Feeds Issue 3 | Volume 9

Director Dr. Mini Shaji Thomas

Dean (Students’ Welfare) Dr. N. Kumaresan

Faculty Advisors Dr. S. Mekala Dr. K. N. Sheeba

Cover Story: Ajay, Athreyan, Vedanjali, Sudhir, Deeksha, Gokul, Vaishnavi, Venkat.

Cover: Harish Raj Writers: Amritha, Ashwin, Deeksha, Gokul, Kratika, Naman, Pooja, Prathamesh, Rohit, Sandeep, Sriram, Sunil, Surya, Swami, Umar, Vaishnavi, Vignesh, Vishnu, Ajay, Amogh, Anisha, Arpit, Athreyan, Avinash, Daniel, Dhwani, Ipsita, Isha, Koushik, KGP, Manu, Nila, Renga, Rishab, Shiva, Shiwang, Shrikar, Sruthi, Swathi, Swedha, Vedanjali, Abhilasha, Adhithya S, Anirudh Ram, Nandini, Parasu, Preetham. Sashank, Siddharth, Sudhir, Venkat.

Illustrators: Gokul, Sneha, Vaishnavi, Vijay, Arpit, Isha, Nikhil P, Piyush, Renga, Sruthi, Swathi, Komal.

Designers: Abhishek, Naman, Pramoth, Rasika, Sandeep, Sneha, Ajay, Amogh, Arpit, Athreyan, Harish Raj, Nikhil P, Rishab, Shiva, Shiwang, Sindhur, Sivapriyaa, Sruthi, Swedha, Swathi, Vedanjali, Komal, Mukhesh, Preetham, Sashank.

Photographers: Abishek, Sumiran, Yash

Editor

S. Akaash Preetham

Co-Editors

S. Parasuraman Pinjala Sai Sudhir

Editor, Online Presence Venkat Natarajan

Editor, Design Komal Telagavi

Founders

Karthik Selva and Deepak Valagam ( ICE 2012) Printed at Iyyan Color World, Chennai. © Feeds NITT 2019. All rights reserved.

Venkat Natarajan Editor, Online Presence Fads, however short, have always been around. Different tropes have quickly become popular in society’s collective entertainment-craving conscious, and have faded into obscurity just as fast. It’s rare that the fundamental way in which we choose to entertain ourselves changes in any major way. It’s when the medium we use to communicate develops in a substantial way that we get any lasting change in the content, as well as how we consume the content.

A change of such magnitude has happened in this last decade. While my parents primarily watch TV, I spend more of my time online, watching videos on YouTube.

The words ‘TV is a dying medium’ seem to ring louder and truer these days. My generation has gone from having scheduled long-form structured chunks of visual entertainment with limited choices, to being exposed to this veritable universe of content all at once, with no length constraints.

This has changed the way I consume content. On the one hand, having all episodes of a TV show en masse means that I’m more likely to watch all of them back-to-back.

Bingeing is the order of the day. On the other, my attention span and tolerance for entertainment is declining, and I spend far less time on, say, a particular YouTube video unless there’s some sort of immediate gratification. And evidently, I’m not alone, going by the kind of content that recommendation algorithms are boosting these days. Social media has also sufficiently adapted to cater to such needs. Apps like TikTok have capitalized on the extremely successful short-form video model that Vine popularized. In our cover story for this issue, we explore such monumental changes to the way we consume entertainment, as well as the state of entertainment currently.

This issue also explores the murky complexities of Cryptomnesia, which is when a forgotten memory returns without its being recognized as such by the person, who believes it is something new and original. Read our feature on electric vehicles as we talk about how this up and coming field of innovation is evolving. With all the ‘Ok Boomer’ memes, there’s a lot of conversation today about generational gaps, and about which generation had it better. Read our article on the ‘GenZ crisis’ to read about how our generation is dealing with mental health in our increasingly complicated world. In our article titled ‘Safety Coffin’, join us on a journey through the surprisingly active market for coffin-based inventions.

We had a lot of fun while working on this issue. We hope you will have just as much fun while reading it. May the Feeds be with you!

No Sleep

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Preetham

Yuvan, Nandini Rakshit Sriram, Naman, Rohit

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Club Page

'IIT' - a three-letter word which evokes emotions NITians will never get over. The first few months would have been extremely frustrating for all of us, that constant feeling of failure nagging our minds, refusing to let go. While most of us sat around and sulked until we got over it, Sanjeev Venkatesan, a fourth-year student of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering looked at this failure as a chance to redeem himself. However, he had no clue how to go about it. Coincidentally, he saw a message on WhatsApp about a voluntary teaching initiative by the collector of Perambalur for the underprivileged students from government schools.

His passion for teaching and a the burning desire to help students reach where he couldn’t, turned his dreams into reality and IGNITTE - the teaching club of NITT was born.

Along the way, he faced a mind-boggling number of challenges, but he pushed through each one, with guidance and support from his friends, the institute and most importantly, the collector of Perambalur. Just when everything looked started working was starting to like theyoutwere work out, the collector was transferred and it was as if they were back to square one. But they did not let this deter their spirit; they strode on, surmounting every obstacle. They subsequently started a YouTube channel which gave them sponsors and gradually the club began to grow. Today, it’s one of the largest such initiatives in any NIT or IIT in the country.

