The cutoff counts

True story, as reported in the press over the last day or two:

Unnamed TV star is a participant on a TV "reality" show, one involving much dancing and being judged for such dancing. Popularity is everything on these shows, and it's decided the modern way: by SMS. So the star wanders into a neighbourhood phone store, buys up 200 pre-paid SMS cards that each carry between Rs 100 and Rs 200 worth of talktime. We're told that's Rs 80,000 spent on these cards.

Star hands these cards to a choreographer to distribute to the choreographer's friends, asking them to vote by SMS for this unnamed star, and multiple times. We're told that voting multiple times is OK as long as you don't do too much. Sony's "chief creative director" is actually quoted saying this: "To avoid bogus voting, we have a cutoff count of 500 votes per number on a weekly basis per show."

Oh yes, sure, that would cut off the bogus voting all right.

Anyway ... the choreographer distributes these cards to various friends. One of them, a fellow in Versova, takes three and uses all three numbers to vote (hell, that's a "cutoff count" of 1500 votes from this one dude ...).

But he also uses it for a more intriguing purpose: sending messages to his wife. Why's that so intriguing? Well, these are lewd messages. Well, but why's that so intriguing?

Well, he doesn't sign them. She doesn't know who is sending her these vulgar messages. Presumably not amused, the lady goes straight to the police and files a complaint.

Police investigation uncovers this entire chain of events, husband gives a written apology, wife forgives the husband.

No word on what's happened to the TV star's dancing fortunes. But in between laughing myself silly, I'm thinking: SMS, reality shows, self-promotion, multiple voting OK, cutoff counts -- could there be a more thoroughly 21st Century story than this?