The fast and the furious

Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online

The fast and the furious

Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online

Want fame online in a tearing hurry? Please consider a hunger strike. It's what made Baba Ramdev a trending topic today, following his 'war against corruption' and unoriginal decision to fast until black money stashed abroad was recovered. Going by our country's record in that particular department, I predict much hunger in the life of this respected yogi over the coming months. In the wake of Anna Hazare's recently concluded fast, Ramdev's move was met with much scepticism. According to a certain Pankaj Jangid, 'Only channels like Sanskar will telecast his fast, because it's a nice opportunity for them to become mainstream.' MTVIndia simply referred to him as 'Baba wannabe Anna.'

Also in the news was Geronimo, the late Native American Apache who was resurrected from the dead after the US christened its Osama mission 'Operation Geronimo'. Naturally, American Indians were unhappy with the choice of words. Also naturally, a number of tweeple found this funny. Someone called Maria Garcia had an explanation: 'The CIA declares that, due to the impossibility of its intelligence agents being able to spell Osama bin Laden, they chose Geronimo instead.'

The most controversial doll of our time brought its questionable idea of body image to Twitter after a hotel announced bookings for Barbie-themed rooms. The launch of a Katrina Kaif Barbie doll (sigh) may also have contributed to a related surge of comments.

Lastly, conflicting views began to clog timelines following Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir's explanations of what many perceived to be an intelligence failure. While a TV news anchor referred to him as a 'bakra, who was merely doing what he was told', a certain Sehar Tariq responded to Bashir's comment about Pak's forces being neither negligent nor incompetent with: 'They were just fast asleep!' Which sounds about right, doesn't it?

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