Their approach towards teaching is based on ensuring that students gain the requisite knowledge along with the necessary skills to score maximum marks. They do this in such a manner that the students can grasp the concepts taught easily. For example, while explaining the ‘limiting reagent’ concept, the tutor made use of an analogy that the students could easily understand - ‘To cook one unit of rice, two units of water are required.

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Harshini

Vishnu, Pooja, Ashwin, Rishab

So, if you add only one unit of water to one unit of rice and cook it, only half the rice would have cooked properly. Here, the reaction (ie. rice cooking) stops because one of the reagents (water) gets over. Hence, in this particular reaction, water is the limiting reagent.’ This is just one example among countless others.

Competitive exams in general, JEE (Main) specifically, is more of a test of speed than in-depth knowledge of the subject. To crack such an exam, students should be able to identify easy questions, and not waste time in solving lengthy problems. IGNITTE coaches the students on such techniques, thereby helping them maximise their score in the limited time they have. Without exposure to such techniques, the chances of them securing a seat in a premium institute would be pretty low.

IGNITTE functions in a very unique way: students from various government schools, carefully selected through an entrance test, are brought to our college campus every weekend to be coached by the members of the club. The students stay within campus for these two days and dedicate this time for preparation for the competitive exams, and food arrangements are made within campus for them. A constant series of tests and weekly assignments help the club monitor every single student. The club also takes care of the applications for these students and ensures that they have everything they would need before, during and after the exam.

The efforts put in by the club have started to bear fruit. Jansi of Perambalur district, who was coached by members of IGNITTE, was allocated a B. Tech Civil Engineering seat in NIT Trichy this year. But unfortunately, due to personal reasons she could not join the college. She is now pursuing a B.Sc. degree at another reputable institution. Furthermore, 13 students of IGNITTE’s Perambalur programme cleared NEET 2019, with 2 of them securing seats in a government medical college.

On the whole, the club does its best to help society and to bring out the best in its students. This effort to give an opportunity to the underprivileged section of the society to develop and move ahead is something that's highly commendable. Making this project grow bigger and expand to other esteemed colleges would be a dream come true for IGNITTE, enabling several other students from different parts of the country to chase their dreams!

Abhishek

Venkat, Shrikar, Tania

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Feature

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Rasika

Feature

Sriram, Deeksha, Vishnu, Ashwin

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Poetry

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Rasika

Shiwang

Feature

Why do we find an increasing number of people suffering from mental issues in this younger generation?

The world that Generation Z has inherited is one of unprecedented chaos. A recession from which the economy never really recovered, cyclones, earthquakes and hurricanes occurring with alarming frequency in all parts of the world and an environment that has been damaged beyond repair leading to a climate that is destructive. To add to it all, it’s a digital world out there, today, and the internet that has brought people closer online, has pushed them away in real life resulting in a spike in the number of teens and young adults who are depressed, anxious and feel alone. We have it worse than any other generation has ever had it but why?

One of the biggest reasons is the economy. The Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000s and the housing market crashed not long after. We have lived through the Great Recession and we’ve seen the financial hits that our parents or people around us have taken and we’re cautious and worried and rightly so. The rising cost of both a high school and college degree and declining employment opportunities, even for the well educated, means that there is no security, no guarantee of success or even a stable livelihood and that is more than a little unsettling. The world is in political upheaval. Extremist governments that seem more concerned about leaving a mark than actually working for the people and rampant corruption has left us disenchanted with and mistrustful of the political leaders and their ability to ensure that we have a safe, secure space with the opportunities that we need to learn, grow and flourish.

The environment has started to show alarming signs of fatigue, caused by years of reckless pollution, and is quickly approaching a point of no-return. Plastic in our oceans, smog in our skies and harmful chemicals in the food we eat and water we drink, there is no escaping the side effects of development. Finally, the internet has played a significant role in the deteriorating mental health of people of all age groups but especially those most susceptible to it, teens and young adults. The inexplicable need to be connected all the time because of a fear of missing out and the yearning for validation through likes, views, subscriptions or comments has made us anxious, depressed if we don’t see the required reactions and incapable of communicating with and relating to people in real life.

A generation know to be more educated but poorer than their elders, the Gen Z are left feeling incompetent and insecure in an environment that is crumbling down around them.

With a constant flow of information and notifications of every change from every nook and cranny in the world, and around us; yearning for valid-

Sandeep

-ation and assurance that we are doing well. The pressure to perform in an increasingly competitive society bound by rigid constructs and establish one’s mark tends to eventually take a toll on you.

A combination of these pressures pressing down from a multitude of directions results in lower self- esteem, anxiety, self- harm and depression. A staggering statistic that nearly a fifth of the United States population is suffering from a mental condition while only about 45% of this population group reports “good” mental health status, should raise alarms. Adding to this spectrum of darkness, we are now a world of aging decision makers and withering teenagers. Is all hope lost? Do we call time on this planet and begin looking for a fresh start, elsewhere in the universe? Not yet. The fight against climate change has slowly but surely started to show results. With increasing awareness, people want to take steps to protect the environment and hopefully, reverse some of the damage that has been done.

