What's the big 'deal' in banning websites ?

A Satire on Pakistan and it's internet madness.

Pakistan is on a spree you see. And we, as good neighbors are keeping a close watch on them.

Disclaimer : None.

Let the images do the talking.


















































PS : Sorry to have used Mr. Orkut, i have good memories of Orkut. Just dint find anything else.

PPS : As most of the internet is banned, this piece sadly wont reach my friends in Pakistan. Not cool!!

To Chelsea, with lots of love... :P

Disclaimer 1 : I have got a lot of good friends who are blue noses. Tumko Chelsea / Champions League ki kasam, please play along and dont get offended. ;) Simple banter this.

Disclaimer 2 : None of the images below are mine, blatantly using Vodafone's, as small time payback for ridiculous billing some time back.

So, Let's kick offf....





























































Ok, this was my first amateur attempt at a comic. Inspired mainly by Sahil Riz' The Vigil Idiot , Fly, you Fools and some more blogs. (and Savita Bhabhi maybe???)

PS : Wikipedia to be blamed for problems, if any. :)

Justification of IPL obsession by a News editor.

* Bit delayed post. Was my first attempt at satire. :) *

AN EXCLUSIVE REPORT




A citizen journalist (CJ) got an opportunity to grill the editor of a popular English news channel on the recent obsession with IPL-gate which led to missing out of other ‘so-called significant stories’ developing simultaneously. Mr. Sumon Roy, Managing Editor of ‘Times Then&Now’, took time away from his busy Twitter schedule to oblige us with this interview.

CJ began by asking him why the Prime Minister’s visit to the West at the same time of the IPL mess did not qualify as substantial news on his 24 hour channel. Discussion of Af-Pak with Obama is news after-all we thought.

He said, ‘Look, IPL is way cooler. Because there is no Pakistan in here.' But in the same breath he added, 'I am not saying we are collectively ignoring Pakistan like the IPL owners. If anybody dares to allege that we are indeed blacking out Pakistan in media, I have got two words for them : Shoaib Sania’.

Visibly delighted at the awesome and spicy byte he just got, the CJ went on to ask him about non-coverage of the PM’s attendance at the Nuclear Summit following the USA visit. Roy said, ‘ We live in times of change. Few years ago, the nuclear bomb was the strategic deterrent for USA, through which it ruled the world. Its not the ‘in thing’ now. 21st century is India’s era. IPL is the new strategic weapon. Don’t tell me you din’t see Shashi Tharoor’s TED talk on India’s soft power. We are merely following that. If you don’t listen to us, India won’t drop a nuke. She would bar your players from IPL and not telecast games to your country. For the resulting loss of revenues there, they will probably take on board some more sponsors. After all, sky is endless and there is space for so many more blimps’. It aint the 4th biggest league in just 3 years for nothing.

The Prime Minister also visited Brazil by the way. A key strategic ally. In response, ‘Well well well, why would you ever want to report anything on Brazil if it is not football, or those wild thong-clad chics at the Rio carnivals? Waste of time and space. Brazil time on news will be later this year from South Africa, subject to end of IPL-gate by then’.

On being quizzed about the lack of news reporting on Pankaj Advani’s successful title defense at the Asian Billiards Championship, he put all the blame on technology. He said, ‘Anyway, we have reported a lot on Advani and the overwhelming response has been that oldie should retire and die in peace. So keeping in mind the public sentiment, our news channel system installed a program which blocks any news featuring the name Advani. So, this young boy’s achievement got filtered. All because of his unfortunate surname. Anyway, since he plays so well, I am sure he will win more and more in the future, and give us more chances to let him down’.

Final question to him was what about Indian football team qualifying for the Asia Cup 2011 after 20 odd years and tournament draw that was held last week. He was surprised and said, ‘Whattttt?????? What is that???? Is this a trick of FakingNews.com ? India qualified for Asia Cup 2011, that too after 26 years, are you sure??? Are you sure this is football and not some other believable sport???

Off the record, he told our correspondent that he is not too worried about important news being missed on private news channels. He said, ‘The truth is everybody is on twitter. Smart-ass bloggers invariably post links from BBC and Wall Street Journal etc. So we are covered in that respect. And prioritizing sleaze and glamour over important news is keeping in mind the new Indian urban attitude. I know this because a lot of my friends are actually following Mallika Sherawat on Twitter ahead of Cricketwallah etc, just because she posts pics every now and then showing a lot of cleavage.’

‘Popular media should mirror the mindset of the nation, isn’t it?’

Who are we to disagree?

My report on FakingNews.com

EDIT : This post was the 8th most read post on FakingNews for the year 2010 out of 418 articles published. :) Delighted. Here is the list.

