You can still socialise with friends, virtually!
CHENNAI: While most city dwellers use messaging, calling or even do video calling, to stay in touch with their friends and families, some have gone beyond to use interactive live video options to socialise widely. For example, many bloggers have switched to Facebook live to cook, make craft, paint or display other skills real time. With most millennials locked indoors, these bloggers have secured a sure-shot audience pool. This not only allows them to display their skills to their friends, but for the first time, their friends have the time to provide live feedback to their work.
Cooking with limited ingredients, indoor fitness regimes and Do It Yourself craft using upscaling home waste are among the most popular topics for live on social media. However, some youngsters have started using these live tools to simply beat the social distancing blues. For instance, Toulouse Bhajans, Keertans, Qawwali and Ghazal Group - a community of music enthusiasts from India living in France - came together on Saturday evening to hold a live group Bhajan on the Zoom App.
“We all miss talking to one another. We miss people,” said Sana Kumar, a business analyst living in Chennai. Over the last week, she has been going live on Instagram everyday to video call friends who are online. “I decided to go live everyday for 21 days, to talk about any one subject, except coronavirus, with my friends,” she said. For half an hour each day she discusses about topics such as the last movie she has watched, one book each person recommends or a playlist her friends have been listening to.
Sukanya Umesh, an actor and a story teller, has been going live and chatting with her friends each day as she cooks her dinner. A few others have made a mini-reality show with live tools. Guru Narayanan, a city based stand-up comedian, was playing dumb charades with his friend living in USA last week. He said while he acted a movie title live, people would keep commenting their guesses.