The economy, though volatile, is unlikely to crash because of the drastic shift in spending habits that has seen a reduction in purchases made on credit and a spike in savings. Organisations are opening up to the idea that a college degree isn’t the only sign of intelligence and are hiring based on talent. An increasing portion of young people are becoming politically conscious and protesting laws that do no benefit society as a whole, as shown by the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and the Yellow Vest protests in Paris. Parents and educators have started to understand and pay closer attention to mental health and ensure that those who need it, get the required medical attention. We’re fighting and we’re becoming stronger, everyday. One day, the world will come to an end but that day is still a long way off and we, Generation Z,are going to push it even further away.

There is after all a bright side to all things. Millennials have managed to bring down the levels of stigma surrounding the topic of mental health and far more people in this generation choose to address their issues and seek professional help.

However, not everyone is comfortable enough to open up to those around them in regards to such matters. The least we can do is create a safe space for our peers; an environment that alleviates them off the pressures of this world and let them be the carefree youngsters they were meant to be.

Sruthi, KGP, Naman, Daniel

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Feature

E ntertainment

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Harish Raj

Cover Story

As a progressive society took shape based on mutual understanding and worldwide communication, content that had the potential to entertain a wide spectrum of audience emerged. With the advent of incorporeal forms of media, such as social media, verbal and visual forms of entertainment grew popular, changed and morphed with time. However, the idea wasn’t new to humanity. Carvings and hieroglyphics found all over the world indicate that the idea of sharing thoughts through writing and illustrations has existed for as long as humanity itself. It was the uncurbed availability of technology, however, that promoted a widespread presence of entertainment based online content over the world wide web. Let’s talk more about the same as we delve into the major forms of entertainment that have dominated the world over the past decade.

memes Since its birth, the Internet has served as a medium for the spread of information and other not-so-serious content. Richard Dawkins, a pioneer in memetics - the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution - introduced the concept of ‘memes’ in his book ‘The Selfish Gene (1976)’. There is no origin for memes, as the simple fact is that they are just an evolved form of jokes that used to be passed on by word, text messages or comics. However as connections between people from varied backgrounds formed, the sharing of satirical ideas and takes on politics, world events, celebrities, pop culture, videos and so on became prevalent. The first appreciable presence of memes was recorded during the late 90s, and increased in popularity due to generally funny concepts such as rickrolling and lolcats in the 2000s.

However the 2010s, or as many netizens call it, ‘the golden age of memes’ has seen the emergence of memes as arguably the most influential branch of media on the planet. For example, the ‘Dress Controversy’ of 2011, a heated argument between netizens over whether a particular dress was black and blue or blue and white led to a record number of comments on Facebook posts over the two weeks in which the topic was heavily discussed. This event is widely considered to be the turning point in the history of memes, and what started back then now has proved to be an influential factor in deciding the future of multiple nations and maybe even the world.

periods. However, memes have both a positive and a negative side to them. For example, memes have been used to mock the oppressive nature of governments around the world such as the ones in China, Egypt, Syria etc. in the past few years. This has enabled these issues to gain a widespread following from all over the world and thereby impose pressure on the governing bodies of these states. On the other hand, the dark side of these memes has dictated attention in recent times.

For example, the Tide pod memes which were prevalent in 2017 and 2018 resulted in several cases of people actually consuming Tide pods following meme culture. At least 37 cases have been recorded wherein the patient admitted to having consumed Tide pods willingly. Such has been the influence that the easiest way to spread fake news or hoaxes is through the usage of memes.

All over the world, memes have been used for long to express people’s thoughts on serious issues and concepts in a way that might be easily comprehensible to any viewer and thereby achieving high publicity in

Ajay, Vedanjali, Athreyan, Deeksha, Amritha, Gokul, Vaishnavi

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The first recorded usage of memes to influence the public to personal favour was probably during the United States Presidential elections of 2008. Although most of the memes were generated by the general public, there were dedicated teams on both the Democratic and Republican sides for spreading propaganda and to an extent, defaming the opponent. However, the presence of a small audience compared to present day prevented the social media battles from turning ugly and kept it under control. Today, every ambitious politician, irrespective of his/her status or position has his/her own social media team who constantly monitor

their influence over the public, analyze and come up with innovative methods to attain widespread social media reach, through the usage of memes. Although a major proportion of memes stick to genuinely humorous topics over which most normal people can have a laugh, there is a widespread presence of potentially offensive memes targetting certain classes of people, segregated based on race, nationality, and even sex.

Ultimately, this has resulted in conflicts between groups of people thereby destroying the harmony of social media communities.

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emes

Non-PC hum A lot of people have been hailing the return of Non-Politically Correct Humour as a countercultural response to the overtly PC nature of current discourse.

This can be seen by the fact that even though Dave Chappelle’s recent comedy special ‘Sticks and Stones’ got negative to mixed reviews from critics, the audience score sits at a high 99% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes.

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Komal

Before we can delve into this phenomenon, we have to first understand what the phrase ‘non-PC humour’ will refer to in the context of this article. The phrase ‘non-PC humour’ means any sort of humour that might offend a group of people. On one side there are people who claim offensive humour shouldn’t be allowed and making jokes about minorities is enabling their mistreatment, on the other side people argue that no joke can be made that doesn’t offend someone and

Coming back to Chappelle’s special, critics judged the special for being irresponsible and out of touch with the current scenario. They felt that his jokes about LGBT people were insensitive and enabled others to be dismissive of their predicament. Chapelle does respond to similar criticisms from the past in this very special.

