Gone Viral!!!

It took almost half a century for me to understand the difference between rumours and news. Whenever I come up with such doubts I enter into my mind web for clarification.

I remember a famous television cartoon called the balloon. A small kid playing with balloons bursts one by mistake, one of the neighbours starts to spread the news that he heard a loud noise coming from behind closed doors. Slowly the news spreads like wild fire and finally news reaches the cops.  They turn up at the doorstep imagining mass murder and end up seeing a happy kid playing with balloons.

Each and every event that becomes news creates an opinion. If someone is being spotlighted for doing good he becomes the hero. If someone is being spotlighted for opposing that opinion becomes the villain. But how many of us actually question the credibility of the news? Portraying someone in a certain perspective has become a cakewalk nowadays with social media spreading the news faster than the speed of light.

Personally all of us have gone through such stuff in our lives as well. Whatever we hear through word of mouth creates an image in our head and it becomes an impression that forms an opinion from which we are unable to retrieve ourselves when being confronted with truth.

A famous fable goes that a fox lusts over a bunch of juicy grapes, jumps up and down trying his best to reach them but after futile efforts he becomes tired and leaves from there saying the grapes are probably sour. This shows the difficulty in accepting the truth. The fox is not able to accept his defeat and cheats his own mind saying a different story to suit the circumstance.

All of us in a way behave like the fox in the story. When we form an opinion about someone or something and when the reality defies our perspective we tend to twist the reality to our convenience forming dissociation with truth. When some of us are strong enough to accept the reality and try to explain it to others we are being shamed and scammed by those who are not ready to accept the reality.

The same story applies on a larger scale to news and media. Such half truths float in the air like a virus and spreads amongst us corrupting us according to the whims and wishes of those creating the news. If discussing such information between friends and family is called spreading rumour then how come doing the same thing on media is called news.

Hence the pondering question in my mind, what is the difference between rumours and news? The question in itself is a wrong approach. The question should be the difference between rumours or news and the truth. If we can accept and understand the truth in each situation and be strong enough to say that the grapes are so juicy and tasty but I am not fit enough reach them, then probably we will start to understand the reality of each and every aspect of our lives.

Our opinions are like a virus that we spread when we try to dump it on others, which is why trending news or a thread is said to have Gone Viral!! Instead of spreading the virus let us vaccinate ourselves with the truth which will be painful for a day or two but will protect us from further harm......I have taken my dose, what about you?

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 23, 2021 at 4:06 AM

    Simply superb Ganga

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJuly 23, 2021 at 6:00 AM

    Truth is a bitter pill...no one wants it...only the sweets that are lies...and in a world where what one thinks is sacrosanct...you need a new mantra to cleanse the system...and that mantra is Silence...Paramasivan

    ReplyDelete

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