The rush to create a personal brand online is leading us to define ourselves in black and white.  The internet has given us so many places to voice our opinion that often we have the means but no opinion and force ourselves to have one.

Are you with Kolaveri or are you against it? Do you think that was a flashmob or not?

Slot. Slot. Slot.

Clearly you can’t say you’re a musician and then go on twitter and not have an opinion on every piece of music being shared. You may not even have an opinion on A R Rahman’s new piece but to build your brand, you must.

God forbid you have mixed feelings about anything. God forbid that you should want to comment on a post without sounding like an extremist. With 140 character profile descriptions and your life laid bare online, there is an urgent need need to define your brand.

Comments, likes, posts, tweets and status updates seduce you into giving an opinion. Any opinion. And Quickly.

No wonder then that all you see online on forums, sites, social networks are angry, pissed-off people who either rush to embrace the next new thing or shred to pieces anything that they don’t instantly love.

Read this disrespectful comment on someone’s post – ‘You are either joking or your ideological-obsessiveness has made you stupid.’  Or just look at the unprovoked nasty messages Chetan Bhagat gets on twitter.

And it doesn’t matter that the extremists have no real reason for hating anything.

Why? Because online you either love it or you hate it. There is no in between. No one wants to engage with a moderate voice.

Moderation makes not a good brand, I suppose.

During my research at MICA on the 1984 Sikh riots, the most obvious property of a crowd kept popping up. The fact that crowds amplify sentiments. It’s only natural after all.

If one wants to be a part of the crowd or be heard in one, you have to be more extreme than them all. 

The result is that your group turns into a group of extremists, really. All raging to out-do the other and yet show loyalty to the group’s thought and cause.

The online world isn’t much different if you ask me. These rules of the crowd apply just as much.

People tend to react in extremes in the online world. They either love you or they hate you. This may be common in today’s world but it’s accentuated by the fact that online you’re competing for popularity, page views, subscribers, followers with only your words to stand for you. And since CAPS is considered bad manners, you’ve only got biting words at your disposal.

A dislike for a brand’s campaign can suddenly spiral into a I-hate-brand-X campaign with bloggers sporting buttons and hacking you down on twitter. After all, the stronger my point of view, the more peopel are bound to take me seriously. Plus the stronger my words, the more likely you are to read on.

Reacting vs Responding

With such little time left for reflection

with 20 tweets a minute

with 10 feeds updates an hour

you really have such little time to process information you read. And the constant need to be a part of the conversation and be one with th group means we’re all often reacting rather than responding.  (Amazon Fail)

Notice the sudden outrage at the Amazon story #AmazonFail

This is especially worrisome if you agree that  ”If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states” (Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values, scientists warn)

This reaction is often exaggerated by social media socialites and turns outrage into a true blue e-riot.

Show-you-your-place syndrome

Now this is where the power gets to your head. The 66 odd subscribers I have and how I can use them to show this person/company/brand that I can ‘screw their happiness’.

Outrage is more justice seeking and serves as a good warning (in my humble opinion). While the second one is plain vindictive.

Coke did this campaign with bloggers some time back where they asked them

 to give some of their home page to their new brand i9. In return they sent

 them a cool usb-fridge. To say thank you ofcourse.

Now outrage would be saying coke shouldn’t have done this. why buy bloggers off. unfair. boo.

But what really happened is plain vindictive -

Bloggers who were not a aprt of the campaign starting trashing coke left right and centre. Perhaps they were jealous. Perhaps they hated the idea of bloggers being bought. But then they weren’t being bought, right? so why all the fuss?

Khyati showed me a site that runs a contest for the best short story. The only catch is that the story needs to be really short. 140 characters to be precise. A typical SMS limit.

My first thought was that it’s interesting, but I wondered if it would be any good.

So I visited their winners page and am now eating my words

Sample this!

‘The baby’s fine,’ the midwife says, touching her hand. ‘Bit of a scare there, but he’s a little fighter. Have you decided on a name yet, Mrs Hitler?’

‘I love you,’ she says just before he places the pillow over her face and presses down, hard. As her cancer-gaunt body stills, he feels his heart break.

‘Aren’t you the musical one son’ said Dad. ‘Don’t know where you get it from.’ Mum’s blush rose as the postman passed the window, whistling tunefully.

‘I’m home’ I yelled, entering the house. No response. In the kitchen my wife sobbed and hugged our son. ‘Daddy’s dead’ she whispered, looking through me.

Visit the site for more.

I propose a short story contest on my blog. Lemme invite a judge. Who knows, there may be prizes

1. Doctors

I think doctors are great and they know a lot. But then they can’t know more than google right?

Anyway, point being, the internet allows us to figure out what’s wrong with us and what to do about it. It doesn’t replace doctors of course. But imagine having to deal with a patient who tells you to check for so and so complication because Maria in Brazil suffered from it last year .. so says google.

So I won’t blame the doctors if they hate the internet and the free and perhaps inaccurate medical advice it brings.

2. Teachers

I remember telling a professor at MICA that now that the internet rules our lives, we no longer need teachers. Err.. after all we can learn from the web, right?

Sure the internet lets teachers access amazing study material from across the world. But it also lets students know more about stuff than their teachers. Imagine telling a class about Shakespeare for the first time and having a kid quote Macbeth to you off the net.

I think the internet is forcing teachers to evolve. They can no longer be information gatherers.

3. Quizzers

I’m no quizzer. I never have been. I find it impossible to retain information and I lost the only quiz I ever participated in. I remember my partner giving me the stink-eye after I passed every question. (Sorry little boy who had to team up with me. You were good but so was I. They just didn’t ask the right questions!)

Anyway, I think that the internet takes away from quizzing too. While it’s a wonder that someone knows the names of so many of the capitals of the world, I think it was a bigger wonder that the person put it all together. Google surely takes away from that. No?

4. Match makers

I am told that earlier every village had a match maker. A man who was often a postman or a barber, would know the inside scoop on families. He would help out in suggesting matches. The internet sure did him in.

5.___________ So while I’d have loved this post to be about 5 I couldn’t think of anything. So help me out a little

Kunal says it’s the postman. Poor chap can’t even ask for bakshish anymore