“Anna is going viral” my teen neighbour and a neo social activist announced to no one in particular in the lift as I struggled to check mail on my smart phone. It was only after the lift had moved up a couple of floors I realised we were the only two in the lift. As a courtesy I enquired of the college going teen as to who was running a fever. That is when she explained to me about Anna Hazare being on ‘Facebook’ spreading his message on the net. Though a bit late I realised what she meant and smiled knowingly as we reached our floor – “Good joke, uncle” she said and got out of the lift. I sensed a delicate situation was automatically retrieved – because I had not joked!!!!!
But at the first opportunity after I followed my mod teen out of the lift, I accosted uncle Google and other sources and learned that Viral may refer to any object or pattern that is able to induce some agents to replicate it, resulting in many copies being produced and spread around. Uncle told me that viral marketing, for instance refers to marketing techniques that use social networks to propagate brand awareness or to achieve increased product sales. It is said that this is achieved through a process of replication of self much like the viruses do by latching on to all contacts. That explains the viruses infecting all digital gadgets that use software……
Then I imagined what would have happened if I had not smiled on the fateful day in the lift. Else my mod teen neighbour would have told my daughter ( her friend) what a dud father she had. My daughter would then admonish me in front of her mother for not keeping myself updated on the modern lingo and how she had to face humiliation from her friends et al. My wife would then tell me the futility of spending hours on the golf course instead of reading the business pages in the news papers. “What sort of a businessman are you?” she would have asked. “Have you not heard of Viral marketing?”. she would enquire. The wife is an expert on facebook where she has managed to locate a long lost friend living in an obscure street on the outskirts of New York with a picture of her exercising on a cycle machine.
All this I imagined would have been the sequence of events if I had not smiled on the lift that day. I shuddered even while I imagined. So these days I am in frequent conversation with uncle lest I initiate a different variety of virus which will get my throat, yes, in a different way. Will that be known as spiral, I wonder.
