The cities we end up branding
When I open Twitter these days, at least one tweet on my feed is about a city and its expression. It could be the algorithm or the people I follow or even the location on my smartphone, but I see mentions of a city in one way or the other.
And there’s quite a method to the madness. It’s a cry to help out with house hunting, cribbing about the infra, or highlighting the local food joint as a discovery. Once this is done, there are images of the sky, the trees, and the signals.
Without me explicitly stating the name, most of you who’re reading this will have pictured your city. But this is all within the Twitter universe.
An interesting insight I derived is that cities now have stopped being about people. They are now more about the materialistic attributes. Earlier, geography would define people. We knew what to expect from residents from a certain city or a locality of that city. The woke me today is aware of the judgement that follows by this bucketing of people and the places they’ve lived in. However, I also like to believe, it lent a certain character to the city and, of course, to its residents.
Earlier, when we met someone who wasn’t from our city, we made attempts to familiarise ourselves with them. We tried to understand their culture, their heritage, their food. There was a certain sense of curiosity to know who our new neighbours or friends are. Now we just figure out what’s better in terms of weather, affordability, or accessibility. It’s a race to compare which city outruns the other one on a myriad list of factors. And the Metaverse is not even here yet in full swing.
The great migration has ensured we have houses in several places but homes in none.
Our friends are either working from the hills or from traffic. We belong somewhere but our reels are from everywhere. And we no longer have exclusive, elusive experiences with our cities. We are hanging out at the same places, consuming the same content, or complaining about the same things.
Inside Twitter, it’s not hard to identify a city. There’s a framework, a set of attributes, and a chain of loyalists (and hashtags) who ensure the city’s image in the Twitterverse stays alive. And it has also resulted in a few positives. It’s brought people together too. Many have found their jobs, partners, and new lives by being in these cities.
But I do want to know, what have the cities found?
