Badass?

A few weeks ago, a standup comedian by the name Agrima Joshua faced a wave of criticism by Shubham Mishra, Imtiyaz Sheikh and many such ‘influencers’ that included, but was not limited to, rape threats and inexplicably vulgar abuses. Although it was these videos and the subsequent arrest of the makers for intimidation online that got them to the headlines of major news publications and social media, their followers and the number of likes and the support the makers got just went on to show that they were cultivating groups of angry young men with polarizing views on everything. More importantly, platforms like YouTube and Instagram did not take these videos down until they were pressured into doing the same by the woke community. Above all, we notice one thing, that a section of society feels that they are entitled to the right to express themselves in any way they want, irrespective of how it may affect the one receiving the criticism. Both of the above-mentioned influencers, drew inspiration from another singular influencer. This was evident from the noticeable similarity between the videos of all three creators – similar recording settings ie. in a car, similar language style that consisted of cursing too often to understand what exactly the video aimed to do and the irony of it all when they cursed almost every female or close-to-feminine thing in this world (before you ask, yes that also includes members of the LGBTQ+ community), while also saying that they respected all mothers and sisters. Although the law-enforcement authorities were quick enough to identify what was wrong and arrest the offenders, many followers of these ‘influencers’ had already followed in their footsteps by making their own versions of the rant or recording the original clip before it was taken down and then reposting it to be faithful to their social media gurus. This created a huge unfavourable domino effect on social media. Many such rants drew from the narratives that comedians are anti-national, TikTokers do not conform to society’s heteronormative ideals and that all females must be respected, until you want to curse. Another thing that this occurrence brought to light is that the government has failed to evolve and morph with the changing society and societal norms. Although there are provisions for legal action under several defences like defamation or under the IT Act, they may not be as effective as perceived to be, because in India, the justice system has been paralyzed to a huge extent, so much so that filing an FIR will take a week, discovery a month, filing a suit another two months and going to trial another year or more. But, until then the damage would’ve already been done. Millions would’ve already seen the potentially actionable and offensive content and many more followed in the footsteps of the makers, spreading an array of false facts and even more prosecutable content that is borderline hate speech. And you won’t believe that the influencers who were arrested had YouTube followers in the range of 300k-350k followers. So, imagine the amount of hate speech introduced into the media if even a fraction of these followers would’ve seen their videos – I’m sure many more did. Many of these ‘influencers’ have also bought their tickets to reality TV shows and fame due to these followers. What I’m trying to say is that, we have been buried so deep in social media progress and popularity on such platforms that we have failed to identify if the provisions made to reduce malicious content are even working. Social media platforms must take immediate action against all content that may cause harm to anyone. Irrespective of the government initiatives, platforms must establish a clear liability on content creators who promote hate speech content or media even closely associated with it. Most importantly, you as a young user of social media have to be aware and watch everything around you that happens. Remember that small button in the corner which read ‘Report’? If you see inappropriate content, report it; it doesn’t take even half a minute. Do your part and then it is the responsibility of the platform to ensure that they do the right thing, provided that you contribute to it as well. Hate speech is a cancer that will grow out of our control if left unchecked and exposing young impressionable minds, who fail to comprehend what is right and wrong, to such content will only cause it to spread like a wildfire. To correct myself, exposing ANYONE to such content will only cause it to spread like wildfire.