by Abhinav on October 27, 2011
Disclaimer: This post is not targeted at any person particularly, its based on general mass behavior, reaction and opinion.
There’s an old saying – “Been There, Done That”. This post, as the title suggests, is the opposite of it.
Incident 1:
It dates back to my engineering days. I was probably one of the first guys to buy a desktop in the hostels. Not that it was an achievement, but I had taken the step while others were still contemplating about the move. Being the first ones I even had to face a lot of questions. Apart from the regular “how much did it cost”, there is still 1 question or rather statement which i remember. It was made by one of the better guys, in terms of computers/technology. The statement was:
“Why did you an AMD machine? According to me AMD doesn’t support Linux”
If you are familiar with AMD and/or with Linux you would be laughing out by now.
To answer that statement, I asked him : “Have you used AMD?” – He said NO.
“Have you ever used Linux?” – Again the answer was NO !
Point to note: How could you make that comment if you’ve never used either the hardware or that operating system?
Incident 2:
A friend of mine was planning to buy a smartphone, he called me up and told me that he was planning to buy an HTC, which costs exactly the same as iPhone. Well, I being a happy iPhone user, suggested him to buy an iPhone if he’s planning to spend that much. He said, “I don’t like the iPhone”, I asked him “have you used it? “, he said NO.
{Most people who follow/like Apple and/or its products also know this fact that its haters are the ones who’ve never used/bought an Apple product ever. #Irony}
Point to note: I don’t question the fact that you don’t like the iPhone but the point is, how can you not like a product, if you’ve never used it?
Incident 3: This is the most important and the one i come regularly across, the topic Entrepreneurship !
I shared a NYTimes article on Facebook “Will Dropouts Save America?” and quoted a statement from that article too along with a small personal opinion. The article talks about how have dropouts helped America create the best technology companies and added jobs and growth to the American Economy. Interestingly (or rather stupidly as I would put), the people to react strongly against the post/article were the ones who’ve never tasted entrepreneurship or have created a single job ever! I don’t have proof but I am quite sure, they wouldn’t have even bothered to read the article!
How can you ever comment about something when you never tried that? Have you ever tried building a company? Or even tried at being self employed? If not, how on earth can you comment about Entrepreneurship ???
Entrepreneurship is a topic which is close to my heart and hence the burst but the overall point remains the same: It feels great when you have an opinion about a topic/experience/situation that you have been in, but if you never been through it, why not keep quiet?
by Abhinav on September 17, 2011
Every time the Indian government raises the petrol prices, I see a thread, initially which we used to receive on mail and now every now or then somebody or the other copy-pasting it on Facebook!
Petrol Prices….. Pakistan Rs. 26 …….. Bangladesh Rs. 22 ……… Cuba Rs. 19………. Nepal Rs. 34 ……. Burma Rs. 30 ……… Afghanistan Rs. 36 ……… INDIA Rs. 73.00 ; How it comes to this -> BASIC COST PER 1 LITRE 16.50 + Centre tax 11.80% + Excise duty 9.75% + Vat cess 4% + State tax 8 % = Total Rs. 50.05 + Now extra 23.35 Rs, PER 1 LITRE . What a Great job by the Govt. of India Pass this message to ALL INDIANS Plz post it on ur wall… let all Indians know about this
I have no clue where from where this originated but as far as I can recall, I am reading this since over a year now!
People/friends/colleagues without putting a thought or applying their minds just repost or forward it. The government raised the prices yesterday and there it started appearing again! A couple of hours ago I again saw this posted on Facebook by a friend and I dropped a comment
Not sure if this data is correct, pls find out the source for this info
This comment was followed by another comment written in complete honesty and no sarcasm:
Good research..!
“Good research” – hullo! Excuse me sir, did you bother to see if she’s actually done the research? Or made an attempt to find out if that “research” was correct?
I even got a response to my comment from my friend:
Abhi: i followed the last part. “Pass this message to ALL INDIANS Plz post it on ur wall… let all Indians know about this”
Wow! Amazing isn’t it? That’s like behaving like a RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN OF INDIA
Did you give a thought if petrol prices were so cheaper in our neighboring nations then is the Indian Govt foolish?
Flabbergasted, I keyed in “petrol prices Pakistan” on Google and the first link displayed this :
| Product |
Price [Rs.] |
| HOBC |
109.93 |
| Premium |
84.8 |
| High Speed Diesel |
92.64 |
| Light Speed Diesel |
83.52 |
| Kerosene Oil |
86.62 |
Can you read that? Rs. 84 !!!
Okay that data maybe untrustworthy, i move on to the next 4-5 results on that 1st page itself and get Reuters results, pages which can be trusted blindfolded, and it says 88.41 rupees. Not only this, Reuters also tells me that prices in Pakistan are also increasing in a fashion similar to India, they rose in April and then again in May by 12%!!!
The problem that I am raising here is not about petrol prices, the government or inflation; what I want to address is that why don’t people apply their brains before blindly following others? Don’t they have enough time? If you can copy paste on Facebook, then obviously you could have spent a few seconds in typing that on Google. So the problem is not time, okay so what is it then?
During the Anna Hazare fast hundreds of thousands of people turned up to support him. Yes, all of us want a corrupt-free system and we need to raise our voice. Curious, i asked a few people about the differences and i got vague responses from them. I tested my awareness about the JanLokpal Bill and got a ‘little’ clarity. But how many of us spent a few minutes on understanding what were the differences between the bill that govt proposed and the JanLokpal Bill proposed by team Anna?
There lies the problem: we don’t want to be educated. We don’t want to be responsible and most importantly we don’t want to question! Yes, we do want to show off that we are. Whenever in a crowd we make sure we speak in English, to portray we are educated, we pass on messages like the one above to show we are responsible and do a hell lot of things to portray things which we aren’t actually.
My question is: WHY DON’T WE RAISE QUESTIONS ?
