Le Me of the Meme

OK I was disappointed in myself for not having written anything in over 3 months, so.. well I had to write something.. but nothing really interesting is coming to my head, anyway so this is a small post, its about the million memes that have been doing rounds.. there doesnt exist a topic, public event or a celebrity who or who's actions havent been made into a meme.. people make memes of their friends, colleagues or even themselves .. here's one of the few that I made at work..

ok that wasnt my best, dont judge me yet.. it was a colleague at work, she wore a lot of rings thats all :D

Now, whats this post about, its about the me and normal people saga of the memes.

here's an example:

hilarious right? here's another

you see a pattern here?
No? ok here's one more.. this till with 1 comment.

You spot it yet? the comment reads "same here"
thats exactly the reaction I had and sometimes even made such comments on the "normal people and me" saga memes.

Theres some more memes like that.. heres a frisky one

I know perv thought.. but come on.. every guy thinks like that once hes hit high school.. or even less nowadays I guess..

OK one last one.. and this had the most "me too" comments

So what I'm trying to say is every damn person is "me" or Derp(the meme guy).. and no one really is the "normal people" So... everyones Derp and think the others are normal (lame and boring basically) so we can say being Derp is the normal thing to be.. every Derp is normal..

here's my meme..

AAP Bhi Aadmi Ho

Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the 7^th Chief Minister of Delhi about 15 days ago. It was a big day in the politics and democracy of India. I wasn’t really happy about the Aam Aadmi Party taking Congress support to form the government in Delhi. The day when the news broke that AAP will form the government in Delhi  with Congress aid, I made a sad facebook post. Here’s the pic:

Yeah, call me a sadist, and heres a comment by one of my high school teachers

And another friend of mine said:

Ofcouse I only had this to say:

And then the status died away.. and 5 days later Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the CM and he made quite a decent speech that day. 

I made a status:

I realized that I was missing something and this congress alliance may not prove that damaging and AAP would still be able to play a dominating role and provide the people of Delhi some good governance.

The days that followed saw a lot of changes and decisions like the transfer of DJB higher management, 700 liters of free water per day and maybe a few more that I don’t remember. But all the while and media, other political parties and sympathizers and supporters of the NaMo Movement started posting pictures, excerpts and quotes of how Kejriwal and the AAP were switching sides, changing tunes etc etc.. the 3 biggest things that the people have found hardest to forget and forgive are:

1.       Kejriwal won’t fight an election – He contested and became CM

2.       Kejriwal won’t take VIP security or government facilities (car, house etc) – Well he did that

And the worst

3.       Kejriwal swore on his children that there would be no support taken from BJP or Congress – Well, we all know what happened.

Now, ofcourse I’m writing this post to well somewhat justify his statements, now these three have not risen from different sources. The one reason is, he’s green, that’s it.

Being a.. well talkative person I know that sometimes you go overboard, get carried away and say something of paramount proportion when you don’t know the complete picture. Haven’t we all seen people who are ‘confidently wrong’? That’s what happened here, it’s practically impossible to have a CM walking the streets without security. I’m not talking about the CM, the people would swarm the place and hurt one another.. its so with any celebrity and he or any celebrity has no control over it.. so this was an innocent ‘confidently wrong’ statement. How can he say something and we take his word for something that isn’t in his control?

Speaking of the swearing on children part, the same goes here, he was ‘confidently wrong’ because of his innocence, as I said, he’s still a little green, now what do we do of an innocent first timer? Do we show some consideration or we scrutinize and criticize his every move? Expect him to be perfect from day 1? That’s just too much expectation from us, the media and other politicians. Given time, maybe he’ll learn his limitations and learn that every word is counted.

To be a little neutral here, I really am concerned about the ‘370 pages of evidence against Shiela Dixit’ statement. Ofcouse, thinking realistically, there’s no such thing as ‘unconditional’ support. Lets leave it as that.

Finally, why did he enter politics, contest and become CM? well, We must think of why AAP was formed in the first place, there was no option left, right? No Lok Pal Bill would be passed with all the Anshans and people were simple getting bored and eventually fizz out. 

This was a right decision, but sadly, we have a perception that nothing can be changed or that people who get down in the pit to clean also end up smelling like shit.. or people have no hopes of ever having a clean political system. Maybe.. but the one line I remember from The Shawshank Redumption is “No one can ever take away hope” So I’m gonna hope, hope that change is possible, change will happen and I will do my part. (by making blogs and fb posts? Sure why not)

Novice Poker Effect

It had been a while since I had been sent out of a classroom… the last time this happened, I think It was in the OOPs lab in 2008, well teachers wouldn’t get offended that easily in UVCE I guess... anyway it was an interesting class of rural marketing and I seemed to be interested, but sadly I was caught fiddling with the phone and making some kinda tattoo on my hand and the teacher took offence at it and pushed me out of the class. But what I was googling about was the Myths involved in Rural Marketing. I’m not gonna bore you with what I found, heres a snap shot. 

Something I remember from class held my attention for a long time. The prof had said ‘One of the biggest myths about rural marketing is that the marketers think we rural buyers don’t ask many questions, they ask more questions than urban buyers, they are smarter than the urban buyer. They sometimes ask questions that seem silly and make you laugh, but we fail to find answers to such questions and that’s what makes rural marketing more challenging.’

Yes, we’ve heard this being said a lot of times. It’s almost a cliché. But something doesn’t fit right, does it? How could rural buyers with less exposure and information about what’s happening be harder to outsmart? Why would they be harder to sell to? Why do they ask harder questions? Why are they tougher to convince? Do they know what we’re trying to do from before? Not really. I like to call it, The Novice Poker Effect.

It happened roughly 2 years ago; out of boredom I decided to teach my cousin how to play poker and tried to play him a little. I couldn’t read him, I couldn’t bluff him, I thought he bluffed when he played simple and I obviously lost. The reason is simple. A novice poker player is not playing you, he is just playing his cards. It’s the same with Rural Marketing, a rural buyer is just playing what’s on his cards, he isn’t bothered about what or why a marketer is trying to sell. 

We could conclude that a rural buyer is not smart; he’s just like a novice poker player. Hard to read, hard to pick up trends and hard to know what he wants. It’s this Novice Poker Effect that makes us think a rural buyer is smart. If we understand that the rural buyer just looks at things from his side and dont try anything fancy against him, we would succeed. 

So to round it up, learn to play poker with a kid, maybe you’ll excel in rural marketing.