Keep It Real Bro
“Literature hits”, texted a dear friend as he delved into the meaninglessness of life after having been freshly drenched in the many tenets of existentialism while spending time reading far away from the bustle of New Delhi amidst the pandemic.
Our conversation over Instagram had been seamlessly picked up from WhatsApp where we began discussing Clubhouse — the new sensation du jour in tech town. A section of the world is literally losing sleep to keep up with a fresh cocktail of conversations (pull to refresh for another round) — each producing a fresh vile of dopamine hits (or not when your shot is politely declined) — the new kind — the kind which is far more instant than the social media apps of the nouveau world. Silicon Valley has discovered yet another way to cash in your precious money spitting senses. Another supercomputer party. Raise your glasses! This time intimacy is in vogue guys.
You are reading this when I am up to something else. I will read your comment when you are occupied somewhere else. Boring! Enter Clubhouse. From answering life’s greatest questions to discovering a fellow stranger’s sex story, Clubhouse has got you covered. And It all happens in realtime. No more waiting for responses on your opinion — well if you can finish saying it in the first place. And once you have finally unravelled the meaning of existence in the hallowed hallways of the 22 year old vlogger’s weekend special 8 o’ clock room, move on to the next and indulge in a 4 hour long discussion around the truly underrated beauty of a burning cigarette — a conversation long time coming they said. Bored? Pull to refresh.
“The modern devil is cheap dopamine.” — Naval | 2020
“But Dwaipayan, the discussions are so diverse. Where’s the harm in that dude?” you might ask. To which I would say “sure, but where’s the quality bro?”
The power of social media lay in the democratisation of free speech. It levelled the playing field. Amplified the silenced. Made the world fairer. If you have a screen and a working internet connection, you are now powerful enough to get vocal and tell whatever it is that you want to tell to the entire friggin’ world — in an instant. An instant. And that is exactly where our humane flaws kicked in. We got lazy from our newfound powers. For most of us, easy access propelled the banter to incomprehensible speeds thus creating intricate latticeworks of crap.
Quality has taken a backseat. Why? Quality requires sound working knowledge and developing so takes time, energy, patience — behaviours the world of social media doesn’t reward. Not creating content consistently? Now you’re off the algorithm’s Christmas list. The trending hashtag is now your fresh new Almighty to bow down to. Worship it by creating yet another fresh stream of content in its name. Talk about a modern day religion…
Today’s world is a disgustingly cluttered place with a downright obscene appetite for cheap hits — a style of gluttony that is satiated cheap. Massively cheap. Birthing fresh markets daily, these cheap hits are soon to take over the world and transform mankind’s fundamental narrative. Hello new generation, the world is apparently yours!
Welcome to the century where your brain farts are hot stuff (aka memes) and thought is so vanilla and therefore, passé. We are living in a “blurt it first before someone else does” era. And that, dear reader, is a pitch perfect manuscript for how we can have our brains in a cryogenically frozen state as a society for dummies. Fun times right? I know bro.
People chatter. Nostalgia: substance. People assert. Nostalgia: logic. Embrace bias cause who has got the damn time man to think stuff through? And life is just easier to blend in with the cool gang at the next cocktail party. Be original? What do you think I am? A hippie?
Ever wondered why the apps jiggle in your iPhone when you wanna clean up to make space for the next hot new fad? Fear. Fear of being obliterated and being left for dead. Fear of getting deleted from the connected world in one deadly tap. By you — the holy trinity of this century. The Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer. That’s all you buddy. Feel the power yet?
From the more than frequent schadenfreude to the blanket validations, Clubhouse is evolving fast. But consumers always evolve faster — they ruthlessly destroy ideas, organisations and the associated people in its way and happily leave them to turn into rotten carcasses in the digital savanna.
It’s the era where truth is convoluted as popularity takes precedence. The cucumber cool mod’s validation in a 1k+ room and the girl you have been crushing on based on her hot Clubhouse DP laughed at your on-the-fly googled joke — it is now the cool joke. Your cool joke. It is your go to joke at every party from now on. You are now officially cool. Foundation? Two Clubhouse babblers.
“Is it all bad bro? Is there nothing good about this new app?”
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course there is. Meeting new people, learning about new things from people belonging to various contexts — a kind of access that may have been much harder to acquire in a world without a Clubhouse, Facebook or Instagram. No one can take away from the good that social media platforms have collectively helped achieve. From connecting long lost friends to voicing people who earlier had no platform, social media has truly changed the world in its purest sense. It has shrunk our world exponentially and that is a good thing, given it is done right.
Today, most of us are adding to the chatter aka the clutter. Trends create waves to create more clutter which leads to newer forms of clutter. CLUTTER! Only a few are cutting through it and bringing substance to the forefront. A few are rejecting to dance to the algorithm’s drum. A few are daring to be original.
“So what should we do man?”
Let’s strive to bring substance back into vogue. Let us dare to be different. Let us not care about filling a void with the same crap that created it in the first place. Let us contribute to make a difference. Let us make s**t matter. Let’s have a real conversation — despite what the algorithm will have to say about us.
To my friend who is yet trying to see his way through the tenets of existentialism, let me just say, you made me smile and that counts. Keep it real bro.