you’d rescue if your house was burning down, romantic moments that would’ve been ruined were it not for UPS Batteries, and so on.

In hindsight, I suppose it’s better off to not be part of a What’s App group that lacks a sense of humour and doesn’t allow for dissent. Still, from Groucho Marx proudly proclaiming that he wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would accept him as a member, to me getting thrown out of a What’s App group that NO ONE wanted to be part of – there’s quite a bit of work to be done on the social front!

The Ice Bucket List

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!

DeLinked In

Each week, without provocation and apropos of nothing, I receive requests from at least two complete strangers who wish to be added to my professional network on LinkedIn. This might make it sound like my professional network is the equivalent of those parties thrown by Jay Gatsby that everyone wishes to be part of. That to those on the outside looking in, it looks like the sort of professional network that helps people get jobs, make useful business contacts, publicize their successes, climb up the career ladder and that sort of thing. The reality, though, is quite the opposite. The last time I updated my LinkedIn profile was nearly a decade ago – to give you an idea, the iPhone had not been launched yet, Pluto was still a planet and not just a cartoon dog, India hadn’t played a single T20 match, and Israel and Palestine – well, ok…that situation was still messed up. But apart from that, it was a very different world.

The truth is that I’m simply terrible at business networking. I’m shy, withdrawn and prefer the quiet comfort of the written word to the raucous harshness of the spoken word. Networking, then, isn’t something that comes naturally to me. And when you throw in business along with it, it’s a uselessness that gets exacerbated exponentially to create a perfect storm of incompetence. It’s not like I don’t have a commonsensical understanding of business, but I’ve never had that eye for business that marks out an entrepreneur from, well, a regular person. Not just an eye, but I also lack the guts, heart or spine for business – it requires too much ambition and too much of dealing with people.

Of course, the unsuspecting strangers who wish to be part of my professional network do not know any of this, since it isn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d state explicitly on your LinkedIn profile. Still, it does make me wonder, who are these driven and motivated professionals that decided to add me to their network despite not knowing me at all? It would be understandable if I was an HR person, or if I had some big time designation like Vice President or Director or Partner or CEO. But I don’t – so it probably means that these people diligently tracked down profiles with the big shot designations first, sent them requests, possibly got rejected but persevered doggedly until they trickled down to my level. That just seems like an insane level of dedication to business networking. Was I missing out on something? Was there some very happening and exciting business life that was being played out on LinkedIn, the way it always seems to be the case on Facebook?

Each time I log in to Facebook, the first five minutes are enough to convince me that I have no life, and the next five minutes are enough to convince me that I have no opinions and am an uninformed country bumpkin who has been hiding under a rock while the whole world was seething with rage over something that offended someone. Half the people I know are partying, holidaying and checking in to fancy places. The other half are expressing opinions, getting outraged and having informed debates on topics that I didn’t even know are in the news. I wondered if it was the same on LinkedIn, but in a professional context?

What I mean is, were people eagerly updating their statuses with their latest professional achievements like “Landed a new client today – mopped the floor with my rivals”, “Got a big promotion and a bonus – time to get that sports car”, “Crunched numbers and absolutely wrestled them to the ground – I’ll totally rock the budget meeting!” or even simply “Ate a hearty business breakfast. Good food for thought”? Did they put up photos of themselves attending high-powered meetings or making strategic presentations? Was there a plethora of selfies out there but with people trying to look professional instead of pouting? Did they check in with statements such as “Checked in to CXO level meeting at posh 5 star business hotel” or “Checked in to World Trade Tech Village Global Corporate Business Park for tricky meeting with idiot client”? In other words, would logging in to LinkedIn make me feel like I have no professional life either, to go along with the social life that I already did not possess?

Thankfully this wasn’t the case, though after five minutes of browsing through LinkedIn it was clear that I had no opinions and was utterly uninformed in the professional sphere as well. People were holding forth on professional topics of interest, sharing links to new corporate developments, commenting on latest workplace trends, etc. It was an entire world of opinions and debates that I was completely oblivious to. And it’s not like LinkedIn didn’t try – they’d send me regular reminders that invites were waiting to be responded to; people were waiting to be recommended glowingly and that yet more habits of highly effective people were being discovered while I withered away in a state of ignorant stagnation. Every now and then, it even sent me beseeching mails imploring me to congratulate someone on completing 2 years in a job, and I foolishly ignored it thinking that no one actually did something like that. Yet it was only now that I realised that this congratulating is actually very real, just like people wishing you on your birthday on Facebook.

The oddest part, though, were the spate of links shared on increasing productivity and efficiency in the workplace. By the time you’d get through these, you’d have spent pretty much your entire workday. Now that’s not exactly being productive, is it?

Let me super-poke you!

