The Hot Girl Pseudonym

Back in the 19th and 20th centuries, there were quite a few female writers (like Mary Ann Evans). Most of them had to use male pseudonyms (like George Elliot) to be even taken seriously by the readers! Men and women by definition were not equal then. Even in late twentieth century, Joanne Rowling had to use a gender neutral J. K. Rowling to sell Harry Potter to young boys and men (the reason here being more of economics than social). This only proves that men and women are equal only by a politically correct definition but not in our way of life.

But in early 21st century, social networking and blogging became "the thing" and the tables have turned. My theory is that it is lot easier for a girl to get recognition on the internet than it is for a guy. Be it facebook, blogger, twitter or whatever, it is much easier. Just look around you, look at your facebook wall, you can see some girl making an absolutely asinine status update and she gets two pages worth of likes and lols.

It’s the same with blogs. Even when they write about boring (and often narcissistic) shopping “adventures” or neighbor’s cute puppies, they get hundreds of followers and dozens of comments. But for a guy to have hundred followers! Well I am yet to run into a non-tech, non-celebrity blog with original content written by a guy to have over a hundred followers...

Just to prove my point, I conducted a controlled social experiment in facebook where I picked up one silly status message update of a friend on facebook and I put the same status message to compare the number of reactions.
The result: It is always one up for girls; two up if she is hot and uploads her pic!

52 comments!

No comments, just one like :'(

I am not blaming the girls for the seemingly unfair advantage, I am only blaming HIM (Horny Indian Male) who comments/likes/lols every silly status message and blog! (Even I am occasionally guilty of this offence but this is my redemption).

I have an offer to write my own column for a London based online magazine(yaay!) and I initially toyed with the idea of writing with a hot-girl pseudonym but decided against it for three major reasons. One, I do not want a bunch of desperate HIMs following me. Two, I do not want to lose the chance of a hot girl falling in love with me because I am so funny (highly improbable but not impossible) and three, I respect the intelligence of my readers. So I’ll be writing as g2 everywhere :).

P.S: I did not take permission from my friend on facebook to conduct the experiment because I believe it is always more convenient to ask for apology than permission. (If she is reading this, my apologies)

P.P.S: I can be so sexist.

P.P.P.S: Celebrating over 50 followers :)

WWE: The girls hostel at IIT Bombay (part 1 of 3)

Before you fantasize a whole bunch of cat fights, WWE stands for Worst Website Ever! (suckers :p). Now that you have been successfully deceived  into clicking on the link to this page, just keep reading.

What is common between a professor in computer science, the girls hostel in IIT Bombay and the Son of God, Jesus? All the three have the worst websites EVER!

gtoosphere is proud to present a sneak peek into probably the worst website hosted in IIT Bombay (and possibly in all of IITs). We are talking about Hostel 10's website. For beginners, Hostel 10 is the undergraduate girls hostel in IIT Bombay. 

This is the landing page of the website. The horrible template coupled with the terrible color combination along with awful abuse of fonts and a depressing finish makes me want to say only one thing to the girls. "Not cool!"

I barely recovered from the shock of the landing page and I found myself in the "CULT" page... and I can assure you, this is nothing short of legend!

This is the point my eyes became numb towards colors, fonts and all possible artistic parameters and I "blindly" clicked the Photography and Fine Arts page and I was like... "Aww.. My eyes... my eyes...!!!"

That was it.. I could take it no more. If you think you can, here is the url: http://gymkhana.iitb.ac.in/~hostel10/

Note: The views expressed by the author are not his own but of the general public.

P.S: Celebrating the 36th day of my new (fairly good looking) template and over 10,000 page views to my blog :) Thank you.

P.P.S: ఉగాది శుభాకాంక్షలు

A finger for each ring

The fundamental problem with marriage is that it comes only in one size. As far as legality is concerned, matrimony is a monopoly product supplied by the government! From what I observed in Hollywood and American primetime television, the proposal is more important than the marriage itself! I am not sure if normal Americans are like that but going by the Daily Show (with Jon Stewart), it seems so!

I am no authority on marriage but I don’t see what experience has to do with giving advice so here I go.

My advice to guys planning to propose:

Don't.

My advice to guys who don’t follow my advice!

Now that you have planned to take the plunge (against my advice) you should know a few things about the intricacies of proposing.

