Posts

The Clickbait Charade: Unveiling the Psychology Behind Viral Content

 Have you ever scrolled through social media and gotten sucked into a vortex of funny cat videos, heartwarming stories, or something so bizarre you just had to share it? You're not alone. Viral content thrives because it taps into the core of human psychology, making us click, share, and come back for more. The internet is a swirling vortex of information, entertainment, and endless scrolling. But what makes certain content break through the noise and achieve viral fame? The answer lies in the fascinating dance between psychology and content creation. Understanding what compels us to click, share, and engage with content is the key to unlocking the secrets of virality. Viral content can steer some sense of emotion into us. Various psychological factors are associated with the anatomy of a viral video, image, graphic, icon, or meme that is made using such viral content. Following are some psychological factors behind viral content and what makes it tick:- The Emotional Rollercoaster...
Post a Comment
Read more

A sense of liberation in unearthing your history : Watching Netflix's documentary Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb

Image
  "You get a lot of mistakes about history, seeing the great temples, the great statues and you think everything in history was perfect. And then you see these people, you discover they're like us. Exactly like us. This is the real story."  - Amira Shaheen, professor of Rheumatology in the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. The film by James Tovell presents the odyssey of several excavations at Saqqara, Egypt, to unearth the tomb of the ancient priest lord Wahtye. A team of Egyptologists, archaeologists, researchers from Cairo University, and excavators are deployed at the excavation site, where they unearth artifacts dating back to the 5th Century BCE. In 2018, the excavation site at Saqqara had recently witnessed some of the most important historical discoveries, such as the oldest mummified lion cub, the discovery of the Bubasteion Necropolis, the Egyptian goddess 'Bastet' statues, playing figurines, etc.  According to the hieroglyphs that were deciphered b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Incorporating Tech like AR & VR in Schools: Are we heading towards metaverse school system?

Image
Emerging technologies like Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality are changing the education field with innovation in the teaching methods many schools adopt today. As the learning experience becomes more immersive and engaging for students, should schools be more receptive to technological innovations in education dissemination? Today, technology has incorporated itself into education in ways that give a new face to learning. Technologies like augmented and virtual reality have been used to teach students methods of science and arts efficiently. Augmented reality is a digital simulation that allows users to augment their surroundings using digital elements. According to Krogstad, augmented reality has the following attributes: a) it should combine the real and the virtual, b) augmentations should be interactive in real-time, and c) the simulations should be registered in 3 Dimensions. (Aastveit)  Since the advent of these techs in the education space, students can learn creatively, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SK Das’s literature of ‘Bharatvarsa’, Irrelevant to Modern Literature in India: A Critique

Image
'Bharatvarsa' or 'the land of Bharata' is evident in a literary tradition in the Indian subcontinent since Vedic times. In contemporary times, Dalit writings have become a 'subaltern literature', incongruent with the idea of 'Bharatvarsa'. A critical analysis of SK Das's idea of literature. How long will it take to accept literature produced by Dalits in mainstream Indian literature? Sisir Kumar Das | Picture Credits: Alchetron.com We make a singular picture when we think about literature in India. We always think about how the literature of India constitutes different languages. Owing to its vast lingual diversity, putting literature in India under one single idea becomes challenging. Its pluralistic nature tends to make it mutually exclusive. Taking the whole Indian literature under a single unit thus becomes challenging. To talk about literature in India, one must use the plural 'literature' due to various literary traditions across the co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meeting Love at its Infancy : Thoughts after reading 'Samsa in Love' by Haruki Murakami

Image
  Picture credit: The Time Samsa in love is a short story written by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and is translated by Ted Goossen. It is a part of Murakami's collection of short stories called 'Desire' published by Vintage Minis. In his story, the character of Samsa is based on the character known as Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka's very popular novel Metamorphosis. Kafka's novel revolves around a man (Gregor Samsa) who wakes up one day to find out that he has turned into a moth. It is a brilliant work around the idea of existentialism. However, in Murakami's story, Samsa wakes up to find out that he has turned into a human from a moth. It's the other way around. The initial sensations of both these Samsas are the same. They both find it difficult to adjust to a foreign body, taking in the consciousness of a totally different being. Both know nothing of how they come to be in this way. Gregor Samsa had his own set of ordeals which ended in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming Jane - A beautiful irony of life and literature

Image
  " My characters will have, after a little bit of trouble, all that they desire" - Jane Austen Becoming Jane is a movie on the author Jane Austen, celebrated author of Pride and Prejudice.  It is believed that she wrote the novel when she was having an affair with the lawyer Thomas  Langlois Lefroy on whom she based the character of Mr Darcy. The movie traces this controversial love affair of Jane Austen.  Having grown up reading Pride and Prejudice and swooning over the dashing Mr Darcy, I anticipated that Thomas Lefroy would just be like Mr Darcy.  Alas, I was wrong. The movie is a whole 2-hour piece of irony. Characters of the movie look familiar to the characters of the book, but they behave in an unconventional way. Jane Austen herself acts differently (more humanely) than the character of Elizabeth Bennet of the book. Watching this movie I was busy noticing how these actors onscreen look much like the characters of the book but act in a more relatable, l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Closer : Waging a war against usual meet-cute flicks

Image
Have you seen a human heart? It looks like a fist wrapped in blood! You go check a few facts while I get my hands dirty. -  Larry These are the words that were ringing in my ears long after I finished watching the movie Closer. Starting off as a typical rom-com it progresses into an arena of manipulations, power struggles, bitter truths, and lies. Characters resort to brutal truths (more like confessions) in their relationships, hurtful yet ashamed at the same time. The movie revolves around the idea of how intimacy is actually a lie. Closer, released in 2004, is based on a play written by Patrick Marber and is directed by Mike Nichols. It stars Jude Law as Dan (a writer and journalist), Natalie Portman as Alice (an American girl who says she was a stripper and fled New York to end a relationship), Julia Roberts as Anna (an American photographer), and Clive Owen as Larry (a dermatologist). The characters connect in a series of meet-cutes that are perhaps no more contrived than...
Post a Comment
Read more