Charles Leadbeater, author of ‘We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity’ famously wrote, “You are what you share”. Social media which is one of the most potent and popular manifestation of ‘mass creativity’ and mass interaction is unpardoning in one respect and that is “what you share”.
Jure Klepic, a specialist in digital media was spot on when he said, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas; what happens on Twitter stay on Google forever!” Seconding what Klepic said I reiterate here what I often say at social media workshops: You can escape your destiny, not your social media post. So, be sure of what you write and write with a certain amount of attention and with a large amount of conviction.
As stated above social media, especially Twitter is an unpardoning space. There are people who are ready to bite you for a little disagreement. There are umpteen voices on social media and that is what makes it a place of deliberation and that naturally calls for a great amount of tolerance. But, the problem arises when those claiming the virtue of tolerance tend to brand the contrarian point of view as dogmatic, prude, intolerant, sell-outs just because it does not suit their narrative.
It is no more a hidden fact that social media is largely divided into ideological lines that can be loosely categorized as the ‘Right’ and the ‘Left’. It is a fact that there is no meeting-point between the two, which often results in strong disagreements leading to what we call ‘war of words’.
It is all fine till here. I don’t agree to a certain point of view and I am opposed for holding mine. The problem arises when their contradicting my point of view is marked as “debate” and mine as “trolling”. The problem arises when their fight is eulogized as “duty” and “fight for democracy” and mine is rejected as “trolling”. The problem lies in marking any attempt by the Right to push forward their point of view on any issue as trolling by “IT cell for 5-5 rupees”.
The conventional medium of communication and intellectual discourse be on it on the subject of economics, politics and history was dominated by Left for all these years, yielding no space to contrarian point of view. Why that happened is altogether a different story that will require a separate article, but because it happened, the space for a contrarian point of view was complete diminished by what I call the “intolerant left”.
But now, the Right on social media—which is a unified group of serious thinking people—are using this free space for popularizing the ideas that are in the national interest. As stated earlier Right on social media is a unified group of serious thinking people believe that this space should be used to listen, to engage, and to build relationships.
And, because of this belief, our pursuits on social media go beyond building opinion that serves the national interest and exposing those sinister ideological agents who are here to break the nation. Our pursuits on social media go beyond challenging the “tukde tukde” gang who wants to divide the country. It tries to bring people together for a cause that helps us restore our faith in humanity.
It stretches from mobilizing people for blood-donation to crowdfunding to creating a thread of prayers for a father whose daughter is battling for life after meeting an accident. If you have to understand the intent and content of the Right on the social media you have to look beyond “5-5 rupye waale IT cell waale log” type of a narrative build by the so-called “progressive Left”.
Alok Bhatt, a selfless volunteer from Uttarakhand was going through tough times when during Durga Puja this year, her wife and 9-year-old daughter met an accident. No, sooner the news broke out on Twitter, thousands of people started posting their prayers, tweets were shared to arrange for any help required by Bhatt. And this continued for two months till the daughter was back home, fully recovered.
One of the twitter users made an appeal: URGENT: Reaching out to my friends in Dehradun! @alok_bhatt wife and daughter met with an accident yesterday at Rajpur Road and are critical! They need support. Kindly see in your network in Dehradun who can help with O-negative blood Alok Bhatt.
No sooner this appeal was made messages and calls started flooding from different corners of the country. This is the true face of the Right on social media that needs to be acknowledged.
From spreading the message to help find a missing girl from Kolkata to arranging blood for a patient in Bihar, the Right has been always up to this task in this regard.
Consider these tweets:
n July 2019, an innocent man was killed by a group of people which the Left would have termed as lynching if his name was not Gopal. Gopal, a ‘gau rakshak’, was shot dead by cattle smugglers on July 30 while he was chasing their vehicle on a bike after being tipped off about cows being smuggled.
The mainstream media that would have otherwise marked this tragedy as “death of democracy” and “idea of India” did not care to highlight it. So, the Right took the charge of helping the family of the deceased. Through crowdfunding around Rs 40 lakhs were raised for Gopal’s family.
These examples are not an attempt to self-praise our work but only to highlight the selfless initiatives of lakhs of ‘Right-thinking’ people which normally goes unnoticed.
Social media is a great place of sharing ideas, but at the same time, it is also a place that is used by people with vested interest to promote their sinister motives. Our, job is to challenge them, demolish false narratives. But it is important to remember this place can also be a great instrument of promoting a humanitarian cause that Indian Conservatives and Right are rightfully doing.
