Of cyberspace racism

While checking the stats in Google Analytics I found out one of the keywords used to find my blog in search engines was "i hate mallus"

Hmm.

If you've been reading my blog faithfully you will know what "mallu" means. If you don't here's a rundown: "mallu" is a term used to call a Keralite, IE someone from Kerala. Well in my previous post I blogged about how Keralites were discriminated and racially abused. So it wasn't much of a surprise when I saw that particular keyword.

They probably do hate mallus ... but some thing's odd, don't you think ? They hate us enough to google the hate, but when they come upon a Keralite blog, they spend some time on it and just leave. Just like that. No hate speech, no racist abuse, no nothing.

Heh. Fricking cowards.

Anyhoo, I see this keyword everyday on my stats. Finally yesterday I Google it myself, just to see what's out there. Sure enough my blog is on the front page; sixth link. I check around and see that most of the links are to other blogs which have a lot of "mallu jokes" and the "i hate mallus" come in the comments. I spend some time around reading and smiling at the jokes.

Then I click on this site.

Now, as most people know everyone seems to get offended very easily these days. I have to agree with Chelle on that. People are waaaay too sensitive these days. Something said in jest or something said without understanding the culture should be forgiven. We all make mistakes in our lives. We shouldn't get too riled up on stuff like that.

But then again, there's also the intentional. This site was intentional. The authors do not make a joke about it. In fact they're material is pure hate speech and almost propaganda. And they are all directed at me and my community.

Needless to say I was fuming. I've been through other offensive sites but nothing lit the spark like this did, since they were abusing me personally. You never know how bad and ugly racism is until it touches you.

Now ... fuming as I were, I always look at things with a broad mind. I have always refused to think down a one-way street. I've always believed no one is born into what they are ... life molds them that way. So apparently these people were molded into hating the likes of me ... and I was curious. Angry and pissed, yes, but still curious.

I'll be the first to tell you Keralite's have their problems and believe me we have some mighty big problems. But then, who doesn't ? Before we rebuke a particular community or religion or whatever we really should look at ourselves first.

Anyhoo ... I decided to go through the blog,unthinkable as it might have seemed, to find a root cause. I like that ... behavioural analysis and stuff like that. Kinda cool.

So here we go : lets analyze a racist, shall we ?

1) The Authors:

Apparently it's a team blog. The user names range from normal one's like KK to some high fly one's like Dr.Evil and HellBlogger.

Meh. What's in a name ?

2) The Subject

The subject is the United Indian School (UIS) in Kuwait. I have never heard of this school but it surely must exist. There are a lot of Indian schools in the Middle East.

The blog states that it wants to expose the corruption and incompetence of the UIS.

Wait, wait ... lets backtrack here. United Indian School ?? These are school kids. Teenagers at best. Probably around 15 or 16. Pre-college stuff.

Oh.

So, it's a couple of kids who don't like their school. Fair enough.

A couple of kids who don't like their faculty and make it known to the world, in their own way. Fair enough.

A couple of kids who think Keralites are an evil cancer. Hmm. Something wrong there.

3)The Readers.

Very little comments on this particular blog. That actually made me feel better until I saw the feedburner. 169 subscribers.

Oh boy.

I was surprised to see no comments favoring the Keralites. I tried sending a comment ... and found out that it was moderated. Well, that would explain the lack of retaliation. Seemed pretty lame to me though ... if you want to say something to the world you have to prepared for debate. It's kinda cowardly when you don't want to accept criticism.

But then again ... all racists are cowards.

4)The Racism.

Pretty harsh language in the random posts I read. Apparently we are fit for nothing but slavery, have a language that should be used for torture and we sleep with our mothers.

Surprised ? Shocked ? That's racism for you. :)

I've also noticed some of the posts that seem to paint a very unflattering picture of the girls in this particular school. Male superority? Maybe. In fact ... very probable.

