Reading time : 7 to 9 minutes.
Circle back to December of 2016: people died in wars, skirmishes, fights, drone attacks, explosions, misfires, crossfires and their lives came to a halt, as the creators, enjoyed the spectacle on their television sets, having a smoldering barbecue and single malt!
There were unspeakable crimes against women, men, and children. Some killed for no reason, some for obsession and some died just like that. Rapes, tapes, abuse in all shapes, torture, torment gore galore, all repeated like seasons and episodes from the same folklore.
There were men who abused power and there was the power that abused men, there were women abused by powerful men, and there were women in power abusing position.There were lives lost to road rage, ignorant innocents defied their age.There were deliberate plans and designed damages or designed ignorance and feigned support.
People fell for selfies and selfies felled people, top of buildings or on the tracks, self-obsession burst through the cracks, warm subways became cold , WhatsApp diet was for the young and old. Blaring headphones silenced the noisy banter and the friendly chat turned into a spat.
People still watched the silly tele , protested for things willy-nilly, the news channels screamed their debates out every night and some still had stage fright. Fake questioned reality and reality called out a fake, rhetoric represented mass or mass generated a rhetoric, opinions formed and formed opinions broke, perceptions triggered reality and reality broke perceptions.
Then there were apps and tech, blockchain and not so free internet, there were trolls in scrolls, hate speeches and underrated breaches, there were dreams of Mars and nightmares of cars, there was the threatening Bitcoin and fighting Sensex, people lost the plot, and some plots got more complex.Legacy and piracy continued for some as come realized change and transformation was so cumbersome.
There was corporate politics and the politics of the corporates, of course there were the bad bosses passing off the losses and some lost running with the wrong horses. There were ignorant employees cribbing what they got, and then there were salary hikes which some companies conveniently forgot.
Recruiters chased candidates,yet jobs eluded most of the primates. There were resumes bloated to bore and tired eyes misread the core.Diversity was denied entry as fear became the sentry, and then the old boardrooms traded the veterans, in came the young guns , armed with their bschool puns, and corridors filled with lexicons of change and transformation, then came the call,and numbers continued their fall.
Some played their victim cards, and some dumb charades, oft changing loyalty and different interpretations of flexibility. There were shorter mails and lesser details, carefully deleted trails and their epic fails, there were more challenges and arguments, fights and instruments, playing to the gallery and top tier or blatant flattery of the posterior.
Then there was more death by ppts and presentations that killed many liberties. There were keynote speakers and demotivated seekers, disillusioned weepers went on to become motivational speakers. Expert excerpts fell of the trees as divine gurus charged corporate fees, some caught in the act of fornication and some shepherded the masses with hallucination, some sold noodles with Tootles.
Then the pointless content on YouTube , people designed their moves,movie reactions became a rage, praising trailers and political outrage. Talk is cheap and a farrago of opinions people keep, on things little understood, while others had their expressions on wood. Social media became an expert in its infancy and infants became subject matter experts with their vocabulary so fancy, likes and swipes ruled the day, and days ruled by what others say.
Thousands of reality shows, same format, and scripted drama, looping commercials with on viewership on terra-firma, The same marvels and big bursting buildings, endless wars on poor earthlings, crazy carpets and flying cars, the same special effects of fading stars. Movies with less content and more packaging, and writers with more noise than writing, social causes with no show causes, box office in crisis and crisis at the studio office.
I guess you get the point but it’s the point to get.
That was ’16 or was it ’17 – what’s going to be different in ’18?
Will you control the reason, or let reason control you? If you want to end with a wow, you don’t need to wait for ’18 begin now.
AB
#nowin18
The Gyan Ban Times 