The nation’s first Facebook star
Till the time this went to press, his Facebook followers were 2.96 million. That is more than the followers of the country’s top English language daily newspaper. A little less than those of the top two Urdu newspapers put together.
Yes, there are even bigger fish out there. Abbasi’s political leader, Imran Khan, has over four million followers. Pop icon Atif Aslam has a gargantuan 18 million followers. But the latter is managed by a professional team that only gives updates about upcoming concerts and publicity stills. And the Imran Khan (Official) account is managed by a PR team whose content, though eagerly consumed, appears more press release-ish in nature than anything that would inspire debate.
It is Abbasi’s account that is most talked about. Since he uploads his statuses himself, they don’t feel like overly curated, sanitised PR fare. Which is a double-edged sword, since the lack of adult supervision also makes him come across as a simple-minded party automaton at times.
Abbasi is a pretty little thing, with half-baked views on just about everything under the sun. He probably hasn’t ever read a book cover to cover in his life, getting more of his information from internet memes and viral clips than newspapers. Having cracked the CSS exam doesn’t seem as much a comment on his intelligence as it is on the fallen standards of the state in recruiting civil servants.
Though his support for the PTI seems genuine, there is no doubt about the fact that his fan following certainly did rise exponentially after he joined the party. The publicists of many celebrities, even those not particularly enamoured by the PTI, would be taking note.
In the performing arts, Abbasi doesn’t bring anything cerebral to the table; his one attempt at direction lies on the cutting room floor a year after it was shot. And as an actor, though he is adequate, he is not the sort of outlier who will necessarily survive the test of time. That limits him to the good-looking star category, in which the flyby dates are notoriously unforgiving, what with fresh faces entering the market on a daily basis.
Soon, even within the party, he might not be the only star on board.
But in 2015, he has shown — rather intelligently — that the internet in general, and social media in particular, is a tool that has taken some broadcasting powers away from stuffy television channels and newspapers and placed them in the hands of others who don’t even need to wait for programme slots. That political parties and other interests need to leverage this medium better and that the mainstream news media also needs to adapt to this very changing calculus.