Skip to main content

Triumph of the Trivia

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.” Ray Bradbury


Half a century ago, Andy Warhol predicted that “In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” His prediction came true partially when the TV channels multiplied and programmes such as reality shows thrust fame on a whole lot of people who would have otherwise remained in total obscurity. Later the internet and the social networks extended similar fame to anyone who wished to achieve such fame.

The latest topic of debate at Indiblogger [a blogger community] is whether quite many bloggers are “idiots”. Blogger Arvind Passey initiated the debate and his phraseology is not quite felicitous. Let me quote the motion of the debate as stated by him: “Most book, tech, lifestyle, food, and fashion reviewers and influencers, reviewers, and bloggers are idiots who hardly understand what they are doing. Do you agree? #OnlineWriting

It’s a very daring question particularly given the fact that it is raised at a blogger community by a fellow blogger. The question had risen in my mind many times though I would never have dared to state it so bluntly in public.

My understanding is that popularisation of anything tends to trivialise it. For example, blogging popularised writing and at once trivialised it. Anyone who could put words together became a writer. Pathetically prosaic lines passed off as poetry that won public accolade. Books with neither substance nor style became best sellers at E outlet stores albeit for a few days. Which reminds us of Andy Warhol’s 15 minute-fame.

Quite many of these popular bloggers achieve success through the cliques they form in various ways like blogger communities or social network groups where they follow the mutual back-scratching policy. They support each other in the process of hogging the 15-minute limelight. In the process, quality is sacrificed and trivia is glorified.  

Consequently trivia has triumphed today. That is quite tragic.


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers



Comments

  1. Replies
    1. I resisted the temptation to go beyond and apply the 'view' to what's happening in the country now. See how everything from science to religion is being trivialised.

      Delete
  2. What do you have to say about personal bloggers?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are quite many very genuine bloggers most of whom belong to that category. Of course, there are also good travel bloggers, recipe bloggers and so on. But the overwhelming number of the others is rather disappointing

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Sunita Williams and Narendra Modi

An Indian artist celebrating Sunita Williams' return Prime Minister Modi has extended a cordial invitation to Sunita Williams. In a Letter dated 1 Mar 2025, Modi expressed India’s pride in her achievements and extended the invitation. “After your return, we are looking forward to seeing you in India. It will be a pleasure for India to host one of its most illustrious daughters.” Will Ms Williams accept the invitation? I have serious reservations. She won’t, in all probability. Her cousin was allegedly murdered by Modi’s men during the investigation of the 2002 Gujarat riots. The young generation in India are probably not aware of the 2002 riots in Gujarat orchestrated by Modi and his party for political mileage. In the last few years, whenever I raised the question in my classes, hardly one or two students out of the 200-odd ones were faintly aware of the riots. Inhuman violence was unleashed in Gujarat against the Muslim community after some Hindu pilgrims were attacked on...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...