Social Capital is the New Flu

Today's social capital spreads faster than influenza. You sneeze out a selfie, and voila! 10,000 souls have been infected with admiration, envy, and inexplicable urges to dye their hair. Fame, in the old days, required effort. Now, it requires Wi-Fi. Once upon a time, if you wished to be seen, you had to climb a mountain, fight a war, or marry into royalty. You had to do something! Now? Just wiggle your hips, switch on a ring light, and surrender yourself to Lord Algorithm to launch you into stardom.

- Debashis Chatterjee Author, Professor & Director, IIM Kozhikode

paradoxically validated not by tradition but by the metrics of social media engagement. Priyanka Chopra Jonas, ever the ambassador of a globalised Indian identity, navigated the red carpet with a confidence born of both cultural capital and calculated branding. Her every gesture, every accessory, seemed designed to resonate across continents, a testament to the commodification of the self in the digital age.

In the influencer economy, being seen is not vanity. It's currency. Visibility equals viability. If you're not trending, you're ending.