You have an idea. You have an area of interest. You’re an artist. If enough people aren’t aware of it, the surest and simplest way to let them know is to take to social media. Say something funny, create something beautiful or upload something interesting and voila! Someone ‘likes’ it, someone shares it and a whole bunch of people get to know about it.
Nothing connects us as easily or as effortlessly as social media. And we’ve all found many uses for the connections we make in the virtual world. While many people use it as a platform to showcase their skills and interests, here are three who also provide interesting free services in the process.
Quiz time
People have all sorts of questions. What is love? Why do medhu vadas have holes? Why don’t penguins freeze their toes off? Some of these questions are pragmatic, some funny and others intriguing; and not all the answers are one click away on Google. In that case, turn to BATT (Berty Ashley Think Tank) because they claim that if they don’t know it, no one else will.
“When someone asks me a question, I tend to know the answer or make it a point to find out and get back to them,” says Berty, who has been conducting quizzes for a long time. With a need to “compulsively click on every hyperlink in Wikipedia”, he picks up a lot of information which can’t be used in quizzing or everyday life. It was only natural for him to create a platform for people to ask the questions that give them sleepless nights.
Along with fellow quizzer and friend, Akhila Phadnis, he provides answers which are researched and referenced, making it useful for academic purposes too. The answers are made simple and interesting, for anyone to understand, even when the questions are complicated.
Dreams on canvas
When Swetha Kanithi graduated from Architecture school, she wanted to start a pet project. That’s when she decided to do a series of sketches, giving form to dreams. Her page, Dreamink, has people sending in descriptions of their dreams, which she then sketches and puts up on her page. The biggest challenge is when she receives one line descriptions because then, she has to fill in the gaps with her own imagination.
Each dream takes about a day to sketch, making this the activity that keeps her going. “I work on this on a daily basis, it’s helping me visualise in different perspectives,” says Swetha who hopes that the work she creates now will go into her portfolio if she ever decides to go to an art school.
People who write in are curious to see how their dreams can translate into art and often, it’s personal and comes with a lot of emotion attached to it. “Most people have a certain niche fears. They just seem to remember what frightens them the most,” says Swetha.
Play with clay
It all started when Disha Pinge began playing with clay. She started sculpting quirky little characters, taking pictures of them and using them to give people a lesson in vocabulary. Welcome to Like That Only, where learning new words is made easy through clay art.
“There’s a little more value when it is more than just a pretty piece of clay. Adding a word to it makes it a lot more interesting,” explains Disha, whose skill with clay has improved since she started the page.
Having a full-time job hardly gives her time to get her clay box out. She mostly updates her page whenever she can manage it, no pressure added. “It’s supposed to be fun, I don’t stress over it,” says Disha. She doesn’t preserve any of the pieces either, so all the clay is recycled and goes back into the box in a lump. “I like that about clay; it’s transient.”
