Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online
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Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online
A former cult turned business opportunity for greeting card companies and the hospitality industry. That, today, is Mother's Day for you. The Greeks honoured Cybele, their 'Mountain Mother'. For ancient Romans, it was the hilaria -- equinox festivals honouring the same Earth goddess. America jumped in somewhere around 1870, with the help of social activist Julia Ward Howe. Appalled by the savagery of the Civil War in her country, she enacted a 'Mother's Day Proclamation' in protest.
That call of anger from a pacifist has, in our time, been reduced to dinner reservations and hashtags like 'Happy Mothers Day', 'Mothers Day', 'Moms' and 'Ma' -- none of them important if your mother isn't one of your followers on Twitter.
Also trending this morning was Rabindranath Tagore, the bearded bard who continues to cast a long, unshakeable shadow over speakers of Bangla the world over. Referring to people of the modern age or, in his words 'newer people,' he spoke of how they were 'more eager to amass than to realize'. That the comment is still relevant decades later is a sad indictment of the way we live.
Greater Noida -- quite possibly home to much of India's testosterone -- clogged timelines on account of a clash between farmers and the police. A certain Soumik Sen had a pertinent question: 'Police deaths and farmer protests. Is this the Singur in UP that Rahul Gandhi was waiting for?'
When 'Animal Kingdom' began to trend, I assumed it was on account of curious children in love with nature. No such thing. It was actually the name of a horse that ended up winning the Kentucky Derby. Why was it trending in India, a few thousand miles from the venue? No one had an answer. Maybe Indians love horses as much as they love cricketers and Bollywood stars. Twitter can be a very strange place.
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