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This Meme Artist Raised Over Rs. 3 Crores for India’s COVID-19 Crisis
Talking about his motivation to raise money for India, he observed, “I was drawing comparisons with what’s happening in India and America, what happened here during the earlier months of COVID, the comparisons of the leaders, [them] not listening to science… that’s when I kind of decided to ditch the humour on my page for a few weeks and raise funds for India.”
“It is all the community feeling and the connection among the people that keeps these fundraisings going,” Marcus added. When the conservative American radio host Rush Limbaugh died this February, Marcus raised over $1 million (roughly Rs. 7.3 crores) and donated it to Planned Parenthood, an American non-profit that Limbaugh had lambasted during his lifetime. “The Rush Limbaugh project helped me realise the potential of my followers to do a good thing,” Marcus remarked with a smile.
Marcus said about 5 percent of the fanbase of Quentin Quarantino are from India. “It is really sad how the government can’t be taking care of the people. There was this sense of privilege surrounding me which made me feel like I wanted to do something for India after reading some articles about what is happening out there. My followers and I have collected this money largely on behalf of the American people. Now we are all in a place of safety. I’ve been vaccinated. The situation in America is getting a lot better. But to see this same cycle that we were in last year happening somewhere else. What was happening in India really hit close to home for all of us… I wouldn’t say it felt like an obligation, I felt like I really wanted to do something for the people there. That really pushed me into this direction,” recounted Marcus.
When asked about how he made sure that he chose a legitimate organisation to associate with to raise the funds for India, he said his priority was to make sure that the organisation was not affiliated to the government. “I spent a full day to make sure that I did these fundraisers correctly. My main focus was to stay away from the government… Instagram was very helpful in making sure that this happened. Reading reviews, articles, Indian celebrities’ reviews also helped in picking out the right NGO.” For the India COVID-19 crisis fundraising, Marcus has joined hands with GiveIndia, a non-profit organisation based in Bengaluru.
“The NGO sends me an update everyday regarding how they’ve used the funds, their hands are tied that way too… I can’t say the exact statistics but some tens of thousands of oxygen cylinders have been given out already using the money… It is not like at the end of the fundraiser a lump sum will be sent, the money is already being sent to the charity,” described Marcus.
Treading the social space
Before starting Quentin Quarantino, Marcus ran @unhinged, a dating-based meme page on Instagram with 308k followers. @unhinged had a big corporate sponsor. But there were several restrictions as to what he could post on the page. Thus when the lockdown struck, he started Quentin Quarantino with the aim of putting up 25 posts a day. “I’ve always been a very political person. All the posts (on Quentin Quarantino) were rooted in humour. It continued to be funny through the months leading to the [US presidential] elections… But when I started calling out stuff, I started losing some Trump-fan followers,” Marcus said.
Looking back at the transformation of his page, he said, “When I started the page, I thought, ‘Holy sh_t, I’m gonna make so much money’. But now I’m like, ‘Holy sh_t, I’m gonna change the world’.”
He recalled his experience as he started to navigate the social space with political content, “I’m friends with a lot of the popular meme-makers on Instagram… when it comes to posting political stuff, a lot of them stay away from it. A lot of the people are shy to do any controversial stuff. When I started posting the serious stuff, a lot of them started messaging me, asking me if I really wanted to get into the controversial stuff.”
“I’ve never made money on my page selling a single ad,” he explained. “It is kind of difficult to describe my particular space on the Internet. But there is so much solace and purpose in doing what I’ve been doing.”
He said that he has a routine for a typical workday. “But a lot of unexpected things keep coming at me throughout the day. I’m on Instagram for some 10 hours a day… I still don’t have a future vision about the page, but I think that’s to my benefit, right now I’m taking it one day at a time,” Marcus added.
The name of the page is a derivative of Quentin Tarantino, his favourite movie director, with a play on the word ‘quarantine’. When asked about the one thing that he’d want to tell Tarantino if ever gets to meet him, Marcus gushed out with a laugh, “Quentin, how have you not followed me yet?”
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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