The sudden popularity of Ashok Gehlot in Istanbul,where the BJP apparently finds that he has more Facebook fans than in Jaipur,need not amaze us. As Gehlots people say,Facebook likes can come from anywhere on the planet. And as the BJP says,they can be bought from agencies,which specialise in liking people. What this story exposes is not the politician for buying likes is not a cognisable offence but the changing nature of the internet. A medium that used to fight fiercely for its freedoms and freebies has become just another marketplace,where the unfairly advantaged can buy more than their fair share of free stuff.
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Money can buy the services of electronic sweatshops,where drones on production lines hundreds of terminals long perform mechanical tasks 24215;7. They punch out promos and likes to social media. They comb the terrain of massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft for gold,which lies tastefully scattered about. Designed as windfalls for players to stumble upon,this gold is sold online and has become the basis of a huge global business. And Second Lifes entrepreneurs are making real dollars hand over fist designing clothes,homes and whole lifestyles services for citizens loaded with Linden dollars,things that they used to make for themselves as expressions of creativity.
Here,the real story was not about the Rajasthan chief minister at all. He is just collateral damage. The real story is that the last refuge of the free has become an electronic supermarket. We dont even have to talk about the weirder things you can buy or hire out there,from 300 fairy corpses and imaginary friends on eBay to the real assassins who hang out their shingles on the Hidden Web. The production-line assembly of Facebook likes is weird enough.
