The Ghose In The Machine

Take a look at this furnace in the basement. “He wanted to make his family disappear… He murdered his whole family and half the people on the block... That’s where he keeps his victims”. 

It’s quite a frightening horror scenario. Every time you look at the furnace you cannot help being reminded of the victims who were burnt to hell. The soot and ashes from the burnt bodies are all over the basement floor. The stench of roasted humans fills the air in the stuffy basement. You can be forgiven if everytime you entered the basement you saw ghosts of those that were killed by some maniac. 

This story was captured in a horror movie and I suggest you watch this 2.0 minute trailer (Only if you’re over 18):

Imaginative geniuses can turn a comedy like ‘Home Alone’ into an absolute horror story. Youtube has an abundance of such recut trailers which turn comedies in to horrors and horrors into comedies. Kids are scared of a lot of things. Kevin, in Home Alone, has this terror about the basement furnace. In other words, it’s seeing ghosts in the machine. I know of someone else who sees terror and ghosts in comic situations. That’s none other than our very own Social Genius. In yet another idiotic loose cannon titled “Netiquette,Not Censorship” in Outlook magazine she sees ghosts, evil and terror in the social media and, unfailingly, in the Right-Wing. The only way kids overcome such fears is as they grow, see reason, logic and scientific explanations. Being an optimist I’m sure someday in the distant future Sagarika Ghose will grow up and embrace reason, logic and science.

One of Arthur Koestler’s book's central concepts is that as the human brain has grown, it has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures, and that this is the "Ghost in the machine". The primitive minds in our mainstream media (MSM), so well exemplified by the Social Genius’ mindless utterances on TV, in print and even on Twitter, is the phenomenon of ‘The Ghose in the machine’. So let’s visit some classic ‘moron-speak’ from the primitive Social Genius.

“Social media is not the enemy. It is simply an amoral technology..” There! In the very opening part of the article the compass points clearly to the technology being “amoral”. If that line were to be rephrased, a bigot from the MSM would have rewritten it and it could read: “Hindus are not the enemy, Hinduism is amoral” Now you get the logic of the communist?

“A deluge of profane language, abuse of religious icons and vicious attacks on minorities are the hallmarks of Twitter and Facebook in India. Twitter in India, almost completely dominated by right-wing religious nationalism, has been called a “hate factory”. Well, it’s quite easy to forget who abused Lord Ram as an encroacher or manipulated a debate on TV to make SriSri Ravishankar appear in a negative shade. Never mind! Her boss, the so called editor of CNN-IBN, in deep anguish and anger uses the ‘F’ word. Oh yeah, you could say that is kindness compared to the profanity of others. What about ‘right-wing’? It’s true social media is dominated by Hindus. Educated, tech-savvy Hindus. So they’re all right-wing religious nationalists who collectively run a ‘hate-factory’. It’s a nice clever way of branding all Hindus into one category of hate-mongers. Ghose in the machine?

“As a television journalist, I get a daily dose of abuse on Twitter, an exercise in character-building endurance. Some examples: “Bitch, you deserve to be stripped and raped publicly.” ….. why u r not covering assam riots, mulloh ne ma ch..i hai kya behan..... Dalli saali Rahul ki.” In fact, I and other women journalists on Twitter regularly receive threats of sexual assault, showing that on Twitter, criminals do not fear the law”  Aha! So you see it’s really not about people in general getting abused but it’s about her and her “hammam”. A huge majority of those on Twitter don’t use such language. Most are skilled in either subtle or vicious humour, sarcasm or ridicule. They don’t need filthy language to do that. On the other hand, without condoning that kind of language, I would surely recommend the Social Genius take a look in the mirror. Of thousands of media persons and writers on Twitter if she and a few others get this then they would do well to remember it’s called ‘boomerang’. What you send out is what comes back to you in return. How often have you heard the line: “If you don’t like our programs, don’t watch our channel”. Same goes for these propagandists. If you can’t take something just leave and go someplace else.  

“In the mainstream media, we constantly debate the limits of regulation. The NBSA, the watchdog body for electronic news media of which I’m a member, advocates a firm “no” to censorship but “yes” to responsible content”. The NBSA is a watchdog? It’s just another coffee shop like the PCI. And if the NBSA is pathetically useless it is because its members are the same ones who abuse the privileges of TV media. I don’t think anyone needs to add even one line more to the stringent observations by the Supreme Court on the TV media in the Kasab death sentence. The SC has clearly stated that regulators cannot be from “within” the media itself. That’s the level our shamelessly corrupt media has fallen to. I dare say, it would be safer to allow security of Tihar Jail to its criminal inmates than let the media guys manage their own imaginary watchdog. The SC also damned them as potential “national security threat”. Journalist involved in the Israeli Embassy attack in Delhi, journalist involved in the murder of another journalist in Mumbai, on August 30 a journalist arrested in terror-plot in Bangalore. Shouldn’t the people demand that before journalists are given jobs or accreditation they should be cleared by National Security agencies? And yet, because some fools use filthy language on Twitter, the social media needs to be throttled.

It might have never even occurred to this Social Genius that hate can be incited even without filthy language. If I remember right, petitions have been filed against religious books, religious texts have been burnt for inciting hate and violence. The Bhagwad Gita was recommended for a ban in Russia. And these don’t contain filthy language. So the self-righteous sermonisers from the MSM typically don’t do any research before they criticise.The one journalist who was booed and chased away from India Gate was Barkha Dutt. I don’t think that would happen on Twitter, would it? But hey, just as the imaginative recut trailers on Youtube, there are some shows that best explain Bimbos. In a previous post I explained Sagarika’s “Miss India” type utterances with a video. The video below explains it even better: (A transcription of the exchange is provided below the video)

Anchor:  Say (your husband) is he basically more urban or rural Cathy?

Blond:    I don’t know what they mean..

Anchor:  Oh you know about that, you married him! What dya say?

Bimbo:   Ahhh.. heck, he’s urban

Anchor:  He’s urban? How long has he been that way?

Bimbo:   About two months..

Anchor:  And you think there’s anything he can do about it?

Bimbo:   He went to a doctor…

Anchor:  Did the doctor give him anything for his ‘urban’?

Bimbo:   He gave ME something...!

So that’s how the Social Genius sees ghosts and terror on Twitter and social media. Maybe next time she will look in the mirror and find it’s not social media, it’s Ghose in the machine. Nothing to worry really!