1. The marriage proposal is supposed to be an ambush, you have to do it where they least expect you to. Choose public places so that it would be difficult for her to say no.
   
   
2. The most important thing is the engagement ring. The ring is usually hidden to add an element of surprise, there are however no rules governing where to hide it.
   
   You can hide it in a bouquet of flowers or hide it in her dinner, in a glass of champagne or her pizza dressing, in her chocolate ice-cream but don’t hide it in the bill! (In another world, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for a romantic comedy… the waiter brings a $10,000 bill for a $100 meal. The girl looks into it and finds the cost of the ring included. Then she looks up a little confused and finds our loser kneeling down and proposing)
   
   
3. Don’t take the above point too literally. Hide the ring only in food, drinks or flowers but not in things that concern the other end of the digestive track because it might end up looking like this.
   
   
   
   
4. Don’t do it on the phone, or email or SMS. To give you a sense of proportion of how stupid it looks:
   
   
   
   
5. Don’t be completely honest, you might end up looking like this.
   
   
   
   
6. Don’t do it in a sports stadium because in case you are rejected, it’ll take some 15 years to get out of the trauma and by then your kids will be old enough to find this video in youtube.

Statutory Warning:

Do not take unsolicited career, relationship and medical advice from an amateur cartoonist.

Flukonomics: Why all terrorists are muslim and more...

chapter 1: Lazy villagers sitting under a tree

There are infinite statistics about how 42% of the people in India live under BIPL (below international poverty line of $1.25 a day). Have you always wondered where all these people are?

source: http://www.kotaku.com.au/

If you go to a fairly backward village during the spring and summer months, there is a high probability that you see the majority of people working for only four hours a day and spend the afternoons sitting under a tree. doing nothing. There is also a high probability that you'll think to yourself that, “if they worked in the afternoons instead of sitting under a tree, they'd be out of poverty by now” It did not make sense that people are lazing around in the mornings and sleeping with a hungry stomach at night.

So I did a little bit of research and found some startling results. On an average, the working male from a poor family consumes about 1650 kilo-calories of food per day (that too a fairly imbalanced diet). We humans need about 600 kilo-calories per day just to keep our heart beating, our lungs breathing and other basic life functions going. That leaves about 1050 Kcal per day which is about four hours of physical work. So what we perceive as laziness is actually helplessness. They cannot afford to work for 8 hours a day which is why they are stuck in poverty!

Chapter 2: The myth of subsidies to farmers

Every time the budget is announced, it is not unusual for tax paying middle class people in urban areas to complain about the subsidies the rural farmers get in the form of water and electricity. So I did some more research to see if their complaint was justified.

source: http://www.pwconserve.org

As per govt policy, every person living in a rural area (source: Planning commission of India's report on Maharasthra) is entitled to a minimum of 40 liters of water per day whereas every person living in a city is entitled to 200 liters of water a day. (we actually flush 50 liters of water everyday!)

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The govt till date has invested Rs. 7000 per person on us (people in cities) to build and maintain infrastructure to give us our 200 liters of water a day whereas it has spent only 1600 per person in infrastructure to provide 40 liters a day per person in rural areas. If they get their 200 liters of water a day, they can use it for their cattle and grow kitchen gardens which will make them healthier (and eventually wealthier).

So the subsidies are in a way giving them their fair share!

Chapter 3: Why are all terrorists Muslim?

source: http://www.ahajokes.com

The answer to this is really simple. Because of the mainstream media! Yes, the mainstream media seems to have reserved the word “terrorist” exclusively for Jihadists. All others who are involved in terrorist activities are given a different name by the media. A name that sounds softer and better.

So terrorists in Jharkhand are called “Maoists” or “Naxals”. Terrorists in the north eastern states are called “militants”. Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka are dubbed as “Tigers” while the Irish terrorists were “separatists”. The Israleli terrorists are “commandos” and the communist terrorists are “revolutionaries". Terrorists in Africa are “insurgents”, The cuban terrorists were “rebels”, the Hungarian ones were “extremists”, the Chinese terrorists are “radicals” and the American terrorists are “counter-insurgents”. Looks like the Jihadists have hijacked the word terrorist! 

P.S: Inspired by a quick reading of Super-freakonomics :)