Outrage is the king; news is just another beggar
Last few decades we have lived with the myth that outrage is
a bad word, a trait to be curbed, an oddity which needs to be kept out of civil
discourse. Time has come to change it, now.
Today, it is time to break those myths by educating readers
on this beautiful trait nature has given to man, its proper usage, its contribution
to art and science, great service it is doing to humanity and its contribution
to the skill development.
Outrage is the new, evolved weapon medium of miscommunication,
a way of filtering the information, concealing the undesirable and delivering the
selected, desired message to the mind of recipient without any clutter of the
unwanted information.
It is also a means of entertainment. Tell me, don’t debaters
on a on our prime time shows give the viewer same adrenaline rush as cock
fights used to do in medieval times? Or are the debate between
Sanjay Jha,
Sambit Patra and Vinod Mehta any less entertaining than any of Farah Khan
movies
Outrage is a scientific art form. It is both, an art and a
science as it makes use of both logical as
One has to be very logical about the objectives of outrage.
One has to use very complicated algorithms to decide what to outrage on and
what to conceal or hide in the process. For example, it requires a very
complicated logical process to identify Vaidik’s visit to Pakistan when the
news agencies are focusing on India’s prominence in BRICS summit.
Then the associations & relationships with past events
have to be formed, statements mined, events recollected, suppositions inserted,
allegations (whether proved, unproved, made or even implied) aligned to
assemble together the campaign.
And then the creative expression begins. A touch of color here,
a brush of innuendo there, some masking on certain area, highlighting somewhere
else and what comes out as a result of this back breaking work is an object of
art, a potent message which ensures that the mind of recipient absorbs only
what the exponent of outrage wants him to.
This is where the theory of relativity comes in. Yes, you read
it right. We are talking of theory of relativity, expounded by Einstein, understood
by very few, misunderstood by most and misused by anyone who can spell it.
Original theory of relativity talked about observable time
being proportional to the relative velocity between the observer and the observed;
it has been modified into a dual theory of outrage. The first postulate states
that outrage on any event is directly proportional to the differences between
world view of the observer and the observed while the second postulate says
that the amount of outrage on any issue or event is inversely proportional to
the impact the issue or event makes on lives of the subject. The two postulates
work together.
For example, a personal view of a Member of Parliament about
LGBT may not impact your life while labour law reform might, but both postulates
ensure that it is the former which would be subject of all debates while the
latter becomes insignificant filler, to be shown & discussed in the
afternoon news, just after “What do your stars say today?”
It is noteworthy is that most outrage campaigns run the
recent past validate the dual outrage theory.
Outrage is also humane. Yes. And I say it with a great sense
of responsibility to the mankind.
The communication boom has resulted in an explosion of
information which the common man on the street is not equipped to handle. For example, when the common man gets to know that
Supreme Court has accepted NSA proposal on black money his mind would go into
an analytical spin about its impact on his life and he would get distracted
from his duties and daily struggles. He would rather be happier to know that we
have dealt with the threat of a communal, arrogant leader force feeding bread to
a poor fasting secular and he is safe now!
As outrage exponents, it is our divine duty to ensure the
life of the common man stays uncomplicated by blocking the unwanted information
from reaching his senses. We may not want to take up this onerous
responsibility but who can deny destiny?
Outrage develops skills. Outrage helps both the practitioner as well as
the beneficiary in honing the skills of communication i.e. the verbal diarrhea
adds to the vocabulary, the targeted use of innuendo adds to the wit, multiple
& selective interpretations of same phrase or words teaches one how to deal
with difficult situations in life and taking right decisions. It also helps in
memory enhancement as one has to remember the most insignificant trivia related
to the event. These skills make a person employable, if not productive.
I would like to end this note with a request to the government.
I demand that recognition of outrage as an industry, setting up of an outrage
promotion council and establishing institutes which teach youngsters how to
excel in this rare trait which combines art and science.
