Trends

Live-in relationship and dating culture, growing use of AI  and ever extending screen time are giving rise to certain trends in social, technological and medical arena, respectively, which are worthy of  cognizance, if not alarm. These are:

Hobosexual Relationship

The hobosexuals use charm and fake love, especially with persons who are caring or nurturing by nature, to get a place to live, food to eat, secure daily comforts and money to spend. They often show little interest in helping with household chores, taking up responsibilities or financially contributing to rent and bills and throw tantrums if they are pressured to do so. They may even move out of the relationship as soon as they find an alternate/better living situation/another person to support them.

Shrekking

Based on the Shrek franchise movies wherein the beautiful princess Fiona falls in love with an ogre called Shrek, underscoring the theme of  love over appearance, “Shrekking” refers to dating down a person who is  less attractive or “below standards” in the hope that the less attractive “Shrek” will be more grateful, loyal, and devoted,  giving the “shrekker” an upper hand and more control in the relationship with less risk of getting hurt.

However, there are high possibilities of disappointment and emotional harm if  the “arrangement” falls short of expectations. Shrekking is viewed as toxic because it objectifies individuals and devalues genuine connection.

Vibe Hacking

Vibe hacking” is the malicious use of generative AI to create and execute highly persuasive and effective cybercrimes and social engineering attacks by leveraging AI’s ability to create/manipulate content based on the attacker’s  simple, conversational prompt or the “vibe”. For example  generating highly realistic phishing emails, fake websites, believable romance scams or personalized extortion e-mails by exploiting the tone, sub-text and emotion of the user.  The attacker uses AI to continuously regenerate code variants and commands to evade signature-based security defenses that look for known malicious code.

Digital Heart Disease

Extended hours of scrolling, swapping, streaming, constant notification stress, ordering food online, sitting haunched over laptops for long hours, binge watching till midnight constitute today’s faulty lifestyle giving rise to obesity, high blood pressure, disturbed sleep and chronic stress. As a result, healthy and young people are collapsing in the gyms, offices and even social gatherings. This is known as digital lifestyle syndrome.

Today’s youth joins the workforce early, works for longer hours and deals with many stress points. Added to this the fast food culture, rising air pollution and obsession with fitness shortcuts like steroids, supplements and energy drinks are perfect triggers for early heart disease even if the patient had normal cholesterol levels in the last check-up.

Tracking screen time , practising digital detox, limiting phone use and creating no phone zones especially during meals can significantly reduce stress along with regularly monitoring blood pressure, walking 10,000 steps a day, avoiding long hours of sitting , taking short breaks in between to have quick stretches, climbing a few stairs and taking two minute walk,  sleeping for seven hours, controlling anxiety and practising mindfulness protect the heart more than marathon workouts on weekends.

Footnote : Digital Heart Disease is more in context of Indian techies and professionals but I guess it is more or less  applicable to all who spend considerable time on smartphones,  television and laptops.

(Information courtesy Hindustan Times/Internet)