So lately if you have been online lately, you must have seen such a big influx of Indians on the comment sections of literally everywhere, be it Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, Forums. Isnt that supposed to be a good thing that we are representing India everywhere. My answer would ideally be yes, until it comes down to reality. Internet is too good for us. While Internet has given us a good channel for us to express, the usage that we had pre-Jio era was still pleasant. People used to do their things as per their priorities. They were searching for pieces of code, chatting with their friends and crushes, visiting cyber cafes for filling up forms or to check the results. That was a sweet era of the internet in India. After the Jio boom, everybody has internet, data that needs to be consumed and an opportunity to make our lives better. And what do we do with that?
Some improved their lives further, some played online mobile games, some started reading online articles, while some recieved the articles in their FB, Insta, Reddit feed. We are a pretty vocal lot. We started giving our opinions on stuffs. That is where this story starts. Now, I am not saying that people from other countries are not vocal. They are. But can you match the numbers that we have, do you have that active internet users that we have. India has an internet penetration of approximately 40%, which can overwhelm a discussion forum with the numbers. Now those numbers have a huge potential to do some real good: standing up for something, taking a stand, holding up an opinion. But sadly it has actually become a hornet’s nest.
You can’t criticize and/or have discussion about something negative happening in India being an outsider. The crowd of online immature users will run you over. And that is not cool. Even Indians who criticize something are labelled left wing or right wingers. We have to understand not everyone who is criticizing has an agenda. Sure, most media houses are serving biased content these days, but being on the internet, we don’t have to subscribe to everything that they are serving. There used to be a time, the media houses and their editorials used to be a great source of gaining perspective. But these days since most of the news publications are being powered by one of the parties, they are not an apt source to gain information. Our best hope is to take the facts from their content and keep their biased opinions aside. Avoiding sharing content which is not verified.
Positives
Sure we had some wins given the united stands of our netizens. The most profilic of them being net-neutrality. When the news broke out that free internet might be in danger , we all took our stands and made sure nothing of that sort could endanger our freedom. That has been the most potent use of our powers as netizens. But aside from that, in most other cases, our power has been borderline annoying. Be it the case of T-Series against PewDiePie. It was never about India vs The World, but we made it seem like in our eyes and then eventually in front of the world. It was about an individual vs a corporation. But lets not get into the details. My point here is we took the diss track personally and launched online attacks on anyone who stood against the motion. In our mind, we were defending India, but in reality we were adding to that annoying factor.
Another highlighted case was of a confusion in names of current PM and a former PM of Bhutan. Use the link to see the story.
Now, when Sharapova(an individual) said that she doesn’t know Sachin, she was trolled massively. While here a media house, the people who are supposed to have the most researched stuffs, made this massive blunder. My point here is: first, Mr Lotay TShering, we are sorry on behalf of our news agencies and secondly, its okay if someone doesn’t comply to our views or opinions, just agree to disagree and carry on with your lives instead of thrusting your own opinion onto others.
What can we do?
So, that was the problem. What is the way ahead? My advice would be to just be calm and think before we outrage or just think if we would say the same thing if the person was infront of us. In most of the cases, we would probably retract our outrage. In this digital era of anonymity(well proxy-anonymity), it is so easy to get polarised in your views. I am pretty sure if I want you to agree with me on, lets say, on how Facebook is an evil organisation and your privacy means nothing to them, I would share few emotional articles which will touch a nerve and bam, the seeds are sown, which will bear the fruits eventually. Now, Facebook sure is turning to the dark side and that’s no propaganda(I will talk about it some other time, maybe next).
News is not news these days, everything has become an editorial, with the presentor forcing their thoughts onto their readers/viewers. And I am not saying that other countries dont have this problem, they sure do, but its not as magnified as us, because of our huge internet user base.
Now, talking to people who already subsribe to above views, I recently did an experiment with positive results and wish to propagate the same.
The experiment is to talk to people outraging and calm them down. During the recent Zomato controversy, where a guy refused to take an order from a Muslim delivery boy. I went to Instagram and tried talking to a person outraging in some comment section. Ofcourse I was abused pretty colorfully initially, but after a round of one-to-one logical talk, I was able to pacify him. Now, he may or may not outrage again, but I would like to believe that he will let logic be his driver rather than anger in his conversations ahead. We really need tolerance in our online opinions these days.
So, my advice again, would be to talk to people spreading hate or colorful opinions over the internet and we might be able to change the tone into a more positive one, one person at a time.
References:
1. https://mobile.twitter.com/tsheringtobgay/status/1134051796564025344
