Once as a little child, I attempted to read, surreptitiously of course, a book from the famed ‘Mills & Boon’ litany. While what little was there in the way of ‘heaving bosom’ and ‘throbbing member’ failed to titillate my then 11 year old imagination, what did make an impression was that all the attractive male type characters had to come across as the strong silent type to make any impression at all on the usually hot headed heroine.
Since then, I have come a long way in reading but that stereotype has mostly been a constant. The society at large, does not seem to have in its collective conscience, a place for a dandy, loquacious, heroic hero.
Cut at light speed to the latest era. Like it, hate it, not know it, be a slave to it, we live in the much clichéd ‘digital era’ which could more appropriately be called the ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’ era. In an age where Facebook accounts are set up for little children before they can even burp on their own and even pets and houseplants get their own Twitter feeds, it should be no time before Batman gets his own grievance redressal community on Facebook and the next great soliloquy is Tweeted in 140 characters or less.
Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, the social media mania has got us all so good that one lame trivia states that there has been a drastic reduction in smoking in young people as their fingers are now occupied, twiddling away on their Blackberrys or HTCs. What with literature holding a mirror to the age, registering the times of lives, so on and so forth, maybe the next bestseller will revolve around the Kindle that got left behind at the beach, that got picked by this yappity guy, impressed by the eclectic collections, launches a hunt on Facebook, dates her smartly relying on Foursquare and Latitude, declares his love on Twitter, and gets the girl finally. Of course I am not aiming for the Nobel here but more like the NYT bestseller list. Takers anybody?
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