Has the pandemic made us more angry online? It's a question that every trending hashtag for the past few months has repeatedly made me think over.
And I believe: more than showing us how hateful or toxic we can be, the last few months have proved how alone we all are.
#Thread
And I believe: more than showing us how hateful or toxic we can be, the last few months have proved how alone we all are.
#Thread
1/ I'll try and explain through a contrast:
As Indians, the generations of our parents and grandparents knew very clearly where they belonged. They had been put into narrow boxes of caste, creed, community, state or religion, that they dutifully inhabited for much of their lives.
As Indians, the generations of our parents and grandparents knew very clearly where they belonged. They had been put into narrow boxes of caste, creed, community, state or religion, that they dutifully inhabited for much of their lives.
2/ This was a world before the internet, so that generation seldom had points of context for life outside of these boxes. The ones with the privilege of money, travel, books or an independent mind, fought to break out of it, but a lot didn't: as they had somewhere to belong to.
3/ It's not that they didn't struggle: the struggle was to make a life and a living in adherence to the archaic rules of these conservative boxes, and sometimes, it swallowed people whole. But even when they were lonely, they were not alone; they had the identity of a label.
4/ When the internet arrived, we realised that there are many boxes outside of the ones our society (and patriarchy) pushes us into. And you can choose a label beyond the ones given to you, or even traverse between many. Millennnials (and the Gen Z) were given a gift: choice.
5/ But with this choice, the question of identity led to a struggle. Are we the identity given to us by birth, or can we choose our identity? And if we choose a different one, are we allowed to *be* different in a country where our identity is decided not by us, but by society?
6/ This struggle of identity has, in many ways, defined our relationship with the internet in the last few years. With everyone unsure of which world, which box, which label we neatly fit into offline, we've all been trying to find - and build - communities to belong to online.
7/ And this is true across the ideologies we support: whether we are feminists or liberal or right-wing or part of the 'Justice for SSR' hashtag, we speak up, speak out, get angry, get emotional, to feel, and to be a part of something that gives us meaning in our lives offline.
8/ The internet has then become both the cause and cure to the struggle of identity this generation is battling with.
And with the pandemic, as we socially distance from our loved ones, the loneliness may not go away.. but at least the anger online may make us feel less alone..
And with the pandemic, as we socially distance from our loved ones, the loneliness may not go away.. but at least the anger online may make us feel less alone..
9/ And if we perhaps spend some time not reacting to the anger, or participating in it, but in trying to understand it, and trying to understand our role in it, maybe.. just maybe, we will find other ways of trying to belong.
Because that's all we want: to belong.
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Because that's all we want: to belong.
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