Death of Facebook??

It seems to be the trend these days to be cynical, jealous of anybody else’s’ success, specifically the wildly monetary types. To get a flavor of it, read up a little bit on Facebook IPO and Zuckerberg’s trashing by most of the analysts and puritans. Being a billionaire at the age of 27, does have its travails.

However I am intrigued by some bits and piece of Facebook am not in favor or against FB, however after the Instagram deal, I am a bit skeptical of the utility and not to mention longevity of web applications. I believe my relative lack of success in enchasing out of the web cash machine may also color my thoughts.

The basic premise for success of FB is the primeval emotions of humans - to boast and the opposing sentiment of prying. FB offers by far and large the most subtle and effective way to do so.

Think about it.

When you upload a photograph of you standing by the statue of liberty, you are in the most subtle way boasting “hey guys, I made it to the land of opportunity, what do you say about it”.(The statue of liberty and US is the top of the mind recall I have, but the same would work for a new car, my wedding, honeymoon, new house blah blah blah…) !!).

When I click on that photo of yours and stare at it for a couple of seconds thinking” Hey he made it big, what the heck am I doing” and then you close the window.

But the sentiment lingers.

The primeval human emotion of boasting and demonstrating dominance urges you to reciprocate.You await the opportunity consciously or sub-consciously to demonstrate the same. Hence the next time you go somewhere, buy something or do something that is a bit non-conformal, you immediately want to tell the world about it, but actually it is your way of getting even the person who has gone to post his photograph against the statue of liberty.

If you really look at the above sequence, there are two actions at dynamic play. 

First is the act of boasting as a method to demonstrate superiority. And the second is the corresponding and the counter act of commenting, liking etc as a method to acknowledge your candidature for superiority.

And why do you need to demonstrate superiority?? A gentle prod to your grey cells will reveal the answer – it is for the purpose of mating, so I guess Freud was right.

Also you would observe there is a dilution in the act of sharing as a modus operand to boast which in turn is kind of aimed at demonstrating superiority. 

The more I try to get even against the statue of liberty photo, the more activities I need to tell the world about. So it comes down to updating status on the go as”in a move hall “ enjoying at ABCD place with XYZ team blah blah"

So you see, deep down inside we are all the same. 

Earlier we used to fight man-to-man to demonstrate superiority, now we do it on FB. 

We have evolved, we have become more civilized but deep down we are all type A as or as the advertisement for some cologne goes” deep down we are all a Bit of Alpha”

But in all this gyaan you would be wondering where is the part of FB dying …… All I see is more reason for it to succeed???!!

Simply because after sometime I actually do not give a damm about you or your life, as I move on with my life, my family, my job, I really do not give a rat’s fart of what the other guy/gal is doing.

As an example, just rewind a couple of years back when you were hunting for livelihood, all you could think of where do I get placed and what is my package and the same was a topic of discussion everywhere within your social circle.

Now after two years of earning your livelihood, you really don’t care of money and where you are working. For people who switch jobs, hike over existing pay is just one reason to mentally convince themselves, for I have seen a majority of cases where people have turned down the same level of hikes offered at their existing organization.

Hence there is no real reason to boast , unless of course you want to tell the world about your kid coming first in dance class(well that is another area of thought …and another post….for another time!!)

Also FB has managed to get a bit of Google pie by creating applications and web-pages for organizations and service providers. So FB will not really die with rigor mortis, but rather end up in a coma state.

PS – I am posting the link here in FB only. So if were to lend credence to my above post, the reason for doing so would be to boast ….about my limited intellectual/literary talents…in the feeble hopes of alluring a like minded female to sit up and take notice….so there is a chance of having Coitus…. :) :) :) 

Alas there are holes in all theories, and there are assumptions in all hypotheses, no statistical test is 100% accurate and the above blog entry is no exception. Sometime the primary reason to share …is to make aware......to elicit a smile…to make someone happy….with really no ulterior motive….

