It was an idle Tuesday afternoon. A minor banter
with a friend on Whatsapp snowballed into a furious row. I was almost teary
eyed and had just composed a long essay presenting my side of the argument and
posted it on the chat window. I glanced furtively as the two grey ticks turned
teal. He was ‘typing.’ “LOL”. He went
off line. My tears turned into new shade of rage. I pinged him incessantly
determined to squeeze out a longer and more satisfying reply. He did get back but he retorted, “It’s after
all a Whatsapp fight, why are you taking it so seriously?”
Whatsapp conversations. Likes on Facebook. Zingers
on Twitter. Are we supposed to take them to heart? Or do we dismiss them as casual
gestures that are meant to be seen for that instance and forgotten the next?
The landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of
USA saw an eruption of translucent rainbow profile pictures on Facebook through
out India. While most saw it an expression of their solidarity with the judgment
and as a positive step towards gender equality, a faction of the population
dubbed it as yet another ‘cool’ fad that people blindly resorted to without understanding
the real ramifications or realising that our country is grappling with bigger
issues. When our India is far from such verdicts, why celebrate ‘Americanism ‘and American popular culture
they seemed to say. It is true that much
before USA, 29 countries other countries had already legalised same sex
marriage!
I am
happy sitting on the fence. What’s the big deal? Yes people changed their
profile pictures to say it’s a positive step for mankind. Yes it was for just a
day. Yes I definitely think its mob mentality and most of them don’t have clue
about what they are doing. But should we
squabble about it so much? Most acts on
social media are fleeting and transient. They last till the next post on ‘Game
of Thrones’ becomes viral or our friend posts yet another model like selfie
from yet another exotic location. Public memory is inversely proportional to
Internet traffic. We do now inhabit a
world colonised by digital natives, where people believe in the adage “if its
not on Facebook it doesn’t exist” and when beauty is routinely instagrammed and
filtered to perfection, the biggest compliment I’ve got was when a friend
remarked that I looked just like my Facebook profile picture!
Deepika Padukone made a super stylised
video with flowing hair and a stoic demeanour hoping she would be seen as the next
bra burning feminist scion. Instead she was vociferously attacked on all media platforms.
Every line was scrutinised, dissected and deplored. People spent hours debating the video’s
pseudo feminism and elitist portrayal. But I ask, are the arguments on social media
worth our time? Yes we all emerge as hotheaded and opinionated bastions of righteousness.
We refuse to take crap. But how many of us truly assimilate what we witness on
social media and take it to the supposed next logical level; constructive
behaviour perhaps? No, we like to play out a mini tamasha akin to ‘The
Newshour’, where everyone agrees to disagree and nothing concrete ever emerges
from the debate. We sleep over it .We
move on to something else that catches our fancy.
When neither of us walk the talk, why talk
so much? As someone very wise pointed out, on Facebook of course, for every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction and a social media over reaction.
- Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri', The New Indian Express, Bangalore- 26th Aug 2015
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