How the Internet has turned each one of us into a cat video
Happy people live on Instagram. I cannot make that statement from experience, having left the platform in 2012 after just a few months of using it. The observation has been repeated at me by different people in various versions. I continue to be miserable, it seems, solely due to my religious use of Twitter. The platform of abuse and fights seems like a hellish place for non-users and while their stereotype isn't exactly wrong, platforms now have largely similar content and user attitudes, especially for seemingly positive content.
Demanding a cat or dog video to cope with a bad day is an acceptable social media practice. When the complexities and injustices of the real world begin to overwhelm, a short video or a scroll through the profile of an “animal content curator” can help reset one's mood. A recent pet challenge involving dogs and blankets gave a welcome break to everyone as the drudgery of 2018 continued.
One of the earliest moments of comforts lied in believing the inspirational stories that came across our timelines. Facebook would be inundated with pleas for likes for a brave soldier or a person battling a deadly disease. Will Smith's inspiring life lessons and quotes were a regular feature of my timeline, deepening my respect for the actor and rapper. The multimedia explosion in the past decade has seen such stories highlighted in photos and videos with pages, and even publications, dedicated to the singular coverage of such stories. The more absorbing the digital world became, the more we imbibed its values and myths. Left solely to the charms of the Internet, you would never believe that anyone kinder and wiser than Keanu Reeves has ever lived.
We gradually started applying the same romanticism to people with far more influence and power. Barack Obama was the first true benefactor of this trend. The internet-savvy nature of his two presidential campaigns married with “cool dad” positioning made him immune from widespread criticism, even those with merit. The same strategy worked handsomely for his Canadian counterpart.
Justin Trudeau was your cat video. A feel good mirage of “woke” triumph made everyone love politicians again — even if they will never govern them.
The feminist cabinet, the progressive politics, and the ability to appear charming in front of the camera at every given opportunity would make him a beacon of hope as the world grew darker and more chaotic. The reductive feel good nature of his actions made him obscure criticism or at least soften their intensity — of setting up a question on quantum computing, expanding Canada's oil pipelines despite opposition from First Nations and environmentalists, or denying groping allegations from 18 years ago. The reporter in question has stated that Trudeau apologised to her in 2000 while many of his political and publicity tactics might be a common resource for leaders around the world. A replacement of scepticism with romanticism in politics, however, as feverish support for Donald Trump and Narendra Modi shows, can only lead to disastrous results. A large section of the internet still believes that Trudeau gave a spontaneous answer about a subject he is well-versed in as the myth-busting articles and videos lagged to gain the same level of virality.
A cat video never has a follow-up — there are no behind the scenes videos or questions about how the owner managed to shoot the animal's antics.
Human beings do not have the same luxury and upholding only the appealing parts of their personality has dangerous real-life consequences.
The downfall of various celebrities and trusted public figures since October serves as a cautionary tale on how fame and perception can make us forget a few truths. Personas have been crafted carefully for decades but when it encountered a place which not only let you escape reality, but even shape it, it became more powerful than ever. When allegations of sexual harassment were first made against The Viral Fever's Arunabh Kumar, a swarm of fans refused to believe them. While the fallout from the revelations ensued, a Reddit user posted an allegation of being molested by stand-up comic and AIB co-founder Rohan Joshi, deleting them in a few hours, and then stating that the false allegation was posted just to discredit Kumar's accuser. The drastic extent to which “fans” go in defence of their idols on such serious issues is still a bewildering concept for me.
Excellent reportage in the #MeToo era has helped societies re-examine their treatment of women, reveal the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, and deepen our understanding of the power structures in the world.
An aspect of this conversation which we fail to take into account is the role played by online publications in creating personas which don't leave much room for nuance. The information age has dwarfed in front of the hype age where gossip has been packaged into a spectator sport. Smallest acts of charity and human behaviour are presented as an oddity when done by the rich and famous while articles gush in praise of their “perfection” — in their work, behaviour, looks, social media profiles, etc.
A voyeuristic approach to the social media presence of famous people means that every minute detail is examined under a microscope, to arrive at implausible conclusions. A few weeks after Anthony Bourdain's death, an article titled "Can We Talk About Toxic Femininity?", cited an anonymous Instagram account called @justicefortony as a source. "I would be sceptical of this random, anonymous reveal if it weren't for the fact that Ottavia Bourdain was following @justicefortony," says the writer, staking the credibility of an important argument on the fact that Bourdain's estranged wife was following an Instagram account claiming to share details of his final days.
Sometimes the force of online popularity is so strong that no amount of news reports can cast any aspersions on the aura of a star. I am not a football fan or follower but I find my interests piqued every four years when the World Cup arrives. The early stages of the 2018 World Cup saw one name dominate almost every conversation — Cristiano Ronaldo. One conversation which happened to catch my eye led me to an article from the German newspaper Der Spiegel which reported that Ronaldo paid a woman $375,000 as settlement over rape allegations. Ronaldo, one of the most popular people in the world with a massive following on social media, denied the claims through his adviser's agency. The woman, identified as Susan K, is prohibited from speaking about the matter, leaving us to rely on the reportage of Der Spiegel. The article cannot compete with the juggernaut that is Ronaldo’s fanfare, especially, when he scores, and the agreement will ensure that the truth never gets out.