This is something that has happened often enough for me not to dismiss as mere coincidence. Each time I log into Facebook (generally once in two weeks), the next 2-3 days I receive at least half a dozen invites. How does this work? Is it that each time I log in, Facebook sends out an alert to everyone “Argha Sarkar logged in yesterday. I guess you know what this means...you better send him an invite”? And how does Facebook decide whom to send these alerts to?

Around a year back, social networking seemed a simple enough task. Everyone I knew seemed to be jumping on to the bandwagon by creating their Orkut profile, scrapping people left, right and centre, and discovering the surprising existence of long-lost acquaintances. There was the simple pleasure one derived from watching one’s female friends receive random requests along the lines of “Will you pliz make frendship with me?”, “I was luking thru ur profile. It seems we have a lot in common, will u be my frend?” or “Hi. I liked ur profile. I am also from Bangalore. Let’s be frends.” As a response, said female friends would remove their profile pic from Orkut and replace it with a random object, or a very arty-looking pic that however gave no indication of what said female in question looked like.

As a guy, the only unsolicited scrap you’d receive would be along the lines of “Hi. I noticed that your interests include Bavarian wild boars. I have started a Bavarian wild boars community on Orkut, where like-minded people such as you and me can discuss our passion for Bavarian wild boars.” Any visit to the community would have you come across fascinating threads of discussion such as “Why Bavarian wild boars are superior to Hungarian wild boars?”, under which some passionate Hungarian wild boar fanatic would’ve interrupted a wholesome debate on the merits of the Bavarian wild boar with a comment such as “Bavarian wild boar suckzzzzzzzzzzz. Hungarian wild boar RULEZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!! Go rot in hell, you Bavarian wild boar lot!” (to put things mildly). At this point the discussion would degenerate into angry chants asking Hungarain_WildBoar_4life to go mind his own business, with the choicest of expletives being hurled at him.

And of course, who could forget the communities of people with same names! Soon after you joined Orkut, someone else named Argha would send you a scrap saying “I could not help but notice that your name is Argha. Come and join the community of people named Argha, where we can discuss the merits of our wonderful name.” The threads in such communities would be limited to half a dozen members introducing themselves and sharing some interesting anecdote about their name, at which point there was nothing else left to say. If you think sharing the same name sounds like a flimsy excuse to form a community, you are horribly mistaken. You would probably come across communities in Orkut such as “Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Episode 8 is the BEST”, “Lovers of Judas Priest in South-Central Delhi” and “People who use a red towel on Tuesdays”.

You either fell into the category of people who initially showed a lot of enthusiasm for Orkut, rediscovered long lost friends, joined a few communities before slowly losing interest and reducing the visits to simply checking when one has received a scrap and replying to the same - yours truly being a prime example of someone in this category. Or you could fall into the category of people who would check their scraps at least thrice a day, dutifully reply to every scrap, send half a dozen scraps of your own, manage to wish happy birthday to everyone on your list, and maybe even start and maintain a community of your own, if you’re REALLY adventurous – I suspect both my ex-flatmates would have fallen into this latter category. The bottom line, though, was that Orkut seemed to be just one step beyond an SMS – albeit free of charge. But you understood everything, and felt like you were in control.

And then something sinister started to happen. First it was just one person, but slowly every second person would tell you “Oh, I’m not on Orkut anymore, I’ve deleted my account. I’ll add you on Facebook though...you have a Facebook account, na?” You decide to keep with the times and join Facebook – you figure it would probably be the same and you’d get the hang of it in a day or two. But lo and behold! Life just isn’t that simple anymore. Everyone around you is poking or winking at each other, someone has found out that they resemble Kareena the most among Bollywood stars, someone has super-poked you, someone has asked you to figure out which ‘That 70s Show’ character you are and someone has offered you derivates on the Peruvian Futures Index. And if you think that is where it ends, you’re sadly mistaken. The next time you log in someone has hurled a sheep at you, another person has rung a bell at you, someone has fattened a pig for you and someone wants you to participate in their coolest friend contest. Where do these people get the time to do all of this? Does it not feel like a full time occupation just figuring out what all these things are supposed to mean, leave alone participating in them? Yet, everyone seems to be doing it effortlessly and is still hanging on to their jobs quite comfortably. How?

And these are the same people who then start sending you invites to join Hi5, Gazzag and an assortment of various other social networking websites...how do they manage it all? For someone who finds it a challenge to even upload pictures on an Orkut or a Facebook, I wisely refrained from joining any of these new-fangled sites. Life is complicated enough with strange animals being hurled at you, you getting poked at, participating in sundry other quizzes and polls, you getting super-poked even though you have no idea what it means and why someone would do that to you. And then there’s Linked In, which I had joined a long time back under the naive illusion that it would be a good platform for creating some business contacts. Or perhaps that wasn’t an illusion, perhaps Linked In is useful...just that I’m not in the “networking” mode anymore.