By Edha Singh and Sam Verma
Class today’s lecture is for content creators. Take a seat and make notes.
When working on the SEO of Quid Ultra we decided to describe it as a page for controversial articles which will instigate people. After writing a few mellow articles, we realised it wasn't for us. Writing fiery articles was our forte and not to mention, fun. Edha and I are both people with unpopular opinions or filled with opinions that are hushed.
We have written articles which on second thought could get us in trouble, but ultimately that’s why they should exist. Why does the voice of two hot-headed seventeen-year-olds matter? Because it is the unfiltered voice of reason, a true expression of free speech.
The reason it angers people is that we refuse to filter our words and opinions; opinions worded in certain ways, which people are not used to. We have come to a point where being politically correct is taken to its extreme and young minds are judged by society for having thoughts beyond ‘limits’. So, it’s important to make them mad. Only when mad, will they be able to reflect on why they are mad. If anything we write doesn’t bode well with you, it internally pushes you into the dialogue about why. That why is the sound of progression.
If we don’t step out of our comfort zone and push arguments that are silenced by those of higher authorities, those older than us and those of different opinions, will there be any new perspectives? Perspective is what drives us to change our opinion.
Edha and I prefer to write editorial pieces; pieces that require prior knowledge to make the article easier to understand. From the very beginning, we created QU with a view to make people mad, in fact, we even wanted rebuttals. We wanted to be questioned and analysed and critiqued and when someone did, we were more than happy to explain and debate it out. We wanted QU to allow people to have these conversations, to make people comfortable with confrontation, to make people comfortable with being uncomfortable with something.
Take this as a lesson for any content production. Judging our own bias’ and presumptions helps us build stories and concepts unique to us. Any time you find yourself hating on something, think of why you hate it; is because it’s expected of you. The ‘limits’ put on our thoughts are put out of fear. Fear of what exists beyond the bounds that society is too afraid to explore. This fear is the reason we refuse to accept simple things like LGBTQIA+ and equal pay. We assure you rigidity of thought and the idea that you know it all, that your opinions can’t be changed will be your downfall as a creator. Believe in things, believe in them passionately, but always leave the ground for people to flip it around. There is no knowledge of what’s right and wrong, the only thing you can work on is theories built on facts and holistically developed ideas, then express them to the world.
If there’s one thing that we have learnt from writing QU then it’s that someone will always have an opposing view and that it matters. When someone has an opposing view take it as criticism for your work and acceptance that you could have written an even more holistic article. Though sometimes rants are justified. Even if no one reads them, rant once in a while and feel free to put it out there. There are enough preachy Instagram stories with no proper arguments and half-developed ideas to act as visual pollution for days. You have an opinion? Take the damn time out to research it, talk to others about it, think over it and then share it. It is disheartening to see well-written articles or well-scripted videos get low views because our attention span cannot last more than 8 seconds. If you can spend hours scrolling through reels, but not ten minutes reading an article please think about what kind of information you are processing. We’ve all been victims to it, but as content creators, you need to be wiser about your media consumption. The brain has only so much it can think about, so if you feed it tik-toks then please don’t expect marvellous poetry.
As young content creators, who have no filter and are vocal about topics that compel us to talk about them we’ve often been told not to talk about certain things in front of our grandparents, uncles and aunties. We know you know exactly what we’re talking about. We’ve been told by our parents, “We don’t have any problem with you talking about women’s education/ dalit rights/ intercaste marriage/ domestic abuse against men but we know ___ Uncle will not agree and might think of us differently.”
How do we expect to see a change if we don’t bridge the difference in thoughts? Not every argument is meant to end in agreement, not every argument is meant to be comfortable. The argument may not arrive at any conclusion but we may certainly reach a compromise. Hell, we might learn something new. Not everything is about Gen Z teaching the older generations how to think, we have much to learn from the older generations too. Having uncomfortable conversations helps us understand the thought process of older generations better.
We’ve had one hell of a ride writing QU articles. We developed ourselves, our friendship, and somehow took more pictures online than we have in real life. We started off with the aim of getting people worked up, either in agreement or disagreement but as time passed by, as our topics got riskier, we understood the consequences of our words. It didn’t stop us, we pushed forward, still experimenting with topics that got us warnings. Although our time on The Green Pages is coming to an end, this is just the beginning of our fight against censorship and so-called appropriateness. We hope our articles have inspired you, encouraged you, educated you and most importantly, pissed you off.
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