Lawless terrain
I once held a job where being funny on social media was a part of my KRAs. Memes were obviously an important part of it but I often felt a sense of discomfort. When you have to lampoon well-known public figures and use publicly available material like movie and TV show posters, screenshots, and clips, you feel little hesitance. Meme culture's explosion with the help of private photos and videos has always been a muddy area of concern for me. Caitlin Seida's story leaves no such ambiguity. Caitlin dressed up as Lara Croft for Halloween and shared a picture of it on her Facebook, forgetting to check her privacy settings which meant that the photo was visible to the public. The photo went viral on several pages where people mocked her appearance, suggested that others like her “should be put down”, and that she should just kill herself and spare everyone's eyes. When Caitlin reached out to some of the women who had left the mean comments, she shared an epiphany.
"And of course, they hadn't really thought of me as a person. Why should they? These images are throwaways, little bursts of amusement to get through a long workday. You look, you chuckle, you get some ridicule off your chest and move on to the next source of distraction. No one thought about the possibility that I might read those words. Far less, that I would talk back."
Caitlin's story should have served as a cautionary tale but instead we can mine for many recent examples where consent, privacy, and decency have been surpassed in service of our entertainment. “Dancing Uncle”, the feel good story of our past few months, could have ended very differently if the internet had not embraced it on a positive note. Sanjay Srivastava told Hindustan Times, "I don't know who he is but I am really grateful to him. I never got such an appreciation before."
The act’s beauty in changing Srivastava's life for the better cannot change the dangers of people's private moments being recorded on phones without their consent.
The past few months have seen people on social media mock users of Musical.ly — a video social network app which allows one to create videos as well as broadcast them live. Opinions cannot be subject to any restrictions but videos from the platform are often posted on Twitter, perhaps without the knowledge or consent of the creators. What these users and Rosey Blair, the creator of the #PlaneBae story, have in common is a deep-rooted desire for fame and validation; in accepting the internet as a reality of its own where fame is just a post away, they view every human story (including their own) as a tool. Digital publications, not satisfied with turning the famous into role models for millions, offered to cater to the fame hungry online user, ignoring the rights of others as just “collateral damage”. Posts with no editorial supervision or thought are still a commonplace phenomenon and until recently, prominent publications would feature articles which clearly infringed on people's privacy.
When Shah Rukh Khan came to Pune to promote his new film, a photo of him taking a selfie generated several comments about one particular woman in the photo. “Everyone's Talking About” — that perplexing genre of online reportage which can cover cathartic personal stories, vapid obsessions, and problematic groupthink — was used by several publications to talk about her.
While BuzzFeed India was able to get in touch with her and present her side of the story, the sheer amount of attention and its detrimental effect on a private person's life was ignored by almost all publications. India.com reported that the woman had to deactivate her Facebook and Twitter profile, to allegedly combat the hate and attention she received.
Consume the internet, not the other way around
Marginalised voices, which struggle to gain attention in real life, have found an important platform on the Internet. New stories or age old tales offered in a fresh lens have helped enrich our understanding of the world and help us become more empathetic. We have bought all of our pain, achievements, and lessons to conversations, finding the closure which evades real life. The Internet gave us that.
The core of the online world, however, has always rested in lies. As Abraham Lincoln says in his famous quote: "Don't believe everything you read on the internet just because there's a picture with a quote next to it."
I am sceptical of impersonal Twitter threads, no matter who is presenting them. I find it odd that in such situations people would rather read a thread summarising a book rather than read the book itself, with the support of full context. Everybody lies online. People either lie about everything — who they are, their purpose, and their points of views — or “massage the truth” to shape the digital reality they want to present. We lie through intention or laziness when we fail to give a complete context. We lie even when we aren't being paid as members of an IT cell or a troll army.
We are free to choose the lies we want to believe. If a 30 second video of a baby elephant's bath helps you seek momentary delight, oblivious of his/her treatment at the facility, dangers of poaching, and the cruelty of human captivity, no one should stop you. Extending such exceptions to human beings can only have disastrous results.
If we can believe in the inherent greatness of a stranger from the curated, limited information we are presented with, it's just as easy to believe in the dangers of another stranger through rumours and gossip. Online abuse, free from political and cultural wars, is an extension of the internet's fake news problem where either through nefarious intentions or through reductive points of view, we dehumanise people as either desirables or rejects.
Taking back control from the internet requires embracing the earliest scepticism we felt when we first logged on to it. A time when every version of you can be fit online, we need to guard aspects of our life; using them as “totem tops” which can help us stay connected to reality. Viral sensations need to be seen through the prism of empathy — does the person know about this? Are they comfortable with this? Is causing someone online harassment worth the retweets and shares I crave? A pause before typing a reply to someone's contrarian views, where you consider that on the other side of the screen is a human being just as complicated and flawed as you, isn't a terrible ask.
I am not your cat video. And I refuse to make you mine.