There are posts written by young ladies and they, of course, attack the Keralite guys. Yawn. That's nothing new.

Actually, hold that thought. Most of the posts written are actually by a young girl (hellblogger). Ahh. Now that's interesting.

5) The design.

It's a normal blogger blog with a three pane template. The title has a picture of the school on it and the panes are filled with anti Keralite badges and widgets. Oddly there's a badge which advocates support for tigers and a badge for Greenpeace. Heh, a weird place to find that!

6) The writing.

Is actually pretty good. I have to admit it. It's really good. These are written by people with a talent for words.

Sorry loss though that they squander they're talent on meaningless hate speech.

7) Random posts.

This is very very interesting.

The first few posts are by the girl named HellBlogger and they target specific boys of the school calling them either gay or really really stupid. The next posts target the faculty .... and then she targets the girls (ugly and whores) in the school.

After all this, she runs into her tirade about Keralite's.

Huh. Interesting.

8) The conclusion.

Here we have a group of kids who feel that they have been discriminated against by a school run pre-dominantly by Keralites. They're kids ... and so they vent their anger that is supposed to be directed towards the faculty at an entire community.

Why ? Because that's what you do when you have a very narrow mind and your thinking space constitutes a 2 x 2 wooden cube.

It is now clear that the girl named HellBlogger is the one who started the blog. Her case is different. From what I can deduce ... it seems like she might actually have had a crush on one of the guys of her school. She gets rejected. The guy falls for another girl. The cycle repeats itself.

So heartbroken and angry she starts a blog and attacks the guys first (along with their pics which is very very immature) and the girls later. Along the way she attacks the faculty which she clearly dislikes.

So why the hatred for Keralites. My best guess ? The guys she liked and the girls who stole them were Keralites.

:D

HellBlogger ... you might read this. If you've been discriminated by a Keralite, I'm sorry. But that does not justify you going up against an entire community. You're attitude is more like a sulking little rejected girl rather than a scarred life. You're inability to see the world for what it is is your biggest drawback. You'd might want to look at that first before you go along with your hate speech.

I wanted to give you a long sarcastic feedback filled with expletives but I decided against it. Why ? Because you're just a kid and maybe you'll grow to be more wiser in the future.

Besides, the best you'd do is call me gay.

**UPDATE 01/06/08**

The guys over at UIS have responded which I expected them to. A note of thanks to the anonymous commentor on this post for giving me the heads up. I had a good laugh out of it.

What ? Did you think I'd get all flushed up and pissed ? No, I expected the retaliation. And yes, the best you did was call me gay and a tuna among others. I'm not going to respond because I've got better things to do and this post was for my readers. You're post is for yours.

And anyways, responding to you would just be a recurring headache.

Of Addiction and rehab

88%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

"Why don't you introduce yourself to the rest of us and tell us why you're here?"

My eyes span across the people in the room. There are about a dozen people and I notice a chance few. A ninja, a pin-up girl, a guy who wears a top hat, another guy with a baseball cap on backwards and a guy who I can only describe as Hobbes.

I close my eyes. How did I end up here.

I tell them my name. They greet me. I can't find any words after that. They look so ... so ... devastated. I'm stuck in a shitty basement surrounded by the sort of sad people society would call losers.

And I'm one such loser.

"Tell us. Tell us what happened. From the beginning."

Okay.

Okay.

"I started blogging in 2008. New Year's day. It was to be my new hobby. I had resolved to quit smoking and start blogging instead. It seemed like a noble prospect. It gained me praise. Little was I to know. And if any of you are wondering, I started smoking two weeks later."

I say that with a smile. No one smiles back. I look down at my hands.

"It was all right in the beginning. Blogging about anything and everything I wanted to blog about. A couple of my friends encouraged me. They read my blog occasionally and some of them left comments. Comments that were not relevant to the post but comments all the same. I was OK for a while."