He says people need to learn how to separate jokes from political statements. He also mentions that as a comedian on stage he should be among the last people that should be taken seriously. That is not to say that he doesn’t make political statements from time to time, especially on topics of race, PC culture and ‘cancel culture’. But he makes a clear distinction between when he is being serious and when he is joking.

n

on-pc

mOUr

jokes made by professional comedians should be taken as jokes and nothing else. A few also have more nuanced opinions on what they think is acceptable and what is not. Certain topics may be off-limits to them due to personal experiences and preferences.

Chappelle is not the centerpiece to this culture of non-PC humour but rather a link in a chain. There have been many comedians who were against overt political correctness, with George Carlin regarded as one of the greatest. His pieces which were more of social and political commentary rather than jokes have inspired many other excellent comedians like Louis C.K., Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld in their pursuit of comedy. His often scathing criticism of politically correct language and how it normalises many conditions and situations still resonates with many people.

While the brand of comedy of that calibre died with him, with similar counter PC comedy being sidelined by more family-friendly humour, the debate has been reignited by Chapelle’s new special. It is a debate that is essential. How much political correctness is acceptable and is the current scenario overkill? How much should humour be constrained by the need to be politically correct?

The definition of Non-PC humour is blurred along sexual and cultural lines. In 2017, a controversy involving Steve Harvey, the comedian made jokes about Asian men and how they are not attractive enough on ‘National Television’. There was a lot of controversy that followed. There were two kinds of people, people either attacking Steve Harvey for making racist jokes or defending him saying, “He’s a comedian, it's his job!”

When it comes to Non-PC humour and its resurgence, there are many double-standards. This is because society and mainstream media have taught us that it is not alright to make black jokes but it’s not a big deal to make Asian jokes.

This is also very apparent in another case in which comedian Al Franken, released a picture in which he gropes a sleeping woman. The most sickening part of the photo is Franken’s wide grin, framing the grope as a joke with the camera. He admitted that it was supposed to be a joke. The woman in question was clearly upset by this situation, as she tweeted that groping someone without their consent had nothing funny about it.

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Comedy is no excuse for inappropriate conduct. Some comedians - mostly white, mostly male- insist that “PC culture is killing comedy”. If a joke doesn't land quite right, or if it offends someone all they say is "hey, it's just a joke. Laugh it off, suck it up and MOVE ON." This method of dealing with criticism means when people (often minorities like women and/or Asians) express their objection, brushing them off with terms like “killjoy” and “women/Asians should learn to take a joke”. This shows that there are huge double-standards when it comes to Non-PC humour.

In short, non-PC humour has been the response to what people think to be the radical brand of political correctness. It is part of the overall counter-culture that has evolved against what many people refer to as the ‘radical left’. People feel that their freedom of expression is stifled because of overt political correctness. Thus, they hail comedians such as Chappelle who seem to be unbothered by such constraints as heroes.

With the sheer size and variety of pop culture today, being relevant and having extensive knowledge of it has become more necessary to be able to carry a conversation. Every single one of us has either subconsciously or consciously tried to consume more entertainment, albeit in the form of music, movies or the latest TV show. The world's attention span is short, and the rate at which people consume entertainment gets higher every day. This has led to a boom in entertainment production and online streaming, with new shows and movies hitting the screens every day.

People are always on their devices, consuming content at much higher rates than they ever have.

Services like Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime have completely taken over the market when it comes to “bingeable” online content. Taking the example of TV shows, some of the most broadly available content on the internet: between two episodes, there is barely any time for viewers to decide between watching the next episode or doing something else. It doesn’t help that there’s a timer counting down the seconds until the next video starts. It’s an inescapable spiral till you finish the show, and after that, there's always a feeling of emptiness that you need to watch something else to fill.

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In his TED Talk in 2017, psychologist Adam Alter explores our tech addiction and how much time screens steal from us. In this talk he brings up an interesting concept while talking about 20th-century television: Stopping Cues. A stopping cue is a prompt included in every type of media that exists. Chapters in a book, episodes in a show, advertisements on TV in each episode, sections in a newspaper, these are cues: the content creator signals you to consider whether you should continue, or if you should start doing something else. The entertainment that we consume either do not provide such stopping cues, or do so in such a way that the cues are easily overcome or are too fast to respond

The resurgence of PC humour is a strong indication of this sentiment. On the other hand, many people are not on the same page with this resurgence of Non-PC comedy. As the eagerness to blame Steve Harvey and the rush to condemn Franken in the wake of that woman’s accusation is quite visible, not everyone is laughing. There are umpteen people who seem to mistake Non-PC as an excuse for the trade-off of decency in comedy. As this reckoning of what’s right and what’s wrong continues, it’s ultimately upon each individual to decide if there should be a line that comedians can never cross or if some people should just learn to take a joke?

Bingei Ente

to. This is even seen in the difference between social media sites then and now: we now have scrolling, bottomless news feeds that just keep going on for as long as we keep swiping up. The lack of stopping cues is what has promoted what is now colloquially called bingeing.

The word “binge” has never had a positive meaning attached to it. Binge-eating is even listed as a disorder.

