Imagine this: a 70-year-old man is walking down the market wearing an interesting t-shirt. The T-shirt has the text, ‘My son is the writer of (name of a movie). Do watch the movie!’.
Most of the people walking around him see the t-shirt with amusement and intrigue, given how unusual it seems.
Scenario 1: Some people walk up to him and tell him they are happy for his son and are touched by his feeling of pride in his son’s achievement.
Scenario 2: Some others walk up to him and tell him that they hated the movie, that he should remove his son from his will, that he should take his son to a therapist, that he should ask his son to quit writing, and complain about the film’s many issues to him.
Considering the first part (of an old man walking in such a t-shirt) itself seems unlikely, just go with the flow and think about what is more likely – scenario 1 or scenario 2?
My guess is the first scenario. As for scenario 2, it is perhaps more likely that people talk among themselves when they have something nasty, mean, or rude to say about the film, than express that directly to a stranger who simply happens to be the father of one of the writers of the film.
Now, let us move from imagined situations to real-life happenings.
The recently-released film Gehraiyaan (Amazon Prime Video) has four writers – Shakun Batra (who is also the film’s director), Ayesha Devitre, Sumit Roy, and Yash Sahai.
Sumit’s father, Chandan Roy, recently took to Twitter to share about his son being one of the writers of the film.
This was the tweet.
Scenario 2 started in all earnest. Tons of people told him that they hated the movie, that he should remove his son from his will, that he should take his son to a therapist, that he should ask his son to quit writing and complain about the film’s many issues to him.
Looking at the scenario 2 overdose, scenario 1 happened too, with many people fawning over this display of parental pride by an old man and denouncing the detractors for their utter lack of empathy, basic etiquette, or common sense. People also pointed out that for an Indian dad to be proud of his ward’s offbeat (relatively; in the Indian context) profession that is not medical, Government, or technology related, it was mighty unique… and healthy!
I was drawn to the fact that scenario 2 happened at all in the first place… online.
But I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, given the kind of discourse that passes on the internet via Twitter replies (mainly by anonymous handles who are too scared to let their online hate-spewing affect their offline, real-world selves), YouTube comments, and so on.
So why would people pounce on a 70-year-old man (approximately – I don’t know Roy Senior’s age) for merely announcing that his son has written a film and asking people to watch the film? What is in the offline version when people wouldn’t go and tell a random stranger that his son’s work was terrible (among more vile things)?
One, of course, is the most obvious – you do not see the man’s reaction when you are being vile with him for no obvious reason (not that a/any reason justifies being vile to a stranger). Devoid of any human reaction as an immediate response, people lower their inhibitions and have a go without worrying about the other person’s feelings (a stranger, at that). This is almost table-stakes for the internet and social media that merely articulating this seems pointless because it has become so normal(ized).
The broader issue is however something else. To a stranger who is simply happy and beaming with pride about his son’s professional work, the two human reactions could be,
- congratulate him like a normal human being feeling happy for someone else’s genuine happiness
- ignore the tweet and move on
And yet, to choose the 3rd option to actually tell the man something utterly rude and mean is far beyond the man and his son’s work. Much of the vileness perhaps stems from a lot of background details – the film’s lead actor’s political dispensation, the larger anger against Bollywood for assorted reasons, the anger or annoyance about the film’s content that is deemed damaging in the Indian context, among others.
Twitter has been looking at ways to reduce the meanness on the platform and has been trying prompts that can perhaps make people think again before saying something rude.
A research paper by Twitter and Yale Law School too concludes that the prompts actually help, to some extent.
But the kind of negative reactions this man’s tweet received may not be something that Twitter can prompt at all, given the nature and context of reactions (that cannot be detected with mere English keywords).
The offline equivalent of merely talking rudely behind his back (and he doesn’t know at all) would be akin to simply tweeting without tagging him, or in response to his tweet. And yet, people don’t even think before having a go at the stranger for saying something so utterly harmless and sweet about his son.
It is tempting to not look at this instance as being anything worth talking about and assume that since the internet anyway removes all inhibitions and barriers to being a better person, this is just another day on the internet and social media. But the support the man received after the initial barrage of rudeness is heartening too. The push back against rudeness demonstrates that empathy is not a lost virtue and that people could feel for one another, even strangers. The number of people who said they didn’t like the film, but were annoyed at the rudeness the man faced for merely celebrating his son’s success probably indicates that the internet could be better.
But that pushback exists because someone started it, and others got inspired by that goodness and joined the pushback.
The vile response is a perspective, inviting people to see the tweet in another way.
The pushback too is a perspective, inviting people to consider why the vileness is mean-spirited and pointless.
More than Twitter creating new ways to prompt people in an endless whack-a-mole game of cleaning up the platform, it is us, the people, who perhaps have the power to do both – be vile, and be human. Just like someone chose not to ignore the man’s tweet when they were upset about anything related to the film, and told him so in a completely pointless act (which he handled pretty well, at that!), we could pushback vocally too instead of ignoring the meanness when we see it. Too often, we take it for granted and conclude that this is the way of the internet/social media, so let it be. And, why bother getting into these fights unnecessarily… is another reason.
But the more we push back against online rudeness, the more we are offering a different perspective for people to consider and join. It is tiring, no doubt, but I believe it truly helps.
That it has come to this stage when an otherwise completely benign online utterance is confronted with so much random, meaningless hatred is a larger sign of the times. But the sign of the times is our doing, as is changing that sign into not tolerating mean, vile and, rude utterances, and being aggressively kind.