"But then it all began. The need for more. I started reading other people's blogs. I saw the sort of readers they attracted. People with like minded mentality. People who objected and started post wars. People who just came in to say the posts made them think. I wanted all that. I wanted to be like those bloggers. I wanted the exposure. Admiration became envy in the bat of an eye and I didn't even notice it."

"I began commenting on their blogs. Some of them paid the compliment by visiting and commenting on my blog. But it still wasn't enough. Then I noticed that one of my visitors was part of a social network. A social network for bloggers. One that had a lot of bloggers. And it looked like he had a major part of his traffic coming from there."

The moderator places a hand over mine. "We are not allowed use the word "traffic" here. It's one of our rules. Its ..." she shakes her head.

I understood.

"Anyway. The site's name was Blog Catalog."

A few wince as if in the memory of pain endured long ago.

"I did what anyone would have done. I signed up. I didn't think about it. If the other's were doing it, why shouldn't I ? I wanted to be like them. I cant be blamed for wishing for the moon."

"No one's blaming you." the moderator says softly.

I nod. No this was not the place for the blame game. This was not that sort of place at all.

"At first it was all about the widgets. That was all I did for the first week. The widgets and surfing through other blogger profiles. No harm. Just some time spent."

"But then ... after the first week ... I ... I ... clicked on the discussions button."

I hear a gasp. I notice a tear somewhere.

"I cant say the rest was history. I have to tell you the horror. The madness. The desperation. I started by replying to a few threads. You know ... lurking around. Laughing at the spammers, stuff like that."

"But then I started to get engrossed in the discussions. Debate's started forming in my head. They carried on to my dreams. I was falling for the whole idea. I agreed with some, I scoffed at the others. My political views changed. My social views changed. My views on human emotion changed. When I look back at it now I realize they were all changing accordingly with the BC mob ... it was slowly changing my life."

The hand on mine again. "We are not allowed to say "BC" either."

I nod.

"Minutes became half hours. Half hours became two hours. Two hours turned to evenings. Evenings turned to midnight. I noticed none of this. I ordered food. I held my pee while pressing F5. I drank coffee to make sure I didn't sleep in the middle of a post war. I prayed for people to start flame wars. I started flirting with the women. I even called myself Casanova."

I dig my face into my hands with a moan. I can sense the feeling of attachment in this place. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. The moderator does not pat me or soothe me. She knows its not needed.

I rise. The story is not over yet.

"I neglected my hygiene. Every time spent in the bathroom or anywhere else would be a minute lost in the discussions thread. A lot can happen in a minute. Food did not fill my hunger anymore. Water did not quench my thirst. I did not stop smoking. But my blogging cut down drastically. I didn't care if I got any tr-- ... visitors on my blog. All I cared was if someone replied to my threads, my replies or my shoutbox."

"My girlfriend left me. She said I seemed to be obsessed with a particular member of the site. And the truth is ... I was. No, I am. My family tried to contact me, but I rarely took their calls. I didn't want to be disturbed. I had more important things to do. They eventually gave up ... and disowned me."

I shake my head as I consider what I just said. The futility of my past.

"People began to realize I had a problem from then on. For one I was rarely seen outside other than in my office. My work lagged as I sat on my workstation logged onto Blog Catalog. When I spoke to workers I spoke only about Digg articles I saw on the discussions thread. It was either that or politics or worse ... religion. And when I started a conversation, I would tag it with labels ... or say "hey this is general discussion" or "this is shameless my work promotion". My boss reported me to the office shrink."

"He ran some sort of mental test on me. He's the one who diagnosed me with ... with addiction. I couldn't believe it. Me ? Addicted ? I laughed in his face. If I remember correctly, I laughed a bit too loudly. I ran home and shut the doors and typed up a new thread and tried to joke it off. I desperately wanted people to tell me I was fine. You see I knew then ... that I truly was addicted. But I just didn't want to believe it."

