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Witerati | All we imagine as @highlight
The trend of highlighting has caught up so much that before you can scan the newspaper highlights, sip by sip with your morning cuppa, there is a much longer list of @highlight notifications waiting to wean away your attention
Hashtag-ism has a trending tag. It’s got nothing to do with Arnab & Co’s barked breaking news highlights. It’s got nothing to do either with the coloured highlight, heralding the wrath of our editors that used to cause much fright.
It’s got to do with hashtag-ism’s trending Facebook feature -- @highlight.
The trend of highlighting has caught up so much that before you can scan the newspaper highlights, sip by sip with your morning cuppa, there is a much longer list of @highlight notifications waiting to wean away your attention.
There was a time when one woke up to or was fed on another type of highlights. Markings as red as the rage of an editor-in-chief on spotting howlers.
Highlights and howlers hand in hand, leading to much heated howling down the high table.
Those were memorable red-letter days of highlights. The highlights of digital age have to do more with red alerts or red carpets.
The @highlight notifications, fast threatening to overtake other forms of highlights, come riding varying degrees of urgency and urges.
There are @highlight posts that are driven by urgency. Urgency driven by time, to draw attention to stuff sublime or events and parties prime.
They scream alerts --- alerts for events and exhibitions one has no intention of attending in this lifetime or the next, alerts for friends’ ticketed shows that are not friendly on your pocket and pizza plans, alerts for masterclasses from life coach and happiness coach buddies that your schooling-unfriendly soul jolly well revolts at.
Then there are highlights that come riding not urgency but urges.
Urge to compulsively tag. Urge to boast and brag. Urge to showcase sartorial swag. Urge to not let follower “likes” lag.
The @highlight trend spells its own boon and bane. For those in the throes of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), it indeed spells a gain. Ah, but for those possessing a propensity for JOMO (Joy of Missing Out), it could be quite a pain.
FOMO Fanatics --- This tribe of Facebookers jump ‘n’ jive with joy at every @highlight notification that lands on their phone. It’s a godsend for those who missed seeing their family or friends on a Venetian vacay, gallivanting on gondolas, or cruising to a destination vyaah from Tuscany to Timbuktu, in an Ambani-inspired extravaganza.
JOMO Gang -- For this species of Facebookers, @highlight is more of an odd-send.
Just when they have made peace with not knowing that their rivals or rolling-in-riches “rishtedaars” were globetrotting in Greece, there comes the unfriendly reminder in the form of @highlight. Of how much more fun and frolic fellow besties and biradri are having, while they themselves are spending life travelling only between non-exotic destinations --- cooped-up corporate cubicles to crumbling corridors of civic housing.
Their expression upon receiving a @highlight notification might resemble that of a grizzly bear in hibernation, who finds his slumber being snapped short by a cacophonous crow crooning in the ear.
Viewed from the perspective of Kumbh season narratives, these Facebookers from the JOMO-inclined tribe may thus look upon the landings of @highlight notifications as being akin to pilgrims stampeding into stations.
The curious case of “When Hari met @Highlight”.
chetnakeer@yahoo.com