WHOAAA!!!!! What a day it was yesterday. There was nothing that could cheer me up more.
FakingNews, many many thanks. It felt great to be on such a kickass site. \m/

Here is the link : Do check out.
http://www.fakingnews.com/2010/05/student-misses-exam-after-sachin-tendulkar-tweets-him-luck/

It is basically a spoof on the maddening and crazy reaction to The Man himself : Sachin Tendulkar joining twitter. I was part of the crazy reaction to this development too, and if it's of any use, I must add that I was amongst the first 100 followers of the Master. Achievement for me. :P

Cheers. :) :)


Edit (4th Jan 2011):
Just checked the stats on the FN site and Facebook page. Awesome response. Info from the site is 156Retweets and 601 Likes/shares on the page for Facebook. 164 people have liked it on the facebook page of Faking news. :) :)

Confession of a Twitterholic

Possible Future Scenario :
At a Twitter addiction rehab centre in South Mumbai.

Me : Hi. I am XYZ. And I am a major twitterholic.

Others in the room : Hiiiii XYZ.




There is a group on Facebook which is named : ‘Orkut is dead. Facebook killed it.’ Just like millions of nonsense funny-named groups in there, it couldn’t be truer. I have trodden the path, that same path through which the whole of India has passed. Hi5  Orkut-Facebook Twitter God Knows What!

I have been hooked to all the above mentioned sites at various points of time. This is not a unique story. But never has the addiction been so much. The addiction to Twitter. The fact that this occurs right when my final exams are about to begin probably adds to the intensity of disillusion I have right now, leading all the more to the confession. Mind you, I haven’t confessed worse things and if I want peace, I rather don’t. ;)

I joined Twitter a long time back and for almost a year, I had one tweet which went something like: ‘Hi, trying to understand Twitter’. Character Count: 30 odd. That was the day when I thought, man 140 characters is bit too much! I signed out and forgot about it. It was still the Facebook phase.

Reasons : Demi Moore and Aston Kutcher were the Twitter Gods. Who cares? Shashi Tharoor may have joined, but the public dint know much. Karan Johar hadn’t started his campaign to have every Bollywood person on the site. IPL took place only on the grounds or telly, not on Twitter. The numerous bloggers whom I followed were on it, but I dint know. Probably missed the Twitter widgets on their blogs or maybe was just not interested. And finally, CNN-IBN’s website din’t have stories describing SRK’s mood today based squarely on a couple of tweets many hours back.
Those were the good days. Uncomplicated.

Sometime a few months back, when the site’s popularity was exponentially high from last thought; I decided to jump back in and add to my single tweet.
No sooner had I got the grip of things, I was hooked.

The scope is massive. Unprecedented. In Facebook and orkut, we mostly interact and fool around with our own friends and acquaintances. Though a lot of people send ‘can I be your fraand’ type of scraps etc to nice display-pic girls, more or less, it’s just the people you know. The ones, who are in these sites for business and opportunities make new friends, bounce off ideas etc but from my experience they are in the minority big time. Apart from the respectable chatting and catching up with long lost friends and school/college buddies, social networking is also in the simplest language possible : style maro-ing by putting good pics and updates, bakarchodi and checking out hot looking friends of friends. It is about creating an image which you want people to have of you. Nothing wrong in it. I love it infact.

Twitter is none of that. To a large extent. It is only Twitter where hopeless people can expect to get their 15 characters of fame. Poorly put but I guess the point is made. The major attraction is of course the celebs. All kinds of them. From the real ones, to the silicon ones.

It is real time shit. Info, humour, perspectives - everything. All in real time. The boundaries of our world becomes timelines. Never have we been so fond of scrolling up and down, up and down, all day, all night.

We ping them. The celebs tweets their day schedule. We ping them. The celebs suck upto each other. We still ping them. The celebs let out their philosophical gyan. We again buzz them. The celebs discuss serious stuff.Supposedly serious stuff I mean. And we keep on buzzing them. But whatever goes on, one thing is sure. Everybody is out to prove how intellectually rich they are. Twitter seems like the Calcutta of the online world. :P

And then, one day, we get a tweet back. Which changes our sad twitter life forever.

It could be a small thanks in reply to one of the numerous real or fake sweet messages we sent over the days. It could be a retort to an offensive and non-fake comment (normally comparing him/her to Agarkar) from us. It could be anything. It could be a simple retweet of that message you just sent randomly. It could be anything.

Then we go on overdrive. We begin to follow hi-fi accounts of Wall Street Journal and BBC. So that we can post kick-ass links from them. We follow the #trend-setters. We try to come up with witty comments. We try every trick in the book and this link here captures it better than anybody else.

AND THEN, Sachin Tendulkar comes on board. Just like he has killed various attacks all over the world, he kills various competitors of Twitter. And suddenly, the whole of India has logged in. The history will be now divided into two eras. BS - Before Sachin. and AS - After Sachin.

So if you are a budding entrepreneur, explore the possibilities of Social Networking Addiction Rehab Centres. I tell you what, if you make money on this, please give me some. :P

Tweeps \m/

P.S. Twitter is the truest form of 'social networking' in my book. If you really want a really hilarious, and meaningful time onsite, apart from the usual celebs, please start following and interacting with bloggers. That's the best thing to do on twitter. They are awesome. You wont regret. Not one bit.