byline

I have written over 1.3 lakh words in the last eight months at work. None of which have have seen the light of the day.

It would be fed into a data centre, providing intelligence to chatbot and AI assistants in combatting misinformation or ensuring people don’t get some dabba attribution or source to some random Vietnam run blogging site.

The last time I wrote something that was published on a news site. My editor appreciated the work then I wrote another story which the editor (rightfully) admonished.

It felt a slide of glass falling and not cracking and then someone drops a hammer on it and it gets shattered.

That in essence started therapy sessions that I do once in two weeks. I am grateful and take my own sweet time to come back

That among, many other small and big and mega events affected what is called self confidence. Something that I held on to like Punch holding his doll at my worst and best phases.

It slipped.

Among many other things from going to a gym to running to learning the ukelele.

I missed writing for the news company’s website I work for. I think my blog attempts had drastically reduced as well until it was resurrected this month.

Due to the nature of my job, what I do and the enormous hard and smart work behind it does not go out with my name. There are also far more competent people who have combatted and written much crucial news reports on misinformation. All of them are living under a radar.

For safety reasons. And seeing how the mob behaves, I am grateful again.

But I miss having to show my wok, sometimes show off my work.

I have seen friends, foes, lovers, former enemies, forgiven characters, inspirations and uni-dimensional losers all sharing some work or the other.

Sometimes I want to say please boss, we know. Congrats. Sometimes I am glad considering the enormity of it. I occasionally sometimes go, “For this, you are flexing!? Okay?“

I only have one big Word document as proof. Perhaps I only hold this document closer like Punch and his doll now.

I do have many many ideas but the lack of time and the efforts required to work on mammoth pieces are beyond me, for now.

I pitched a story, don’t go through because the person, a trans woman I reached out had to deactivate all her social media accounts because the mob was behind her. I tried moving heavens, hells, time zones and relationships and LinkedIn connections but it faltered.

The person, again rightfully so, had to go underground. I was hope she’s safe and her loved ones have some peace in this hyper connected but loose nuts running amok world.

So when this very silly, parody image landed. I just pitched it for my usual notes that would be fed into data centres and help the AI and help some dabba person.

But the sheer media illiteracy over there and the fact that people couldn’t identify what is essentially a very poor AI image was a cause of concern.

After initially being turned down by my immediate editor, rightfully so. because we could not believe people were falling for it.

I found an angle, convinced him who convinced his boss.

This was perhaps the most important writing I have done in eight months. A silly photograph confusing people and potentially disrupting and instigating tensions between neighbours.

I sometimes feel my head is too directed but I have been hyper focussed, triple-checked, took two mental health walks, archived every piece of random information that could potentially help.

My editor went through it, scrutinising it even more because more people were falling for it. We had to be right.

His boss went through it in New York and she has given her suggestions which were incorporated and 30 minutes ago, it was moved to an editor in London who will scrutinise it further.

It may or may not go today. I know I will not get a byline for this. Perhaps I can formally write a LinkedIn post for a change, maybe not.

But somewhere in the world, someone will google or ask Hey Grok is this true and that damn article will pop up. That’s a nice show off to do then.

The cracks are there but they are slowly coming into place. I can’t see myself yet but the image has not gone away.