Of trends and trendy

There was a Malayalam movie that was widely publicized even before it came on Netflix that it was possibly the biggest and most eagerly awaited movie of the year, having set the mollywood BO’s on fire during its theatrical release. Thallumala – meaning chain of fights (ubayam Wiki) was touted as the next big thing to come out of Mollywood, as a spoof or satirical take on present day society. I tried my best to watch the movie and despite forwarding at least a couple of dozen times, couldn’t even cross the first half and by the time the interval came, was wondering why I was watching and what has happened till that point. It was a mind numbing experience and considering Tovino Thomas whose movies are a big time favorite of mine, I was not just deeply disappointed but was almost in a comatose state wondering what in the world had I witnessed. May be the movie was layered and had lot of meta physical and symbolism that was too much for the little grey cells of mine to decipher. Every now and then, as the title promised, there is a fist cuff or a kicking expedition, with the movie going non-linear, every flashback portion is ripe with so much of fight that as a viewer you’ve to fight with your senses to make sense of a semblance of a story line. In between there is a romantic sequence, which is also dominated by fights. The core of this post is not just to praise the movie, but also on some of the concepts it depicts on screen, especially the mad rush for followers!!! You read it right. Once upon a time, say a couple of years back, such machinations were termed as cults and were seriously looked down upon, with lingering doubts about them. Nowadays, anyone with a phone and social media account is vying to boost their followers to a couple of millions minimum so that it can earn them easy money!! Wonder what influence they hold on their followers that led to the crowd in first place and what effect the sponsors for those influencers expect these people to convey on their followers!!! There is no sense of shame or any sense for that matter, with the stuff they bandy as contents, for anything under the sun is a content!! When I saw a post on Linkedin from someone who was lamenting why that person is not getting more eyeballs or followers despite posting regularly and following every method to the T, by the so called influencer lobby!!! I always have this doubt how come thala posts his comments on almost every post in this space despite being the horrifyingly mokka content that gets published here inside my mind, for the fear of losing the only commentor is much higher than running an yaarumillaa tea kadai. Unless I seendi vittufy Adivasi or an occasional visit from triple G or mister mages, this space is largely that -space 😊 And there used to be a time when blogsphere was agog with so many people commenting and reacting, doing chain posts and tag’s. Blogroll was a term I learnt in this space which is the equivalent of following people and their posts. But despite being in this glass house, I still find plenty of stones to throw at this weird group who call themselves followers of every other SM influencer!! It may so happen that unless you’ve X number of followers, you may be outcast from society in couple of years’ time!! People greeting each other could inquire about their follower count and ways to increase them akin to health check and other stuff!! I am already feeling like a dinosaur, after having signed out and uninstalled all of SM except for Linkedin. Seekrama oru nalla vela kedaichitta adhaiyum will uninstall!!! At this rate, people will have tough time in accepting that in this era and decade, someone can actually survive without posting what they had for breakfast and how it came out!!