A Satirical Advertisement
This is a satire created by AI from my previous two articles which were the counterpoint to the articles of Raza Rumi opposing the Movie Dhurandhar: Revenge, published in himalmag.com.
I asked the AI to draft a satirical hiring for writers for a website who can write conclusions on given issue without argument. AI Claude came up with this:
An Advertisement for Job Vacancy
HIRING: Senior Narrative Architect (South Asia Desk) Raven Publications | Remote | Competitive Grant-Funded Compensation
About Us
Raven Publications is an independent journalism platform committed to speaking truth to power, provided power is Hindu, Indian, or democratically elected with more than 300 seats. We are funded by Open Society Foundations, the Royal Norwegian Embassy, and other partners who have absolutely no influence over our editorial direction, which coincidentally aligns perfectly with their stated political objectives.
The Role
We are looking for a Senior Narrative Architect to join our South Asia desk. The successful candidate will produce timely cultural criticism, political analysis, and film reviews, ideally before the films are released, the events occur, or the evidence becomes available.
Key Responsibilities
Publish pre-emptive reviews of Indian cinema timed to maximum reputational damage at box office opening. Identify Hindu nationalism in previously unsuspected locations including weather reports, recipe columns, and children’s programming. Convert box office success into evidence of fascism. Convert box office failure into evidence of awakening civil society. Both outcomes confirm the thesis. Thesis is non-negotiable.
Manufacture victimhood at scale. Prior experience inflating localised grievances into existential civilisational crises preferred. Familiarity with the passive voice essential, as in “Muslims were threatened” rather than “we have no evidence Muslims were threatened.”
Maintain the imaginary Pakistan. Candidates must demonstrate ability to defend a nation they have not visited, using data they have not verified, about conditions they have not witnessed, from a office in New York or any comfortable place in western hemisphere..
Attend international conferences in Geneva, Oslo, and Washington where you will explain the Indian poor to rooms full of people who fund your salary.
Required Qualifications
A conclusion. Evidence optional but must be available if specifically requested by the especially tiresome.
Demonstrated ability to describe propaganda while producing it without noticing the irony.
Fluency in the vocabulary of oppression: systemic, majoritarian, Islamophobia, Hindu nationalist, chilling effect. Candidates will be tested on deploying these terms in sequences that feel analytical without containing analysis.
PhD preferred but not required. Grievance Studies, Postcolonial Victimhood, or Applied Outrage accepted. Candidates from IIT or IIM will be asked to first denounce their own institutions as instruments of Brahminical hegemony before the interview proceeds.
Experience watching films optional. Strong opinions about films is mandatory.
Desirable Skills
Ability to cite social media as a primary source without embarrassment. This is a skill we share with Pakistan’s Defence Ministry and consider a mark of methodological innovation.
Familiarity with George Soros’s published speeches is useful, though we ask that you not read them too carefully as some passages raise questions we prefer not to answer.
The ability to call something “subverting the narrative” when you mean “inverting the facts.”
Compensation
Grant-funded. Amount varies depending on how urgently our funders need India destabilised in any given quarter. Benefits include: moral superiority, conference invitations, fellowships at universities that will describe you as a “leading South Asian voice,” and the deep satisfaction of having your work cited by people who also have not seen the film.
Equal Opportunity Statement
We welcome applicants of all backgrounds provided they share our conclusions. Diversity of opinion is not currently a vacancy we are looking to fill.
To Apply
Submit a writing sample of not less than 800 words criticising something Indian you have not personally encountered. Samples that contain evidence will be returned for revision. Please include a brief statement explaining why your particular combination of foreign funding and domestic grievance makes you uniquely positioned to tell Indians what is wrong with India.
Raven Publications is committed to independent journalism. Our funders agree.
About the Hiring Manager
Our current Senior Narrative Architect, who will oversee your onboarding, brings decades of experience to this role. He is a Distinguished Lecturer at a prominent American university, which means he teaches people to think critically about South Asia from a safe distance of approximately 11,000 kilometres. He has published extensively on Pakistan, a country he left some years ago and therefore understands with the special clarity that only permanent absence provides.
He holds the distinction of having reviewed films before watching them, a methodology he describes as “cultural criticism” and which we consider a significant competitive advantage in the current media environment where timeliness matters more than accuracy and accuracy matters more than honesty, though none of these matter as much as the conclusion.
He is also the editor of two publications that describe themselves as independent, a claim that requires no further examination and which we ask you not to examine further.
In his spare time he gives speeches at international forums about the suffering of people he no longer lives among, to audiences who will never visit those people, funded by foundations whose interests he will never publicly examine. This is called advocacy. It pays better than journalism, which is why we no longer practice journalism.
He will assess your application personally. He has already decided whether you are suitable. He decided before reading it.
This is not a red flag. This is the job.
References:
- Counterpoint to Raza Rumi: https://sandeepbhalla.in/raza-rumi-the-critic-who-never-watched-the-dhurandhar-movie-and-the-pakistan-he-never-visited/
- New Face of Journalism-Activism: https://sandeepbhalla.in/the-new-face-of-journalism-activism/