Morning Tidings

Tag: fantasy

  • ShareChat Layoffs: Social Media Firm Sacks Less Than 5% of Its Workforce After Shutting Down Fantasy Sports App Jeet11

    ShareChat Layoffs: Social Media Firm Sacks Less Than 5% of Its Workforce After Shutting Down Fantasy Sports App Jeet11

    New Delhi, Dec 2: Homegrown social media company ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd) has laid off less than 5 per cent of its employees after it shut down its fantasy sports platform called Jeet11, the company confirmed on Friday.

    Backed by Twitter, Google, Snap and Tiger Global, ShareChat has about 2,300 employees and the layoff will impact more than 100 people at the company, at a time when nearly every tech firm is restructuring businesses to weather the global economic crisis. Amazon Layoffs: CEO Andy Jassy Again Defends Mass Sackings, Says ‘Felt Like We Needed to Streamline Costs’.

    “As a standard business practice, we periodically evaluate our strategies. We can confirm that we are ceasing operations of Jeet11 and have reorganised some of our functions, which meant movement of this talent within teams and a few employee exits,” a ShareChat spokesperson told IANS.

    “This process has impacted less than 5 per cent of our employees,” the spokesperson added.

    ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd) is India’s largest homegrown social media company, with more than 400 million monthly active users (MAUs) across all its platforms.

    Founded in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan, ShareChat was last valued at $5 billion and has social media brands such as ShareChat App and Moj under its portfolio.

    While the ShareChat app has over 180 million monthly active users, Moj is the largest Indian short video platform with close to 300 million people consuming content each month on the app.

    “We continue to focus on robust growth and hiring across various functions and roles as per our plans. To succeed as India’s fastest-growing social media company, we assess our strategy regularly and make necessary changes to achieve our vision,” the company spokesperson further said.

    Launched in 2020, Jeet11 was ShareChat’s take on Dream11 and Mobile Premier League (MPL). Data Breach: Hackers Now Selling 1.5 Lakh Patients’ Data of Tamil Nadu’s Sree Saran Medical Center on Dark Web.

    In June this year, ShareChat closed a $520 million multi-tranche funding round, taking its valuation to $5 billion.

    In the funding round, the company raised $255 million from Google, Times Group, and existing investors.

    Since 2021, ShareChat has cumulatively raised $1.2 billion and also acquired MX TakaTak.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 02, 2022 04:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Teacher Turned XXX OnlyFans Star Courtney Tillia Brushes Off Criticism by Colleagues & Parents; Reveals She Often Plays Teacher-Student Sex Fantasy in Her Content

    XXX platform, OnlyFans has become a legit career option for many where people earn a lot of money by offering membership of sexy, nude, hot images and videos to fans. Many people have even left their low-paying jobs to mint a lot of money via XXX content. However, the stigma attached to OnlyFans doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Just recently, the teacher turned OnlyFans XXX star revealed that parents and colleagues accuse her of turning kids into “temptation”. The XXX OnlyFans star is named Courtney Tillia and she shares her hardships related to the super HOT career.  The former special ed teacher told the Daily Star: “I’ve heard of teacher forums and parent groups, who are typically the very religious, criticising me. I’ve never seen these myself, but I have friends who have shared that they saw I was the topic of discussion in certain Facebook groups.”

    She further says, “Apparently, the teachers believe I’m disrespecting and decreasing the profession while the parents somehow think that their children would be exposed to temptation or immodesty. I have tremendous respect for fellow teachers and the profession – and I don’t think my personal expression and fun has anything to do with their job or the reverence we should have for teachers.”

    That is not it, she also talks about the teacher-student sex fantasy and says: “The teacher/school fantasy is very real and I love playing with that in my content.” If you are still wondering what OnlyFans is, let us tell you that it is a portal where you can subscribe to XXX content by specific people. The XXX website, OnlyFans just like Pornhub.com thrived in the year 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown as people lost their means to earn money.  Although it has faced its share of flak as well, the XXX site OnlyFans was recently under investigation by the Australian authorities over fears of being used as a medium for trafficking drugs, laundering money and exploiting children. OnlyFans doesn’t traditionally provide porn like Pornhub.com or xnxx.com.  OnlyFans usage spiked up with even celebs like Cardi B Mia, Khalifa, Bella Thorne, Tyler Posey, and Blac Chyna coming closer to fans. And while one of the most popular names would be the racer-turned-porn star, Renee Gracie who is very popular on OnlyFans, the list is never-ending.  

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on May 25, 2022 08:58 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • In the time loop: how the fantasy-fiction genre fared at the 2021 Golden Globes

    In the time loop: how the fantasy-fiction genre fared at the 2021 Golden Globes

    From Groundhog Day to the most recent The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, the concept of time loops has taken the fancy of directors

    In The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021), which recently began streaming on Amazon Prime Video, two teenagers are caught in a temporal anomaly and are forced to relive the same day again and again until they find a solution to get out of the loop. So Groundhog Day (1993), I hear you say. Yes, of course, the concept was popularised by that film but the credit for being the first doesn’t go to the Bill Murray-Andie MacDowell film. As with many of these conceptual films, the trend appears to have begun in Japan with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1983), based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1965 novel of the same name, where a girl relives the same day in a time loop. An anime version of the tale was made in 2006, followed by another live-action version in 2010.

    In the West, the time loop concept was deployed back in 1973, in the story 12:01 PM by Richard A Lupoff published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story was adapted twice, as a short film of the same name in 1990, and a full length TV film in 1993. In both versions, an office drone is forced to relive the worst day of his life. The genre really took off with Groundhog Day, and you’ll be surprised to know that the concept has been used in at least 50 films.

    In the time loop: how the fantasy-fiction genre fared at the 2021 Golden Globes

    There are prominent films with big stars featuring time loops, including Edge of Tomorrow, also known by the title Live. Die. Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), starring Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise, and Source Code (2011), with Jake Gyllenhaal. Beyond Asia and Hollywood, the concept has been used in Russia, Sweden, Germany, and around the world.

    From my non-exhaustive analysis of the genre, two major themes emerge. One, the desire to correct a wrong and second, practise makes perfect, in the sense that if you do the same thing often enough, you’re bound to get good with time. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, for example, is filled with events where rote practise leads to slick choreography within the day, and Bill Murray gets good at a whole bunch of things in Groundhog Day.

    A still from Source Code

    A recent, celebrated example of the genre is Palm Springs (2020), where wedding guest Andy Samberg and maid of honour Cristin Milioti are stuck in the same summer’s day to the point where they are ready to kill themselves, but even committing suicide doesn’t bring death and the next day dawns in loop again and again. After the initial fun and games, the pair does correct a bunch of wrongs, while becoming experts in various activities. I watched the recently-concluded Golden Globes with keen interest to keep an eye on the two nominations for Palm Springs — best motion picture, musical or comedy, and for best performance in the same category for Samberg. Sadly, the film won neither category, but surely, in the pandemic time loop we are stuck in, it may win one day?