Well just sometimes !!!!!!!!!

I Too Had a Dream....

The title is borrowed from an inspiring read by Gouri Salvi, on the life and times of Dr. Verghese Kurian of the milk revolution fame in India.The remaining lines are a mix of reality and some philosophical mish mash.If you are reading this, I am guessing you just woke up and are not really very awake to realize that it is afternoon and hunger time.I however remain true to Maslowian needs of primary desire for food and security...I am off for finding grub...:)

I Too Had a Dream

I too …..Had a dream….

I dreamt of ….doing good….

I dreamt of ……learning nice….

I dreamt of a life….. Not with a lot of strife….

Instead…I end up with conversations of the “quarter”…that no longer remind me of amber…

Hell…just of lot of fire and ember….

There is a lot of smoke…..With no sight of any screen…… or a window…

I stumble around …ending up with lot of body blows….….trying to find edges in a round room…

I too had a dream….

Maybe all this is just a phase….

Maybe I should get some loans…that would ease the pain…

Maybe…EMIs would inspire confidence…and remind of the net gain….

Maybe a weekend with a lot of females….

Might just....give a tiny bit of solace….

Then I realize…it is all just a dream….

And dreams are good to have….

But on a….. weekend mid morning….

Cornflakes and oats…really don’t suffice… :)



One of my friends had taken the trouble to read through the above and fill in her own thoughts in continuation.
I reproduce them below as I find it ...well relevant and nice :) 


""And when you have....... so many dreams.....within your heart...
They will be loud enough........ to be heard from the skies.....
Though you would feel that..... you are waiting...and just dreaming...
Your dreams.... are taking the time to travel from the heavens...
They come .....wrapped in colorful clouds..
With a signature.."Thanks for waiting my my dear son"...
With Love ......Your own GOD ""

The File Movement Theory

For the past week I had to do a lot of running around to get something’s fixed, specifically for extracting a huge payment for bharat sarkaar. Now this is not really easy, for you have to deal with everybody from the ICS to the IPS. (For the un-informed ICS is Indian Corridor Service, for which there is no formal selection but nonetheless it is as lucrative and in some cases more powerful than the IAS!!).

Now this thing which I am after is still not fixed but the experience has been illuminating.

It is very lucrative to work in an engineering setup dealing with a government R& D organization, the reason being that there is absolutely no downside rather the risk of not getting paid. Once you have an order in hand in paper, you have to complete it and the sarkaar has to pay for it irrespective of whether both want it that way.

Secondly government defense R& D organizations typically don’t know what they want. Scientists often need prototypes for testing their ideas and ideas well they keep on changing. In this particular case the idea changed so many times that the original thought and the final output had not quite in common.

So something that should have been completed in September has been done just now. And once execution is done, operations, engineering & quality are all happy to dump it on sales for the purpose of closure (Read getting paid)

So off I was summoned to move the file between various departments and push it to the final guy. Aha, once I went inside the place I saw that there are links everywhere. I realized that the top guy there and the top guy in my organization have had unofficial dealings. None of my concern, but the top guy can’t do much until the details come to him and if he starts pulling the details for one specific firm his authority within the chain is questionable. Hence you need a fixer at the bottom and mid management level, or someone like me. Now these levels are also not fools and hence the natural justification for the prevalence of the sentiment so if the top guy is getting “taken care” of why not me??

Well I will get to the “taken care” part in a bit.

Ok, so the first day was spent figuring out what needs to be done. Engineering had to clear it to stores and then from stores it has to go to accounts. Simple flow really, but then things go missing. In engineering the senior scientists had no patience for hustlers like me, but they are polite enough to not be up front. Well, I can take a clue so I fixed his PA and day 1 was spent tracing files that needed autographs.

