4 min readOct 1, 2023 03:18 PM IST
First published on: Oct 1, 2023 at 07:41 AM IST
Anyone with a social media presence is bound to have stumbled on the quietly powerful handle @humansofnewyork that features stories of grit and resilience of ordinary people. It’s a format that’s wondrously simple: a series of images of a person out in the street going about their regular day with the blurb alongside documenting details of their turbulent lives. People talk about overcoming failure, divorces and abusive parents. The overarching theme being that geography notwithstanding, our hopes and desires remain largely the same. Unsurprisingly, the HoNY page has been appropriated all over the world. In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, the creator of HoNY called out Humans of Bombay for suing a similar platform—People of India—for copyright infringement.
The irony, of one entrepreneur blatantly plagiarising an international business model and then suing another for copying them is cynically hilarious and entirely in keeping with the confusion of our era: that there is no longer any specific kind of ethic to live by. In certain situations, the human ideal extends to an acceptance of open deception.
“You can’t be suing people for what I’ve forgiven you for,” said Brandon Stanton, creator of HoNY on X, adding a criticism on the practice of charging money for posts. “In 13 years I haven’t received a penny for a single story told on HoNY despite many millions offered,” posted Stanton. By all accounts, Humans of Bombay is a successfully monetised website that earned over 6 crores in revenue last year. Reports on social media suggest they charge over Rs 2 lakh per social media post.
This HoNY format, known as “empathetic storytelling”, is a genre suddenly visible everywhere, in the personal essay, in podcasts on Spotify, where everyone’s examining themselves and revealing the harrowing dramas that spoil so much of our lives. The idea, that through your tragic story, I come to see my own, appeals to a generation that’s come of age on Twitter and Instagram.
There’s no getting around the fact that talking about oneself, if cleverly orchestrated, can become a lucrative career. However, it’s impossible to miss the inherent contradictions in “paid features” of alleged greatness. It’s one thing to spend money on advertising when there’s a product involved like chocolate sauce or jackets; and indeed, one may forgive a narrator for exaggerating or waxing eloquent about the style or taste of something, to encourage buyers. But surely, the fact that somebody is paying for their story of struggle and redemption to be covered — with the aim to receive accolades—is a serious red flag?
It’s time that social media starts playing by the advertising rules followed by traditional platforms like TV, radio and print, where disclaimers differentiate between news and paid posts. Influencers, everywhere, are feeling the heat for charging money and posting for products camouflaged as genuine recommendations. It’s not a big ask to put out #ad or #paidpartnership since all the research suggests consumers set much more store by an influencer’s validation than a direct campaign.
Pretending a post isn’t sponsored is especially misleading when Humans of Bombay describes their site as “Cataloging the beat of humanity… one story at a time”. Any creative endeavour needs to make money— but to maintain credibility, profit and art need to be carefully balanced and scrupulously disclosed to a discerning public.
No doubt, we’re still hung up on the stereotype of the starving artist, deeply romantised throughout history, which is why we’re instantly suspicious of HoB’s modus operandi. We expect artists to be passionate and disdainful of profit but the fact is, it’s only by selling art that they can continue to make it. There’s no such thing as art for art’s sake; but when someone’s cashing in on the tensions and contradictions in someone’s life story, it’s vital that it be true.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
Karishma Mehta is the founder and manager of the website Humans of Bombay that launched in January 2014, and author of the related book Humans of Bombay (Express File Photo)
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