But binge-watching content is a much more socially acceptable phenomenon, especially as it proves to be a much more methodical and efficient mode of consuming information and content. And with today’s world defining its social aptitude based off of extremely temporary and transitory pop culture references, bingeing becomes very useful. Moreover, a study conducted in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts journal, published by the American Psychological Association has shown that watching intelligently written shows increase our emotional intelligence and make us more empathetic people. We’ve become faster at processing information and there has been an overall increase in our capacity of content consumption.

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ingeing

ing & Visual tertainment It’s not only how we consume entertainment that has changed - the platforms that we use, and the content that we consume has seen drastic changes in the last couple of decades. A short-lived app that got extremely popular for this very purpose was Vine. Vine provided a challenge: to make an impactful video in 6 seconds or less. The rest is history, and now millennials use a format that Vines introduced as a way of speech in their lives through various video-sharing apps. The short-form nature of the videos suited the decreasing attention spans of the everyday viewer. Even if Vine does not exist anymore, its format lives on in various other platforms and social media. TikTok is one such mainstream app. Having originated in Beijing for markets outside China, TikTok caught on quick with Indian users, completely wiping out Dubsmash and other Dub apps in the process. The sweeping success of TikTok sets an example of what to expect when you leave the motion to entertain to the average Indian viewer. Recently, the immensely popular boy band, BTS joined TikTok setting the world record for the fastest account to reach one million followers, leaving people clamouring to download the app.

Today’s ‘fandoms’ have also shaped much of visual entertainment in the mainstream. One such example is K-pop, where apps that are related to this billion-dollar industry are gaining momentum at a massive rate. Fans of K-pop idols are using apps such as Amino to share memes and latest updates about their favourites. They can also chat and discover communities and fandoms within the app. Another such app that is used by stars to post music videos and appearances on talk shows, to talk to fans and report their daily activities is V Live.

With the V Lives that are streamed, fans get news about latest comebacks, variety show appearances etc. For the K-pop industry, which is seen as much more than just music and dance, but also as an epitome of fan service, this app proved instrumental in keeping fans hooked to their idols.

Many may not see social media apps as a means of visual entertainment. But apps like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have proved this wrong. With videos of celebrities on Twitter and Instagram stories, many even rising to fame due to their addictive social media content (the most recent example being Cardi B), or us binge-watching videos of life hacks or delicacies on

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these apps, we can realize their impact on our entertainment quota. Twitter is also a great place to share videos from concerts or exclusive events to the whole world as search based hashtags guide us to our interests.

YouTube has become the go-to source for online videos. It is a classic example of freedom of expression where anyone with a Gmail account can post videos on their channel. Imagine walking around the streets of your city whilst talking to a camera. Five years ago, this would’ve been embarrassing or even frowned upon.

Today, we come across a lot of YouTubers who cover their whereabouts quite regularly and occasionally record their visit to places of interest through vlogs. In the recent past, there has been a significant rise in the number of vloggers. A survey of 1,500 13-17 year-olds in the US commissioned by Variety in 2014 came up with its own definition of “influence”, and claimed that YouTube stars Smosh, The Fine Bros, PewDiePie, KSI and Ryan Higa were more influential for this age group than any traditional film, music or TV stars. While we’re at it, it couldn't have been more appropriate to mention that Pewdiepie, gave a close competition to T-series, India’s largest record label, in the past several months for quite an appreciable period.

Clearly, there has been an increase in awareness of making money by uploading such content, especially on Youtube. Seeing the potential in such ‘vloggers’, several brands have collaborated with them to increase their sales. While the subjects of interest range from food to travel to beauty and fashion or even daily routines, beauty and skincare vlogs are trusted media when it comes to the clever marketing of a product. The main motive of such videos is to help an individual in building a brand for themselves. The surprisingly high appeal for vlogs is probably because they are made by people who are relatable to the viewers and are done so on a personal basis which brings about an almost loyal bond between the viewer and the vlogger.

YouTube has become a one-stop-shop for satisfying our entertainment needs with comedy, music, gaming, dance, vlogs, crack videos, movie clips, web series art, memes, life hacks, food, ASMR, speeches, sports, news and culture-oriented videos. Having such a large library of videos to watch at one’s fingertips has not only changed the way we consume content, but also what content becomes popular. Recommendation algorithms control most of what we watch these days.

Since YouTube is monetized by advertisements, there has been much debate on what kind of content these algorithms should be recommending to remain advertiser-friendly. Vast changes are being made in what we think of entertainment, and of what content is acceptable.

Virtual reality or VR was created to bring a new dimension to 3D entertainment forms and creates a sense of closeness towards the simulated experience.

Several tech giants have seen this as an opportunity to

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develop new products; Samsung launched Samsung Gear VR while Oculus launched Rift which was quite a hit in the market followed by the launch of Sony Playstation VR. Clearly, the image of gamers constantly glaring at their laptop screens and the perception of gaming as a whole, saw a drastic change through these products. YouTube has also launched a feature wherein the user can watch videos using a VR headset. Today, several exhibitions put up such VR forms on display like the Augmented World Expo (AWE) and several others across the world.

