Roses & Thorns - The race for Facebook "Likes" is on! - Ahalya Narendran

In addition to the standard list of status symbols that those obsessed with their social status today buy with money, such as newspaper reviews, TV appearances, dance awards and titles, and real estate on the Moon, there is a brand new item: Facebook likes. It seems, it is not just the US State Department who buy ‘Likes’ on Facebook , but some Bharatanatyam schools have gone on the likes buying spree as well. Just a couple of months ago, the page of a very young Bharatanatyam school had steadily grown over the years to list over 2000 likes, while the number of people who "liked" the page of the large Bharatanatyam school where she studied since the school was 10% of its present strength was nearly 8 times less and hardly growing. Apparently, the school's PR managers were unwilling to realise that not everybody out of the 300+ students in their school is a born dancer. Extraordinary talent and skill cannot be mass produced at dance factories. 

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