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Moderation is a word that doesn’t seem to exist in the dictionary of the film people. If the film folk take to something, they go for it in such a way that they just don’t stop thereafter. Overkill – that’s the word to describe how the industry people operate.
The Facebook and Twitter Brigade
Take, for example, stars tweeting or posting their comments on Facebook. Either stars use these social platforms liberally or don’t use them at all. Most of the stars who do tweet or who are on Facebook, post comments so often that you’d wonder how they managed to stay alive before they became part of these platforms. But today, they must tell their followers that they’ve just woken up, they are going out for lunch to such-and-such restaurant, they are in a shoping mall…. well, ummm…. shopping, of course, that they’ve returned home tired, that the tea they just had was so refreshing, that they need to hit the sack early today because they’ve got to report for an early morning shooting the next day, that they are now going to bed, that they’d like to wish their fans “good night”, that….. the list of comments they post on Twitter or Facebook is endless. It is almost like their fans would die if they didn’t get at least an hour-by-hour, if not minute-by-minute, account of the actor’s life.
Still, have you wondered how none – repeat, none – of these stars has been tweeted or Facebooked (right coinage?) that his/her film has failed at the box-office, that it has not been appreciated by the public, that it will entail losses to its distributors, that it has bombed at the ticket windows? Considering that 80% of the films flop, how is it that not a single star has ever admitted to being part of a failed attempt – neither on Twitter nor on Facebook? Is it that the two social networking sites are only meant to be used by the stars to speak about their ‘achievements’ and not their failures? Or does it mean that the stars, who are on Facebook and Twitter, have never failed as yet, that their films have always made money for all concerned? Many stars come up with such ridiculous comments after their film bombs that you can’t help but pity them. “Luv u guys for liking my film” tweeted one vain star after his film failed to even take off while another wrote on Facebook after his starrer bombed, “Just got a call from my Bihar distributor. He said, people are going mad with excitement in the movie!”
Lack of Honesty
It is this lack of honesty which will do the stars in. Their fans might revel today in the fact that they get to know what their idols are doing everyday, perhaps, every hour, but even they will soon tire of reading half-truths. Honesty is what any reader looks for, whether in a newspaper, magazine, television reportage or on social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They will, sooner than later, begin to question the veracity of what is fed to them by way of star updates. Over a period of time, many of them will stop following the very stars they adore today. Just as it happens in the case of films – fans tire of the stars when the honesty in their performance starts declining – their popularity on the social websites will also keep falling if they regularly hide the truth about their films and only post positive comments about them, at many times, incorrect. And the stars will have nobody except themselves to blame for this.