While online platforms for visual entertainment are convenient and personal, there's nothing like a live performance to enthrall the audience. Theatre, an art form that seemed to be losing its colour, has seen a surprising resurgence in attention, especially Broadway and the rise in popularity of Hamilton. Dramas by artists like YG Mahendra, which are also put up on YouTube, and the famous attempts at dramatizing the famous series, Ponniyin Selvan, by the Tamil author Kalki, are some examples of how this art form is not one to disappear. With musicals adding to the charm, the stage is brought to life with colour Have you ever stood in a throng, chanting the name of your stars, or sat amidst a crowd, hushed up, as performers brought songs to life? That feeling is incomparable. Concerts are a music lover's Disneyland - magical places filled with stars and rainbows. It brings out the latent synesthesia in every person. There are austere Carnatic music enthusiasts, ready with their talas and ragas, hoping to jaunt their interests, and there are the pop, rock, EDM, jazz, Bollywood, and hip hop fans, who whoop and sing along, pouring their souls and energy into every syllable, hoping to infuse the artists with vigour. Concerts are an artist's canvas, where their paint with their own style and flavour.

World tours are becoming more common and fans are constantly online, hoping to snag a ticket, praying that their beloved come to their country or city. As for the month of Margazhi, in December-January, we see people waiting for days to snag a ticket to Nithyashree or Sudha Ragunathan's performance. Concerts are proof of the fact that nothing beats experiencing something in person.

The entertainment industry, in essence, can probably be summed up to serve two different purposes primarily to engage and occupy viewers, audiences and crowds to please them with their skills on various media. Their other - often misinterpreted - objective is to give out a social message. One that they align themselves with over their career. They use their privileged status to garner attention to societal problems. These help us grow as a civilization and pave the way for growth as a species. The way in which we entertain ourselves has always evolved through the years depending on the kind of media that we have at our disposal. And so has what we think of as entertainment.

Creative Space

Athreyan

Athreyan, Deeksha, Piyush

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Evolution of EVs Many environmental problems plague our planet.

The rapid decline in the amount of fossil fuels is an alarming one, especially with regard to transportation.

A commonly offered solution to this problem is to switch to alternate sources of energy. The automobile industry has been trying to make this change by attracting consumers to an apparently less polluting option: electric vehicles. The Indian government has even made policies with the vision of achieving “only electric vehicles by 2030”. In the wake of such measures, this article has been written to explore the technicalities and the economic impact of said measures.

The most popular electric vehicles are powered by rechargeable batteries. Variants include solar panels or an electric generator to convert fuel into electricity. The first crude model was built in 1827 by a Hungarian priest - Ányos Jedlik; however, the first mass-produced electric vehicles appeared in America in the early 1900s.

CLEAN COMBUSTION

BATTERY LIFE

Electric vehicles are cleaner in terms of combustion in the sense that they do not release carcinogenic pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter which may cause respiratory problems.

Batteries can last as long as 8 years. In fact, fuel cells may soon take over conventional batteries thus making them even more sustainable.

MAINTENANCE Maintenance of EVs is easier as they contain less moving parts.

RECYCLABLE EVs significantly reduce noise pollution as well.

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They didn't gain much traction due to the limitations of storage batteries and improvements in gasoline cars. By the 21st century, the importance of renewable energy kindled exploration in EVs (electric vehicles).

These experiments tried to answer the question of whether EVs are truly more eco-friendly compared to their gasoline counterparts.

However, the question to be pondered over is if electricity used for charging comes from fossil fuels, are EVs truly eco-friendly? Well, in that case, it isn’t. If batteries are charged using the energy from solar panels, nuclear reactors, windmills or any other renewable resource, then in some sense they are. Still, a point to be considered is the way the batteries are manufactured. It is an energy intensive process wherein a lot of pollutants get released. Additionally, they require extraction of elements like lithium or cobalt, scant in abundance, and need to be recycled.

NOISE POLLUTION Apart from these, recycled materials can be used to manufacture the car. For instance, Ford and Nissan have independently made cars out of bio-based materials for padding, recycled water bottles, plastic bags, old car parts and even second-hand home appliances.

Let’s Talk About

With the pros and cons being highlighted, how would an immediate shift to EVs affect the economy, worldwide and in India?

India’s recent policies have raised some eyebrows.

Back in 2017, transport minister Mr Nitin Gadkari announced, to quote,

“

“

I am going to do this, whether you like it or not.

And I am not going to ask you. I will bulldoze it.

This meant that electric vehicles would reach 100% penetration into the market, which was a pleasant surprise with a dark pointer to the usual Indian way of implementation. This number made heads turn all over the world, especially in France and the UK, who can safely be assumed to be leaders in this field of change.

This scale of a drastic change was estimated to be completed by 2040, while India has set the same to be done by 2030. Though now, the current aim, has taken a dive from 100% to 30%.

Entering the fourth largest automotive market, the future of electric vehicle sales doesn’t look bright.

The largest hurdle is the ready availability of and the ability to recycle and to obtain power sources, which are primarily batteries. Depending on the type of the electric vehicle, the power distribution between the battery and gasoline will vary, and this battery is what

Komal

makes up 50% of the cost of the car in itself. This creates an imbalance, wherein there is a weighted difference between those countries that contain the required resources and those with the ability to process them.

Barring a breakthrough in the production/consumption, the average cost of the electric vehicle will stay twice as that of an internal combustion engine based automobile with far greater usage characteristics.