Day 2 was spent in tracing materials delivered to the place. I all 5 feet 10 inches and by no measure un-educated, physically opened all the boxes we had sent and did a one to one verification for the satisfaction of our inspection authority. In short I did their work after requesting them to let me do it. Sweet heavens I event made a spreadsheet for them using their system while they took a tea break (justifiable after all the back breaking work of inspection)

Now while I was making this spread sheet I needed some details from our materials team. Mobiles are not allowed inside so I called from their land line and after some discussion I realized that there is some confusion. Seems some items were delivered and then taken back for re-work. In all there was some 30% of value which could potentially not be cleared.

I could not take a call on this and hence I left it at that. I came back and gave all the details to my team and left them over the weekend to deal with it. (Don’t know what will happen on Monday though!!)

All this running around made me very tired. However in terms of real work I had not actually done much. I thought maybe age was eating up on me but I couldn’t accept this reasoning.

A little bit of thought later I realized one thing; it wasn’t really the work that made me tired. It was rather the motivation of not working made the tiredness very apparent. I worked very hard in my B-School, I did everything possible I could do to learn and I pushed myself hard. I believed if this couldn’t burn me then nothing could. But as I realized now and also an interesting post (Click here) that it is not the work load that makes you tired. It is the absence of motivation to do work that makes it tiring or unapproachable. It is the same thing that makes you learn a lot a day prior to an exam than a month prior to it.

And see how the cookie crumbles from there on.

For all the education learning I have had I was no better than the hustlers outside the passport office or the DDA. They also push files I did the same. But did I really need a master for that?

I found myself questioning the relevance of education in the professional world and the logical outcome was not very encouraging. Yes, you need education, because only after you are educated you realize the futility of all it. Or as they say when you do a doctoral study (P,hD) that the more you learn the more you realize that how less you really know about how stuff works.

Why this Kolaveri di?

I gave in to the hype. I listened to the much idiotic and nonsensical song on Youtube.

And now every time I am humming that irritating yet catchy tune.

Is it marketing genius or just another occurrence of the Black Swan?(random events are not just relegated to the domain of financial markets are they?!)

I believe it is the Black Swan, although the song and the presentation do adhere to some good practices of selling. The reason it has gone viral is because of some bullet points I could list down, thanks to the Friday night alcohol induced stupor of my roommates and all:-

1. It is region unspecific: - a Madrasi singing in English with the background music adhering to a bit of both north Indian dhols and south Indian variety of dhinka chika. A Punjabi gyrating to it in a barat as well as a Madrasi dancing to it in a drunken stupor is possible. Run the above two settings in your head, you would find it believable, not really outlandish.

2. Expression:-Crying about heartbreak sells, because Indians are sentimental fools. Of course we all remember the song “tum itna jo muskura rahe ho”. As my friend puts it, it is very soulful, as the song comes in the movie at a time when our lead is absolutely down and out. Humans find it easy to associate over misery, failure and heartbreak rather than the counterparts of these emotions.I am not in any way drawing a parallel to this superficial kolaveri and the soulful ghazal.I am merely highlighting that they both share a common underlying emotion of heartbreak.

3. Simplicity (KISS) Principle:- these are the kind of words which all use under the influence of ethyl alcohol, irrespective of the grade of alcohol or the crowd. Talks of first love, crushes, heartbreaks, and repeated reminders of friendship are common across all alcohol induced settings. And a funny thing about drunken talking is the marked penchant for the use of the Queen’s language. Good presentation practices underlie the principle of KISS(Keep it simple silly).One slide should give you one point , 3 points should build on one insight discovery, and two insight will give you a conclusion. Same is the case with a Kolaveri – I see a girl, she doesn’t see me, I drink and let it all go. Period. No talk about romance, wooing and dancing under the trees.

So there you go. In the field of commercial cinema, some basic principles for success are KISS, bridge to the north and south divide using an appropriate plank such as heartbreak, true love or bash the bad guys and superficial rather than soulful presentation.

PS – As  I came to the end of this post, a thought hit me. Is this blog post adhering to basic principle outlined above? Ding Dong !! I would rather let that thought hang on.