(Image via top10wala.in)
Raghu Jain, a youngster working for one of the dozen Indian Buzzfeed replicas, churning out listicles such as “10 ways to impress a girl”, “5 proven ways to land a girl out of your league” and “8 ways to make any girl go crazy about you” on almost a daily basis, hasn’t been able to impress a girl, or land a girl inside or outside his league or get a girl to go crazy about him.
“I can’t even get a girl to talk to me, yaar, forget about falling madly in love with me!” wailed Raghu. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I followed my gyan to a T. I was a gentleman, I used my eyes as tools, I found common interests and tried to share stories, I even tried to be Dil-logical, whatever that means, but absolutely nothing worked!”
“I am now suffering from a midlife crisis, yaar,” Raghu cried. “I thought I was rendering a valuable service to mankind by summarizing important life truths in crisp, easy-to-consume listicles, but if it isn’t working even for me, what am I doing with my life?!”
Empathizing with Raghu’s plight, Mark Weber, a writer with Buzzfeed who wrote the original ’10 ways to impress a girl’ listicle that was later Indianized by Raghu and a dozen other writers, shook his head and said, “The cardinal rule in this business is that under no circumstance should you begin to believe your own bullshit. Raghu clearly forgot this. Hell, I don’t even read my stuff after I put some crap together and run a spell check!”
Raghu’s despondency eventually came to his manager’s attention when the cumulative likes against his articles fell short of his weekly targets. When asked what the matter was, Raghu broke down and poured his heart out. The manager assumed a sympathetic expression, put an arm around Raghu’s shoulder and took him to his office for a pep talk. The chat evidently bore immediate results, for, within an hour, Raghu published a new listicle titled “10 ways to mope when you cannot land a girl”.