Enhancing affordability while simultaneously improving sustainability, the Indian government rolled out schemes and subsidiaries. Last February, the centre allocated $1.4 billion on subsidies, building the required infrastructure and promoting its presence. With currently 1% penetration in the market, the governments should follow up and be ready to incorporate the necessary changes required for smooth operations on the consumer side, while companies need to step up to promote sales and push for existing and upcoming demands from the centre.

Even upon establishing the support systems, smooth functioning lies dormant in a mirage, with conflicting politics and diverse scams.

In a hugely petrolhead dominated market, it’s hard to know where electric vehicles fit. But in the grand scheme of things, the future is here and It becomes a question of when, more than how we get on board.

Swedha, Vaishnavi, KGP

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Sruthi

Feature

Athreyan, Prathamesh, Gokul

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Ever started singing a tune that you think you made up but then turned out to be a hit pop song from a while ago, or ever told a joke which turned about to be one your friend made up a few days back? If your answer to either or both of those is yes, then you have suffered from the phenomenon of cryptomnesia. The technical definition of cryptomnesia is “thoughts that objectively are memories but subjectively are seen as not”. In short, we mistake memories for original thoughts.

There are two ways in which one can experience cryptomnesia: either with other people’s work or one’s own work. While the latter is less embarrassing and doesn’t have serious repercussions, careers and reputations can be destroyed by the former. Cryptomnesia, while known about and acknowledged as a phenomenon in academic circles, is difficult to prove because it is such a subjective thing to experience. Thus one has to be careful about the work that they put out and make sure it is not an accidental replication of previous work.

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Athreyan, Swami, Venkat Sivaprakash

One of the most well-discussed cases of cryptomnesia in the past is that of Helen Keller. Even though she was blind and deaf from a very young age, Helen Keller had started writing right from her childhood days. At the age of 11, she submitted a story called The Frost King to the head of the Perkins School for the Blind. It went on to get published in the school’s Alumni Magazine, as well as in the Goodson Gazette, a journal on the deaf-blind education. However, the year after, it was found that the story bore a strong resemblance to Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby.

While Keller did not, at first, recall hearing the story or the book it was in, an investigation soon revealed that while she did not own the book, the book was read to her when she spent a summer a few years prior at the home of her teacher’s mentor. Keller was then tried by a school “court” that consisted of four sighted people and four blind ones. They interrogated her and the vote was eventually split 4-to-4 on whether or not she had knowingly plagiarized the book. The tie-breaking vote was cast in Keller’s favor by Michael Anagnos, the head of the Perkins School and a friend of Keller.

Abhishek

Feature Keller later wrote in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, that this incident had scared her so much as a child, that she gave up attempting fiction afterward and nearly stopped writing altogether. Keller said this anxiety arose because she had a difficult time separating what was her original thought from what was read to her, saying, “my compositions are made up of crude notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions of the authors I have read.”

This brings up the interesting debate of how harsh should we be against supposedly plagiarised work, when there is no way of proving it wasn’t caused by cryptomnesia. Does the merit of the work in question still stand? Isn’t the compunction in the author’s mind that this criticism creates too great a risk?

Luckily, Keller had many allies, one among them being Mark Twain, who wrote strongly worded letters in her defense. In one of his letters, he said, “For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them.” She still had her detractors, who doubted the timeline of when the book was read to her, and surmise whether the story was actually intended to be a paraphrase of the original. The truth is very difficult to find, as it generally is in cases of cryptomnesia.

Cryptomnesia has affected a wide range of artists spanning various languages and fields. In the film industry, self-cryptomnesia has been observed in directors, composers, and even actors! 'Dead wives' is a recurring theme in many of acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan's movies.

In Memento, the whole story revolves around the protagonist's search for his wife's murderer, and in Inception, Di Caprio's character is constantly shadowed by the disturbing dream memory of his late wife.

Other such recurring themes can be seen in movies directed by other popular filmmakers too, such as Steven Spielberg (absentee fathers), Terry Gilliam (little people), Richard Donner (people jumping off buildings) etc. Self cryptomnesia in music, though, is a tricky topic. Hans Zimmer, one of Hollywood's biggest names, has been accused of repeating himself multiple times. The soundtracks of A Thin Red Line, Inception, 12 Years A Slave, have the same chord progression at their cores. While some might defend this recurrence as an instance of cryptomnesia, others might chastise the legendary composer for being lazy and uncreative.

Even the best among us is susceptible to this phenomenon. Studies have been conducted on the very closely related subject of ‘source amnesia’ where people forget the source of the information they seem to possess. So, in a way, cryptomnesia is a specific case of source amnesia. Studies on source amnesia, though, have found that memory about the source is no way correlated to memory of the information or thought.

So even the sharpest minds with the best memory can fall victim to this phenomenon.

There is also a sentiment that cryptomnesia is inevitable, that every thought anyone has is a concoction of ideas and experiences they have had over their lifetime. The only originality is the act of piecing together the information that one already has. While this view invalidates the perception that humanity is a species that possesses a special spark that fuels our ingenuity, it seems to be a pragmatic position to hold.

This sentiment is aptly encapsulated by Steve Jobs who said, “Creativity is just connecting things”.

