Priyanka Chopra Trends For 'Snacky' Weekend Pic: The Odd Obsessions Of Social Media

Celebrity couple Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra trends on social media today for a 'snacky' photo from their Los Angeles home the latter shared on Instagram Monday and promptly brings one to scratch their heads over the kind of celebrity stories that pique imaginations and interests online. Are we too bored?

Perhaps consecutive rounds of lockdown blues have knocked down our walls of good sense, if at all we had any, that gatekept the muck and filtered news of use through. Why does the photo of a celebrity and her celebrity husband 'slicing' her rear with a knife for the 'snack' that she is, invite such an overwhelming reaction?

Should or shouldn't, right or wrong, warranted or unwarranted - who's to say?

Thing is, it happened and how. Beyond the two million likes Chopra's sunny snap has amassed, social media has whimsically erupted in conversation, which is largely bemusing and empty of meaning, kept alive by a steady stream of memes, some fan frenzy, much sexist talk and perplexed discussion over Jonas' antics.

See for yourself: 

Image: Priyanka Chopra / Instagram

Priyanka Chopra Trends... But For The Most Bizarre Reasons

Nothing escapes social media scrutiny. The phenomenon may well be thought of as a pinboard where netizens affix proofs, opinions, visuals, memories of all that seems to them momentous, no matter how really inconsequential. If it's out there, it's on that board.

In the case of celebrities, especially desi ones whom their audience often regards as nothing less than demigods, this obsessive, microscopal attention dramatically exaggerates.

Around the time of celebrity weddings for instance, as funnily enough happened with Chopra and Jonas' own, internet sleuths work overtime to put two and two together with scraps of information that may have slipped out through the fortifications of celebrity security and figure out what's happening behind them: from minutiae like what's on the menu to grander details like what the to-be-marrieds are wearing.

But a photo, admittedly quirky but tritely but yet nice enough, getting that kind of high-priority attention? Nah, come on. Isn't that too trifling a scoop to dwell on for the seasoned class of celebrity watchers?

For all the gloom coronavirus and its tagalong quarantines and shutdowns have brought, some have found vicarious (often voyeuristic) pleasure in celebrities' gym photos, gym-entering and leaving photos, the odd celebrity dinner, their vaccination updates and dinner tables... you get the gist.

It's blameless time pass. For some, an indifferent scroll of the finger and for others, an escape from the criminal banality of work-from-home schedules. And for yet others, academia-like research.

From the celebrities' cameras into their audience's galleries - it's a symbiotic exchange. Well, whatever floats our boat (ethically), I guess?

Views expressed are the author's own. 

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