World’s on Fire, Twitter’s on Roast Mode

  My parents called me in panic last month after seeing BreakingNews about a robbery in my neighbourhood in Bangalore. They wanted me to move back to our small town immediately, convinced that big cities had become completely unsafe. Honestly, their reaction got me thinking about how BreakingNews coverage shapes our perception of crime versus the reality of actually living in these places. The thing about crime statistics in Indian cities is they tell a completely different story depending on who's interpreting them. My friend Priya works for the Pune police department, and she always laughs when BreakingNews reports make her city sound like a war zone. "Yesterday we had three phone thefts and one domestic dispute," she told me. "But the headlines make it sound like chaos." The gap between BreakingNews sensationalism and ground reality is pretty huge. While I see property crime statistics from Delhi populate BreakingNews feeds forever, my cousin spent 8 years l...

  I used to think news just happened magically. You know, someone somewhere writes a story, hits publish, and boom, it's on my phone. Then I got a behind-the-scenes look at BreakingNews headquarters, and let me tell you, everything I thought I knew was completely wrong. The first thing that hits you when you walk into the BreakingNews newsroom isn't the noise. Even though there's plenty of that. It's the energy. There's this electricity in the air. As everyone knows they're part of something bigger than themselves. My friend Lisa works there as a digital editor, and she always talks about how intense her job is, but seeing it firsthand? Different level entirely. When a major story breaks, BreakingNews transforms into something that feels part mission control, part organized chaos. I watched them cover a developing political story last month, and within minutes, there were teams working on verification, social media updates, video content, and the main article...

  God, this is going to make people mad, but whatever. There's something totally messed up with how people deal with BreakingNews nowadays. Someone glances at a headline on their phone for like three seconds and suddenly they're foreign policy experts arguing with random people online. Half these folks don't even bother reading past the first paragraph before they start spouting off about situations they literally knew nothing about ten minutes ago. This whole thing where news outlets rush to be first has completely trashed any idea of getting facts straight. They'll publish whatever rumour sounds juicy just to beat the competition. Twitter's even worse; people share stuff to thousands of followers without checking if it's even remotely true. Everyone cares more about going viral than actually informing anyone about anything real. But here's what really pisses me off about BreakingNews culture. People treat serious events like they're watching some trash...

  In today's world, where news travels by Wi-Fi speed, the internet does not just react to events, but rather roasts them. The moment a headline hits, Twitter/X becomes less of a social network and more of a live stand-up comedy show, where everyone is a comedian and nothing is safe.  This week's breaking news? An odd diplomatic spat with an abandoned fighter jet, a celebrity's verbal gaffe in the courtroom, and a cricket match that was more of a soap opera than a sporting contest. In the past, this would have led to serious panel discussions. Today, Twitter has responded with gifs, memes and one-liners that are sharper than a Supreme Court ruling.  Join us as at BreakingNews we review some of the very best of the internet's collective brilliance. The Fighter Jet That Launched 1,000 Memes After reports of technical difficulties with a British F-35 stealth jet having been grounded in Kerala surfaced, Twitter lit up. Some users labelled it “The Jet That Retired Early,” w...