Stay Beautiful.
A hoarding of a very “popular” newspaper in Andhra Pradesh reads ‘News Made Exciting.’ It’s like asking you… How do you like your eggs? with tomatoes or pepperoni. Actually, you do not have a choice. They’re serving you their choice of spicy breakfast. I don’t want my news to be spiced up. I want my facts to come straight to me. Let me decide if it’s exciting enough.
A 16 year old Adnan Patrawala was kidnapped and killed. A popular news channel talking about the case said “Investigation has revealed that the murderers who were BPO employees had befriended Adnan even before he started to speak to the profile by the name “Angel” on Orkut. Now…. for a special focus on Orkut…. Should Orkut be banned?” WTF! The same reporter who suggested that the murder was planned in the real world as opposed to the virtual is now wondering if Orkut should be banned! A result of that wondering? – “yes, of course! Internet is full of scum, it should be banned.”
And the worst part is, this guy who made this easy decision for us doesn’t know s*** about how the internet works. That there are internet ethics and etiquette that internet users have globally set. I didn’t see him (or any other news channel for that matter) asking questions like..
a) If the profile “Angel” was fake, why is he/she/they still on Orkut pleading innocence? Wouldn’t “they” be scrambling to clear all evidence leading upto them?
b) Is it right to blame the social network revolution itself because a victim happened to have a virtual profile?
c) What can be done inside the purview of the Indian IT act to provide protection to an Indian internet user?
c) Why in the hell was a 16 yr old driving a car???
News channels are still showing flashes of the profile pages of the victim and the “charged.” Will an average paranoid Indian parent now be cool with his/her accessing Orkut? Guess not.
We don’t have the time to know the facts let alone coming up with solutions. So, we let media fill up our brains with biased opinions and lopsided arguments. We are all better off listening to a bearded guy sitting intelligently behind a desk with a laptop in front of him, telling us we should lose all this technology and going back to stone age.
The actual question is – are we letting media make up our minds for us? I’m not asking you to buy my argument. I’m asking you to think about it.
A 16 year old Adnan Patrawala was kidnapped and killed. A popular news channel talking about the case said “Investigation has revealed that the murderers who were BPO employees had befriended Adnan even before he started to speak to the profile by the name “Angel” on Orkut. Now…. for a special focus on Orkut…. Should Orkut be banned?” WTF! The same reporter who suggested that the murder was planned in the real world as opposed to the virtual is now wondering if Orkut should be banned! A result of that wondering? – “yes, of course! Internet is full of scum, it should be banned.”
And the worst part is, this guy who made this easy decision for us doesn’t know s*** about how the internet works. That there are internet ethics and etiquette that internet users have globally set. I didn’t see him (or any other news channel for that matter) asking questions like..
a) If the profile “Angel” was fake, why is he/she/they still on Orkut pleading innocence? Wouldn’t “they” be scrambling to clear all evidence leading upto them?
b) Is it right to blame the social network revolution itself because a victim happened to have a virtual profile?
c) What can be done inside the purview of the Indian IT act to provide protection to an Indian internet user?
c) Why in the hell was a 16 yr old driving a car???
News channels are still showing flashes of the profile pages of the victim and the “charged.” Will an average paranoid Indian parent now be cool with his/her accessing Orkut? Guess not.
We don’t have the time to know the facts let alone coming up with solutions. So, we let media fill up our brains with biased opinions and lopsided arguments. We are all better off listening to a bearded guy sitting intelligently behind a desk with a laptop in front of him, telling us we should lose all this technology and going back to stone age.
The actual question is – are we letting media make up our minds for us? I’m not asking you to buy my argument. I’m asking you to think about it.
“If Barkha says so… it must be right. Yep! I’ll buy her opinion.... since, I don’t have my own”
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