BY CA RAJENDRA PATHAK  

 

 

AT ANY given point of time, half of the world population is likely to be in sleep mode. And out of remaining half, a majority are hooked to YouTube via mobile, surfing on various channels, many of them addicted to watching YouTube content so much so that watching YouTube would be deemed to be a natural phenomenon in the days to come. YouTube AI is working real-time & overtime to analyse & feed surfing pattern to its users. YouTube suggested content gets aligned to latest surfing history instantly. There are thousands of channels and the authors of these channels are the new breed of ‘Subject matter Experts’. These experts seem to have hijacked YouTube content by mushrooming in no time, most of them amateur ones, who somehow want to encash the monetary benefits of running their own channels. So before they unfold their ‘expert knowledge’, one has to mandatorily pass through their appeal to subscribe to their channels. Once that is over, now the ball is set to get enlightened about the expert’s deep knowledge in his subject. Information bytes are delivered as if the expert is the only person on this planet who can decode the subject matter. How else one can come across a young teen decoding the intrinsic meaning of Bhagvad Gita, even though the expert may have failed to even loosely understand his/her college subjects.

 

But once they land on YouTube, there is immediate transformation to subject matter experts. Variety of subjects for which these experts are there on YouTube is equally interesting. So we have expert prescribing just one type of special Pranayam to keep 100+ diseases at long distance. Someone has a solution to reduce belly fat in just 3 days while some other expert has a solution to either put on or shed 10 kg weight in one week. Someone has rare & special inside knowledge about which celebrity is in relationship with whom and what are their future plans. Someone is determined to educate us on variety of alternate medicines for common ailments. There is one popular ‘Sir’ on YouTube who can lecture on any topic in his own unique style. Narishakti is nowhere lagging behind and equally visible on YouTube offering expertise on how to get rid of gangs of cockroaches, assuring 100% result, not like 99.99% germs free guarantee of Lizol. Thanks to YouTube, many young girls are venturing in to kitchen, if not for day to day cooking but at least for the limited purpose of cooking YouTube video for uploading on their channels.

 

So, there is no dearth of videos quantity, quality of content could be a question mark. But, YouTube patrons don’t seem to mind that. Many non descript channels get views in six digit, may be surpassing the expectations of channel owners. Afterall, people often excel in finding avenues to while away time. And social media is replete with outlets for that. Earlier, it was Google University, then Whatsapp University become prominent. As if this was not sufficient, now there is YouTube university. We have entered in an era where information is becoming synonym for knowledge and the information canvas is expanding horizontally, depth is shrinking day by day. What will come next? May be a google search would provide answer. Till then, let us keep surfing channels of our choice and increase our ‘IQ’, information quotient, I mean.