Techcrunch freaks out at Swastika!
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Yesterday, Techcrunch had a post on how, for a certain amount of time, the ‘Swastika’ dominated the hot trends list of Google trends. They had just started freaking out. Giving an insight into the matter and saying that it was a “successful spamming attempt”, this is what Techcrunch had to say,
“Google Trends says the query peaked at about 6 am Pacific. The query is actually a Chinese character, but the trends list that it shows up for is U.S. searches. It looks like a successful spamming attempt, but given the number of queries Google handles it looks to be pretty sophisticated - at one point it was the number one query. We’ve pinged Google for a comment.”
Personally, I found it rather amusing. In the United States, the swastika is a symbol mostly associated with the Nazi Party and the related holocaust. I can almost imagine the rolled up eyes of every Indian (as well as those having an idea about Swastika’s true origin) who logged on to Techcrunch yesterday.
But wait, it gets better. Instead of acting like the calm blogging mogul that Mike Arrington should have, this is his response to a tweet from Shefaly, who informs him about Swastika’s real origin.
Obviously, it’s either my way or the highway, echoes Mike Arrington. He’s blocking one and all from receiving his twitter feeds, who disagree with his authoritative views.
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Thanks for the hat-tip and the weird acknowledgment
I am not sorry for being ‘blocked’ from receiving TechCrunch tweets. I hardly read it before. It was easier to follow on Twitter so hardly any loss for me.
I think it is more like ‘authoritarian’ views than ‘authoritative’. The post now has 78 comments increasingly rude and aggressive.
I wonder if Google can afford to piss off so many Indians, Chinese and Japanese by ‘censoring’ a sacred symbol..
I found it weird too.. Arrington has a history of reacting the way he reacted..typical american behaviour..
BTW, Shefaly’s was typical Indian behaviour..
Rahul, I do not know what typical Indian behaviour would be in this situation.
In fact if you see TechCrunch comments, you will see far more fiery comments than I made.
If you lived in Europe like I do, you too would be fed up with the revisionist view of Swastika. I am not religious and I do not consider the Swastika religious but it is a part of my complex, multi-layered identity and I refuse to have this nonsensical view of things take it away from me.
Went through comments, isn’t it so typical of us that we get excited whenever they talk about something related to us..We need not explain things to them.. to hell with them and their idiosyncrasies..
@Rahul: Haha! True its about perception here then isn’t it. Most Americans wouldnt know about the Swastika had it not been for the Nazi’s and the associated violence, where as Indians who have known it from before, wouldnt associate it with anything violent at all.
But that being said, Arrington’s response could have been better. Bahut attitude hai bhai
@shefali: thanks for the correction.
This Arrington thinks that Hindus should be ashamed of revering their swastika.
hahaha, leave it to mike to be a primadonna. Me thinks om is one too. Who am i kidding every geek with any kinda blog traffic fancies himself a diva, though i guess goes with the territory of pretentious speculation and filler fluff pieces.
Even if the Swastika was a Nazi Symbol, Google has no business of blocking it even on that count! Remember how many Mein Kampf books are there in the market for sale…. Swastika is a beautiful arrangement of lines and if Hitler has used it as his symbol, it is his problem - Not ours! At some point of our lives we cant refuse our admiration for the leader who fought against the whole world, single handedly and almost won (In the words of Winston Churchil).
Destination Infinity.