Present day social media has empowered individuals sitting in remote drawing rooms with a medium to express themselves in public domains and be heard which they may not be able to do in first person. There is a huge mass that has reaped benefits out of it. However the boon has a flip side too. There is another set of people who have knowingly and unknowingly converted this boon to bane for themselves and for the rest of the society. Being on a social platform does not make everything uttered or shared as sane. There is a class of people with whom if you start holding a conversation on a contemporary issue, they cannot go beyond the first superficial layer of it, leave aside the reasoning, rationale and having a locus standi on it. However, the same class becomes active in the virtual space. They start posting some 300 words on a issue so entangled that even the country's most intellectual brains fail to analyze. Not only they put forth the issue, they put a judgement in the next line, emphatically claiming it to be the universal truth. However the language along with everything makes it evident that it is either copied from internet, or is mere rhetoric. Then starts a whole bunch of commenting that is completely antithetical to the post above. The comments start with exclaimatory remarks, goes on to become a conversation on something casual like a movie dialogue or some trip and finally ends with something identical to the persona of the author. Someone with a little common sense can easily makeout the reasoning behind the post. It is usually one of the following
- A showoff of pseudo intellect
- A complex - "Am I a lesser man/woman? I have a job, I have a good salary, I do all sorts of upmarket stuff, I can also make a statement, Let the people know that i have also grown brains now, Lets see how many people comment or like it."
- Others-are-doing-it-so-will-I thing
- I-dont-have-anything-to-post outcome
The person logs out from internet leaving behind a catalyst for a potentially dangerous phenomena. Such people dont even go by the reason or rationale behind the issue they vomit in their posts. Remember their reasons behind posting. Hence they are least bothered about the accuracy, authenticity of the statements they made. Same class of people now fall prey to the rhetoric uttered in the post and start building a superficial stand on particular issue, accepting it as a universal truth without verifying the authenticity. However since the stand is built on the edifice of non-verified statements it is as weak as the statement itself. But it results in another post by the new prey and further discussions without understanding the rationale behind the issue.
Now realise the outcome of this. Social media is so powerful a tool that it has orchestrated revolutions recently (where it was used responsibly). However if something similar gets built up on mere rhetoric and hooliganism, imagine where we will head to. A society is a gigantic machinery of which an individual or a group is just a small block which does not know what goes on in the entire machinery, however even if a small disturbance starts originating from couple of blocks the results can be catastrophic. Tampering with even a small screw may result in a situation uncalled for. Democracay is a boon and we should appreciate it. Remember some five,ten, fifty lakh or even one crore people do not represent the views of over a 120 crore people, forget about the miniscule population on social media.
In such times it becomes a duty of every individual firstly to stop taking things on their face value. Whatever comes in public domain may not always be right or may not always be wrong. One should check the authenticity, nullify the prejudices, subside the emotions and understand the rationale behind the issues. Once all these are established, a stand point would emerge which can be shared/discussed with others. If such an approach is taken we can be sure that whatever we are passing on to others is not a part of any propaganda, nor is it someone else's stand point, but it is what we are and what we stand for. And I am sure if we understand this responsibility we can freely exercise our power. And till the time we dont understand it, silence is the best statement.
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