04 November,2012 08:56 AM IST | | Saurabh Datar
The biggest secret in journalism has been leaked. Superman aka Clark Kent will quit his job as a reporter at The Daily Planet and turn to blogging a la Huffington Post and Drudge Report.
My first thought when I read this was: Appraisal achcha nahi hua. But Superman is not as myopic as the rest of us. This is a man who has dedicated his life to journalism with his fearless reporting about, erm, himself. He surely has a vision in place.
Illustration/ Amit Bandre
It must've begun with the disguise. With glasses, he's Clark Kent and without them, he's Superman. Since 1938, the citizens of Metropolis have been playing along to this spectacular (pun intended) charade. Finally, he realised the utterly stupidity of this act and by turning blogger, this practice becomes obsolete.
Also, he changes into his Superman uniform in a phone booth. Phone booth. Ha ha. Everyone has iPhones now and iPhone users don't have phone booths. They have an invisible force field around themselves which only Apple users can penetrate. Then, they all have an iParty.
The advent of digital media has greatly affected print media. I'm sure there must've been an incident where Clark Kent showed his article to his neighbours. And the neighbour's kids laughed their stomachs off and said, "Dude, that's old news. I saw this on Twitter yesterday. The Youtube video already has a million hits. It'll overtake Gangnam soon. Here's your walking stick, Grandpa." With a blog, he can file fresh reports which he can share on his Facebook page and get a couple of likes. This will of course be overshadowed when Lois Lane posts a picture of herself in an LBD.
On the positive side, Superman can now afford to be lazy, because nobody reads beyond the headline on the Internet. There's no need to work hard on original material. Ctrl C, Ctrl V. Also known as the Arif Zakaria Principle. It's the era of being cool. Our man wears red underwear over a blue suit. He needs to do something cool. Blogs can be read on iPads which automatically makes them cool.
It's also cool to quit a job you hate. What vicious villains and masterminds couldn't do, the corporate world accomplished. Defeat Superman. With an arsenal full of timesheets, investment declaration forms and IT policies, even the Man of Steel had to buckle. And the ultimate weapon - meetings. I'm sure there were meetings where a major chunk of time was spent in deciding how many teas and coffees to order from the canteen while Clark sat quietly in the corner, resisting the urge to melt the whole building down.
They say people quit bosses, not jobs. Superman's bosses must've constantly shot down his ideas for path-breaking exposes in favour of a Kim Kardashian piece, because apparently that's what the readers want. No more will his work be criticised by power-hungry old men who have no idea of the modern world. Superman will now be read by trolls who read only because their porn is buffering. It'll be a whole new experience for him. So, best of luck Clark. Just remember, Justin Bieber sucks.
Saurabh Datar is a copywriter who loves reading, writing and being lazy
