If you have a Twitter account and have the habit of checking it regularly, you would have experienced seeing trending topics on the likes of #23YearsOfAjithism, #Celebrating3YearsofVelayudham, #MasssSuriyaBiggestHeroInSouthIndia. The names of actors & even the context of such crazy hashtags would change based on the trending geography you have chosen to see. When you attempt to analyse the very source of such trends, you will get to see some fanatics having a concrete plan to make these work! They create groups and accounts, which will decide and propagate the exact ‘Hashtag’ that the fans are instructed to make a trend of. If whoever at Twitter had worked on the idea of ‘Trending’ gets to see this, he would shut himself in a room and cry! Because, this beats the very purpose of trending. Trending is a tool that enables you to find what people are talking about, without the individuals knowing many others around them are talking about it. It is a sort of unraveling the magic that technology can demonstrate, if you look at it as a concept. Sadly, such topics that form by themselves get thrown out of top trends when these planned hashtag activities take over.
Now that I have digressed all I can from the heading, let me head straight to what connects the topic with this trending travesty! It is the fact that the trending doesn’t stop with those fans who are not challenged with anything more worthwhile than doing that sort of an exercise. The state of affairs of web journalism makes journalists propagate these for the sake of their own publicity as well as to appease to this specific set of probable derelicts who go to the extent of abusing the very journalists if they fail to mention one of these hashtags on their hero’s special day. Definition of these ‘Special days’ is broad. It could range from the star’s birthday to the 50th day of release of his recent film or milestones as insignificant as the 17th year of release of a senseless film of the actor that bombed big time.
It is fine if the buck stops there. It doesn’t.
I see the senselessness behind this. The owners & strategists of some such websites see the opportunities behind cashing in on the arguably ridiculous hash tagging through creating content that could be linked with these tags and be presented as special articles that would help them garner the hits and rake in advertisers’ money! Consumers passionate about cinema who would want to filter these distractions away are now compelled to do more work to find topics of substance, which get hidden in the sea of needless posts.
If fan induced posts are one thing, the other trend commonly seen are posts that carry headlines which fall under the more popular category of ‘Click-Baiting’ – a term that has become popular only recently. However, the concept has been a quite popular strategy with the lowly magazines. Remember Vivekh’s yesteryear dig at one such headline involving Paal Kozhukattai and Kozhukh Mozhukh nadigai Kumudashree?! Web journalism too seems to have fallen for it as such topics are seen on a frequent basis in even the most popular and reputed websites (International, Indian and Local). As an example, a simple news item carrying information on how Mani Ratnam and Vijay were seen attending a public function could be seen to be titled: “Ilayathalapathy and the Thalapathy Maker Meet”. Whoever clicks on it with the hope to see details on a probable collaboration between the two will have to be prepared to conceal the egg on the face expression and the urge to splutter words from their mouth upon reading the news item.
The two points mentioned above are worrying journalism trends that a journalist may have no say on. It is, perhaps, the evolution of journalism. It is after all, a company decision, made under the compulsion of investors backing its owners! We live in the times where bait websites like ScoopWhoop are showered with all the funding in the world!
But there is also a third item in my view that is worrisome; an item which definitely has a corrective course of action in sight. The item is this – The attempts of some journalists towards trying to build their presence in the social media world through means that cross what one would see as the norm.
Apart from the normal activities of breaking cine news, providing early-bird reviews, coming up with interesting and insightful analyses, interviews, sneak peeks etc. that have earned them their meaningful following, their attempt to build the base through certain other means, at times, backfires. They are caught unawares playing party to ugly fan wars some times unknowingly and some times, not so, igniting the already jobless folks who make up the majority in terms of number of followers (That explains why they trend stuff in a flash too!). This is one activity, which they have control over and it would be nice to see the few who indulge in these, limit themselves from doing these activities – For the benefit of the passionate cinema fans as well as for that of the jobless fanatic lot. Think of such an utopian scenario where nobody appeases to them and is least concerned about their efforts to trend something senseless, they will hopefully be motivated to take up something more challenging than the trending travesty. So please, think twice before mentioning the dialogue that Simbu cites towards Ajith in a film that you are watching; a song of Vijay that gets played 3 times in the movie’s background; And please do not contribute to the mess that is #XYearsofYMovie, #ZYearsOfActorism and the likes. That would definitely mean dearth of ideas and Regression of Cinema journalism; Not its evolution.
Column written by Sivaram.L
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