The Internet of Things

For some time I have been struggling for content to write my blog and as might be evident from the numerous blogs I have NOT posted recently that I struggled in vain. I was wondering whether it was that my life had become seriously dull or seriously hectic,although neither was the case I could not understand what was the reason. Then it all came to me as I spent all of last week looking through pictures from the MET Gala event.

I don’t think I need to tell anyone, who does not live under a rock what this major event is. It is flooded all over social media and with some of our desi superstars rocking the international A class red carpet, the pictures and also the memes are everywhere. So, I was in my bed with my phone with its cracked screen looking at all the over -the-top, beautiful clothes worn by even more beautiful people. I started with who all celebrities attended, moved on to their outfits then to the designers of the outfits, followed by their interviews about the outfits, ended up watching YouTube videos on how they got ready for the event followed with what all they did to FIT into their outfits which ironically were being custom made for them. But a plebeian like me cannot possibly understand what it means for these celebrities to shine under the spotlight and I will not even try to attempt it.

After consuming so much of absolute nonsense content about an event that I have no need to have so much information about I realized that this was the reason that I have no interesting or even, not- so-interesting thoughts of my own. My brain did not have any time left after processing all the mindless information that I partake in my free time through my smart phone in my daily life. Celebrities promoting their movies, Modi promoting his politics, makeup videos for looks I will never create in this lifetime or any other, cookery videos of food, which I will never cook. Even looking at pictures of Taimur takes up some portion of my day, who honestly has done nothing to make content except be unbearably cute, but who can fault that. I noticed, it’s not just me its everyone, even my husband late at night in bed, after a hard day at work mindlessly scrolling through endless 15 second videos of random people doing random things in the name of ingenuity even risking their lives for the sake of it from what I read.

The easy accessibility of so much digital content in our palms has made it extremely difficult to judge how much is too much and when does it all start interfering with our cognitive functionalities. Do we need so much content thrown at us, which is so weirdly addictive that we end up in the black hole of the Internet not knowing what really sparked it all? I read somewhere that sitting is the new smoking and social media is the new sitting. Now, I wonder should I throw my cracked screen phone and replace it with a landline just so I am able to travel from point A to point B with my head held high and not craning my neck into my phone. Or maybe I should just get over my rant and wait for the upcoming Cannes pictures to flood the Internet and continue living my life in limbo and crib about how I am getting old and fat because…why not!