Since the Covid situation has been so fabulously handled and the country has beaten every other nation on the planet on economic, financial, health and education fronts we as a collective have turned our attention to the invasion by the new East India Company, Twitter/Facebook/Google/Amazon social media.
How it’s going to play out? Why clearly very excitingly, get the popcorn and grab a seat this promises to be more interesting than the Friends Reunion (and that was a fun nostalgic trip). It’s like a marriage playing out right in front of your eyes… the marriage between politicians and megaphones… minus the very public sex… though come to think of it the way things are going that too might make an appearance at some point. Twitter is the flash point right now however it’s all of Social Media. Frankly I’m the sort of person who sides with Ramdev on the doctors v/s insanity debate however in this case I say go GoI you got this. Grab them by their nuts and drag them through the bazaars of Muzaffarabad . Let’s face it some things are not for mass consumption (no silly not talking about buff) and social media is certainly one such thing. Every lizard is active on FB/Insta/Twitter and that is dangerous for a developing country like India where free speech becomes more of a persistent road bump rather than an enabler. Admittedly I have often wondered why the government ever allowed common man access to platforms in the first place. It all started out fun and games however pretty soon devolved into such rabid cacophony that the seers had to leave in a hurry (me being one of the people who left all social media platforms back when Modi was taking his oath of office…. knew this degeneration and complete breakdown of conversation was coming).
There ought to be proper checks and balances for access to SM, not everyone needs to be there. The paper thin protection of children and degenerates, against each other, that the EULA/ToS offers is clearly a ploy by the FB/Twitter/Google triumvirate to shirk responsibility and let the user, or his guardians, take the onus for being truthful about their information (check this box if you are above 14… why sure ok! …that prevents a 9 year old from making her own account on FB??!! Are you effing kidding me?!). Why not attach each SM account to a valid AADHAR card and deplatform all users who use SM without AADHAR linkage, allow account creation only if age criteria are met. Seriously why do people need to post their nasty pictures for the whole world to collectively barf over why can’t they just send the pictures to their exes and their crushes… SM activity today is 100% bonafide fakeness and bullying. Which concerned government knowingly and willingly allows such peddlers of mass hypnotic drugs into it’s borders? Unless hang on!!! the government itself wants to keep it’s people drugged and zoned out!! Mind blowing revelation!
The GoI has a bit of a problem though, the brainwashed supporters on either side of the fence. They believe now they cannot communicate without SM. How to keep these zombies engaged?! How to control narratives without lizards to propagate what influencer didis are being paid to peddle? It’s a catch 22 dilemma right now… Hopefully we all can support each other offline, help them cross roads, take up painting or some other gainful employment instead of being the amplifiers for a venom spewing Polity. Hang on!!!! SO why would the political parties which so want and need and love SM want to shoo off the platforms. Ok so that’s clue number one about how this will unravel. The typical smokes and mirrors act will play out for a while and then we’ll all be back to business as usual. Anyway I still believe the SM platforms need to be kicked out of the country, completely removed. For a few days let the influencer didis eat what they have been coaxing gullible fools to eat, let the weddings not get solemnized because of missing shares of pre-wedding coitus (ok dry humping we’re a sanskaari lot) photography on FB/Insta/Grindr, let babies not be born for a while because gender reveals did not happen (if it’s not on FB it didn’t happen, right) such wow, much amazeballs! population control as a byproduct of SM ban…. maybe at the end of it all maybe we would discover that we have neighbors, find new friends on the streets (lying like us in a ditch stoned out and trying to make sense of life without Likes and Shares)… maybe we would solve actual problems rather than just hanker after people we barely know asking for them to Sign my Change.org rant… maybe just maybe tempers would cool down. I say ban Social Media and follow it up with news channels. Let Arnab get out of his studio and the security it provides to find out what India really wants to know rather than make it up every day based upon his stupid Twitter poll that even he knows is stupid.
So yeah I am hopeful that this fight that Twitter/WA/FB have gotten into with the GoI will result in SM being closed down for a while which in turn will give us a more productive, more sensitive, more collaborative jantaa which is more invested in solving local problems rather than outraging about some problems that people in sector 23 are facing that they read about on Twitter all the time sitting in sector 4 Bhatinda Artist colony where there isn’t even a sector 23 or an Artist colony… I also know that this is not lala land… we still live in a Banana Republic and the best that will happen is a gentle rap on the knuckles… SM is oxygen for politicians, they won’t let it go away so easily… where would the daily outrage get generated every day to keep the junkies busy and not pestering the Government about jobs!… the Government just needs to take over more control that’s all… isn’t it ironic we are privatizing brick and mortar businesses and looking to make Twitter/FB/Google more answerable to the government… at this rate the day is not far that the Government will be in the business of SM while Railways etc. will be run by private entities. It’s all about the money honey! As for how can anyone decide who deserves to be heard and who is just stupid gibberish that does not deserve a platform to air their stinking trash… well let’s just start at drinking age and work our way up from there, emotional intelligence, rational thinking, logical abilities and all that can be factored in as we go. Conversations impact the direction nations take and today the conversation is so vitiated that all it predicts is a nation in tailspin.