They don’t act like Gods!

Xpre$$!ons...

He waved his hands standing in the balcony at his Mumbai residence and fans gathered like devotees to get one view of his. It was when Mumbai was called Bombay, during my visit I was told by the guide that every Sunday at dusk, Amitabh Bachchan stood at his balcony to give ‘darshan’ to his ‘devotees’. Such crazy fans I wondered. Earlier it was difficult to even get a glance of big stars. Today every celebrity maintains a personal blog keeping it open for comments. In simple words, now they don’t act like Gods!

Most of the celebrities are tweeting through twitter.com. Wherever on earth they are they make sure to pen down messages for their followers.

In fact even the media has been getting entertainment news through these blogs. Coming back to Mr Bachchan again, when he wrote on his blog that his house ‘Prateeksha’ was also affected due to heavy rains, who also helped few women on the road giving them a lift while shifting to ‘Jalsa’— this did become a story.

It is surprising though, Mallika Sherawat has been followed by 7606 people— these figures are highest even compared to Priyanka Chopra’s profile onTwitter. Mallika recently found tweeting useful as she was away to Los Angeles posting messages on her experiences in Hollywood.

While Mallika was left alone by media, Priyanka’s eye infection became news the day she posted it. Priyanka writes, “Distressed today… have a mad red eye! It sucks…,”.And there it became big news that the former Miss World had eye infection. I thought it was silly!

These Bollywood divas aren’t the only ones being followed on Twitter. Shashi Tharoor has more than 16,000 followers on Twitter beating the Bollywood queens; this does not surprise me though. Nevertheless entertainers grab all the attention and boast of having many fans in their admirers list, today’s young politicians have changed the meaning of being called a ’star’. Apart from Indian celebrities, it is Barack Obama who is using Twitter, having more than 1, 75,000 followers.

Social Networking or Confession rooms?

Xpre$$!ons...

In the times when Doordarshan was called the ‘idiot box’, it had many dedicated viewers. It discouraged out goers from what they once used to do -go out for whatever reason. Thereafter, the idiot box became more advanced. Then came the cable channels which made the same viewers even more idiotic. But there still existed some quality face to face rendezvous and outdoors. Until the ‘internet mania’ drove everybody crazy. It changed lifestyles. I am talking about Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and Bebo.

What are we talking about? Checking out what friends are up to in their lives or hooking on to the net for ‘abnormal hours’? It is this addiction that has locked our teenagers indoors. Lets face it…we all have been hearing tantrums in the families on how kids get glued to their chairs in front of their computers. A recent study conducted by a British Scientist reveals that long hours on the net may harm the brains of young people. So, are we ready to risk our health for it?

Social Networking sites can also be called ‘confession rooms’. Very recently, I was told by my friend how a teenager wrote against his mother on Facebook, as he was frustrated of her bad temper at home. Unfortunately, she also happened to be a member on Face book- she was pretty famous! Her reaction could become another confession though.

If mothers can earn such comments then what are we talking about? This reminds me of another such case my aunt narrated to me. A school teacher’s mobile number was published on Facebook writing, ‘I am available tonight’ by students who were fed up of her. I don’t have to write her reactions here, undoubtedly she must have got ‘ugly calls’ in the nights forcing her to change her number. Looks like the confession rooms also announce their verdict! One does not stop it by confessing, either the confession brings shame to the person or it concludes with a dangerous punishment- like that of the teacher’s.

The problem here is, we don’t know where to draw a line and the solution is, just a simple ‘logging off’ before we get addicted to it.