Social media: Where there’s muck, there’s brass

Imagine becoming an internet sensation overnight after a video that you uploaded to YouTube on a romantic song, making ‘obscene’ gestures, goes viral. The video is of four girls who in a Musically video are seen doing gestures on the romantic song Tera Ghata by Gajendra Verma. Inherently so, the internet shot the four girls to fame even though the gestures defeated the very essence of the heart-wrenching song.

Another such instance is of a video which was uploaded three years ago but became the ‘millennial anthem of the year’ only last year. Such is the story of Omprakash Mishra’s rap song Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya. Mishra’s cringe worthy song about a boy who wants to have coitus with an aunty who refuses to ‘give in’ has over 60 lakh

hits.

In India, social media has crowned meme makers and even trollers and abusers. Rarely would you find a foulmouthed Facebook user without less than a thousand friends and administrating a page.

Indubitably, social media has become a platform that can catapult people to levels of fame they’d otherwise never reach.

The recent dance video of Sanjeev Shrivastava on Govinda’s hit song or the killer wink of actress Priya Prakash Varrier are various other instances which went viral and shot both of them to fame in no time.

It’s an altogether different question whether the content in social media is entertainment-worthy but it is an imperative question to ask whether in this race to fame, have we broken all the conventional norms of entertainment and relegated content to play second-fiddle.

Like salt on wounds, who can forget the Dhinchak Pooja videos? The memories are still afresh.

The millennial generation has proved that to go viral, content need not be the king anymore.

Orissa POST interacted with some city-based social media users, YouTubers and content makers to know their views on this changing form of entertainment.

Talking about the recent video Musically video featuring four girls, making inappropriate gestures on the Tera Ghata song, Sidharth Goutam, a content maker in YouTube whose Chup received rave reviews, said, “It’s okay as long as YouTube approves.” Goutam took the video in a “sporty manner” and added, “If you decry their (four girls’) video, then why should you have a different yardstick for Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya, that also does have sexual innuendos.” He lamented that content is no more the king, saying, “It takes ours of brainstorming to write a script or a song but when I see cringeworthy songs registering more than a million hits in less than 24 hours, its heart-rending for me.”

Dipanwit Dashmohapatra, an actor, blamed the consumers of such videos sans content for “dampening the very spirit of art.” “Who is the real culprit for their attainment of fame? Its people like us who are readily attracted towards content like these,” he said. Dashmohapatra rued that the present form of entertainment has been marred by “insensibility and dumbness.” However, she added that it zeroes down to our personal choices and tastes. “YouTube has videos of Sadhguru, or of bands like The Chainsmokers and it also has videos like Chai Pilo (chuckles), it’s your internet data and so it’s you deciding what to watch,” she said.

Stand-up comedian Roshan Bisoi opined that the millennial generation is no longer looking for sophisticated content on the internet as entertainment. “Your content either has to be abstract or ruined with plethora of mediocrity, the point is it has to be abstract to the last comma,” he said. Bisoi thanked social media exclaiming, “I owe social media a lot. It’s a gift for me.”

For someone like Kalkee Krushna, a web anchor, social media has been plagued after the “floodgates of crappy contents” were opened.  “To remain socially alive, people are putting up nonsensical contents everywhere, even spamming,” she bemoaned. She urged that the internet users should comprehend and be able distinct between “crap and beauty.”

Web series maker Jayanta Rout opined that in this technological world, there is a thin line that separates fame and obscurity. “Fame is short-lived, transient and doesn’t necessitate good content to achieve it whereas if you have content as the king, you won’t be a short-lived memory,” he said.

For comedian Akash Baghar, there’s a “Chinese wall dividing vulgarity and obscenity”. Baghar, referring to the four girls’ video on Tera Ghata song, said, “What they did was vulgar not obscene. Society is conveniently okay with Bhuvan Bam using the choicest of Hindi words to make videos but can’t handle a few girls’ gestures,” he added.

Some videos that grabbed the eyeballs—

1. Priya Prakash Varrier, also known as the killer wink girl took the internet by storm in video of a Malayalam song ‘Oru Adaar Love’ that went viral. The video that was released on the internet during the Valentine’s Week, had her become the countrywide crush.
2. Dancing Uncle AKA Sanjeev Shrivastava went viral for shaking a leg to a Govinda song at a wedding along with his wife. His video of dancing to ‘May se Meena se na Saaaqi se’ from movie ‘Khudgarz’ starring Govinda and Neelam is one hilarious package. Shrivastava is a professor in a private engineering institute in Bhopal and a huge fan of Govinda.
3. Imagine your morning chai turning into an irritating viral sensation. The ‘Chai Pi Lo’ videos have been doing rounds across social media and its creator Somvati Mahawar has become an overnight wonder.
4. Dhinchak Pooja, the cringe pop queen is best known for her song ‘Selfie Maine Le Li Aaj’. Despite the hatred for her vocals, Pooja has been applauded for her confidence and content that hits the viral notes. The internet star had her fame leading to the controversial TV reality show Big Boss Season 11 and Entertainment Ki Raat. She has over a million followers on her YouTube channel.
5. A rap song called Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya had been released on YouTube by singer Omprakash Mishra. The song went viral and an event on Facebook was called for people to meet at Connaught Place, New Delhi, and shout Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya. It was supposed to be sarcastic. But 100 people turned up, and when they started chanting and walking around Connaught Place, other people joined them and the numbers increased to 500.
6. Imagine a middle-aged man dressed up in a towel, talking seductively about random objects. The content created by Deepak Kalal is asinine but has quite the humour needed to go viral. Kalal is from Pune, Maharashtra who has gained fame in Kashmir with his videos.
7. Vennu Mallesh is a pop singer whose song ‘It’s My Life What Ever I Wanna Do’ released in 2012 raised brows across the internet. His video has more than 15 million views. You might want to listen for yourself to believe the sarcasm hidden between the lines.

Arindam Ganguly,OP