Monday, November 29, 2010

Ajith Emmanuel and 250 million others like this

INT. Phoenix Club - Night

Sean Parker (to Mark Zuckerberg)

A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie but he's too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. He comes up with an idea. One that doesn't make you feel like a pervert. He gets a $40,000 bank loan, borrows another $40,000 from his in-laws, opens a store, and calls it Victoria's Secret.


I have just come home after watching The Social Network. The first thing I did was, not so surprisingly, log on to The Social Network. And I feel something different this time. The movie has implanted a weird feeling in my mind. And it’s growing fast. Faster than the customer base of the world’s most used brand. facebook.

Maybe the fact that it's a product is what causing the weird feeling. While I have been happily connecting with my friends and strangers, hunting for mates and being hunted by enemies,sharing, chatting and commenting, what I haven’t realized all this time was that I was being used. Exploited. I am just another ‘number’ for Zuckerberg that gets added to his customer base and brings in more ads. At least that’s how he looks up on me, as a Facebook user. Someone is acting smart out there, making money every time I log on. It feels like he's giggling. And I really don't like it.

A product of a product of Harvard. A product that doesn’t advertise and beckon with a board that reads ‘use me again’. But still entangles me all the time I am in front of a computer. And then follows me wherever computers can’t reach, through my mobile. It’s not that I can’t leave it. It just won’t leave me.

Wait! Is it all just cooked up misery?. Of a once-aspiring IIMtian, subconsciously working out an ego, after seeing an undergraduate of Harvard making money out of him? Or the inborn expertise of an Indian to find false, like a needle from haystack, especially about a white during anti-american times? Or is it a good-for-nothing 26 year old unashamedely feeling jealous about the world's youngest billionaire who happened to be of the same age? Whatever, it was fun watching a bunch of Harvards talking nonsense and business on the screen than reading three idiots having fun on the pages of Chetan Bhagat's.

Ok! It’s late. Let me stop and check who’s online on the $30 billion website. It’s 3.00 am.

2 comments:

  1. Wow. loved this piece. I haven't watched the movie. But I so get the feel of what you've tried to say. Nobody wants to feel used. Post this piece on the social network ajit. And for all you know, you might be the one to put the 26-year old billionaire at loss! Sounds like a plan? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. the winklevoss brothers, 6 ft 2 inch, 220 pounds, 2 of them, graduates from Harvard, born to a filthy rich family cudn't put the 26 year ol billionaire at loss. Ur idea doesn't sound like a good plan.

    ReplyDelete