So the next time your friend thinks you stole their joke or your teacher thinks you copied your assignment from someone, you know which article to show them.

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Feature

Synesthesia I have always been a slow reader. Not because the plain text exhausts my limited attention span, no. To me, words aren't a collection of letters that make sense when they're together. To me, each letter is a colour, a hue magnificent in its own right. This paragraph, for instance, has its fair share of vivid violets and gorgeous greens, all put together in this sea of patterns. This additional complexity, to me, is astoundingly beautiful. Sadly, I'm yet to get past admiring this and I struggle to read fast...but it's definitely worth it.

I also hear pictures. Every still, every frozen moment in time, so silent to the unwary, to me, pleading to be heard. A windmill on a tulip farm. Idyllic, serene, downright picturesque; to me, it's accompanied by a cacophony of people milling about, the ancient windmill creaking and groaning with each passing second, seemingly in agony‌lifeless yet so full of life.

I think January is probably a good person to have a conversation with and July's an absolute diva. I love Monday's fashion sense and I can't figure out why people hate him so much. I'm bizarre, I know. But I see all these different facets of life and I get to appreciate them. What's the harm in a little eccentricity if you get to be special?

Synesthesia, a word that consists of the parts syn- meaning a union, and aesthesiameaning aesthetics. It refers to a union of senses where a stimulus in one sense of the body triggers another. Picture it this way, if someone was playing the piano, you can associate each note to a colour or taste. If you were standing next to someone who was resenting something, touching them might make you feel a bitter or sour taste in your mouth.

It is said that every person is born with synesthesia. As babies, our senses are all in one single mesh. As babies, we all possess the ability to establish a connection between the senses. But as we grow older, our senses diverge from each other to perform one singular function. Though we can still say that taste is a collection of smells, we can't actively taste a dish after catching a whiff of it. We can't see colours as we listen to sounds or hear notes when we taste something. The representation in movies of sounds that we hear when we feel or see something is a classic example of synesthesia. To put it simply, it is an intermingling of senses.

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Mukesh Abhishek

Rohit, Vaishnavi, Sandeep, Ashwin

In some human beings, the child-like tendencies remain. The senses haven't parted ways, or established boundaries. As a result of this, those individuals possess a deeper and better connection to things they observe, or feel. In fact, it is not necessary for a person to have all of these conditions. Synesthesia is of different types like auditory synesthesia, mirror touch synesthesia and chromesthesia to name a few.

The thing about synesthetes is that their daily experiences get enhanced. Their memory and graphic approach is better and unique due to association of colours to numbers or smells to music notes. They have an incredibly artistic life due to this neurological condition. However, all of it is not rose-colored (pun intended) as they struggle to explain it without seeming unrelatable or using sentences like "your birth date is pretty". Support is needed to make them thrive and to enhance their abilities. And synesthetes have a very hard time adjusting to colour charts or any other similar standards at workplaces or otherwise as it conflicts with their natural order or sequence of perception.

Through the years, synesthesia has found representation in various forms of art. A great example from the twentieth century is the work of Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian painter who is credited with introducing the world to abstract art. It is said that his being a synesthete helped him greatly in painting art that was truly abstract. Kandinsky expressed the communion between artist and viewer as being available to both the senses and the mind.

Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that (for example) yellow is the color of middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the color of closure and the end of things; and that combinations of colors produce vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played on a piano.

While “hearing” his paintings, Kandinsky associated certain spiritual qualities with the colours he used. Most of these associations are connections we ourselves have made at some point: yellow signifies warmth, while blue is associated with coldness, for instance.

White is serene, and presents the possibility of painting any colour over it. On the other hand, black signifies hopelessness and despair; the bad kind of silence. These connections have manifested themselves in tradition too: a bride at her wedding normally wears white, and mourners at a funeral wear black.

In the more recent past, there have been several passing references to synesthesia in movies and TV shows. In the movie The War of The Worlds, it is theorized early on in the movie that Martians have the ability to smell colours. In a scene from the medical drama House, a character seeking help says, “I started to hear through the eyes.” Synesthesia has also found mention in the anime Canaan, whose protagonist has the ability to see emotions as colours. Also, singer Billie Eilish is reportedly synesthetic, and her music videos are supposed to have multiple layers to them.

While these are all minor references to the condition, synesthesia finds a more central place in the fantasy novel series, The Secret Series, written by Pseudonymous Bosch. Each of the five books in the series is associated with one of the senses, with entities like “The Symphony of Smells” and the “sound prism” playing major roles in the plot. Many of the characters are synesthetic: for instance, a pair of magicians who can read minds with their ability, and a boy who creates abstract art. Interestingly, the antagonists kidnap synesthetes as they believe they hold the secret to immortality.

It is clear that synesthesia imparts unique experiences to those who have it, enabling them to appreciate the beauty in all the little things that appear to be mundane to everyone else.

Art and popular culture have been undeniably impacted by synesthetes; their ability to come up with fascinating and often remarkably insightful descriptions for their everyday experiences is what sets them apart. Perhaps it's better that only a select few are endowed with this extraordinary quality, because who knows if the rest of us could even begin to fathom the multifaceted aspects of life.

Parasu, Arpit

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Harish Raj

No Sleep

Sruthi

Amritha, Shrikar, Ajay

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Crossword

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Preetham