"Then the Surgeon Generals report came out. It warned the public of the dangers and the fatality. Then the grisly news reports : bloggers found dead at their computers, a guy with his fingers stapled to the keyboard presumably by himself, a woman cackling and screaming at her screen; her fingers withered away with constant typing."

"I woke up. I was going to go crazy just like them. I started seeking help. Some of them were drastic. Doctors forced me away from the Internet. But when I sat at a computer that wasn't connected to the Internet, I hammered it to dust. They forced me away from all computers then. I turned into a hungry animal with that. They said I would go past it. They said it was a phase. What did they know ? What did they know about the craving ?"

I raise my palm for everyone to see. "These fingers. They still twitch for the keys that are no longer there."

A woman among the group burst into tears. The rest try to fight back the tears.

"Last week, the clinic recommended this group. I wandered outside this building for the next six days, unsure and scared. I didn't know how to enter or what to say. But today I just thought : to hell with it. And so I'm here. With people who were there. With people who suffered the same. With people who know what I feel."

I smile.

"With people I can connect to."

There is a short silence. But a comfortable one. Then the applause starts. Everyone stands up and applauds. I feel the tears warm and free flowing on my cheeks. I feel a sunrise inside me.

The applause dies down. Everyone takes their seats. The moderator turns to me.

"Is there a final word you would like to say."

I look at her. I look at the group.

"Actually, yes."

She gestures with her hand. Go ahead.

I take a deep breath.

"Ok, general discussion. Why is McCain in the White House a bad thing ?"

Pandemonium.

Authors note: Inspired by a delightful blog post on Sogeshirts.

Of Reality TV

When they came out, people were like ooooh and aaaah! I remember the first reality show I saw : Survivor. I never really got the point of it. What did they try to accomplish other than TV ratings and ad money ? A moral statement that said humans dont blend so well under harsh circumstances ? I gotta tell you ... that's nothing new.

Why was everyone so goo goo gaa gaa over reality shows ? The news channel is a true reality show. No one drools over that ? No, people seem to have an affection to shows where people's characters are either ripped apart or showered in gold. Put in a celebrity or two and you've got big dollars in revenue. There isn't a decent sitcom or show that you can honestly sink into. Why ? Because everyone wants be an idol or a superhero or the last person to come out of a house.

A couple of days ago I was watching an Indian reality show. I dont remember the channel, it was either 9x or Sony. Anyhoo, the contestants were children and they were required to dance their way to glory. The anchors were people I have never seen before and the judges included Raveena Tandon (who still looks gorgeous, by the way) and two others who, again, I have no idea. When it came to the elimination, the audience decided to vote out a pair who had been lavishly praised and honestly to me looked talented.

I have no idea why they were voted out, but the audience looked like they were least interested and maybe, just maybe they had voted randomly on the unfortunate pair. The kids were crying like hell and I dont blame them. They're young and they had to cope with failure at a very tender age.

The anchors however were bawling too ! The lady anchor was openly crying and the male anchor sits down on the floor with an obviously fake look of devastation on his face. He wipes his eyes periodically but for the love of me I couldnt see any tears coming out of them. And just when you thought he couldnt make it any worse the guy actually starts to sing a sad song!

Oh, for the love of God !

Suffice to say, I switched channels immediately.

Celebrity shows are another thing I cant stand. I did not watch the Paris Hilton show on principle but I did have the misfortune of watching the Paula Abdul show and the Hogan show. The Paula Abdul show was annoying to the core and I just couldnt stand it anymore when she started crying because her assistant forgot to bring her matching shoes to her dress. Really ... how long can you take it when a watch a woman do this all the time:



Woman, get a grip!

And the Hogan show just made me feel really uncomfortable. There is something seriously wrong with that family.

TV guys, if you're reading, please please ... scout for some great sitcoms like Frasier and Seinfield or even Friends but please cut down on the reality shows. You're basically sending the next generation the wrong idea that future TV lies with no soul reality shows.

Believe me, I would not want to live in such an era.