WhatsApp university
WhatsApp — India’s leading university
Sandip RoyJULY 07, 2018 18:18 IST
UPDATED: JULY 07, 2018 17:00 IST
SHARE ARTICLE 6PRINTA A A
A forward adds gravitas to whatever random crackpot theory we have.
A forward adds gravitas to whatever random crackpot theory we have. | Photo Credit: Reuters
MORE-IN
Entire revolutions can be plotted and unravelled in a WhatsApp bubble
Please allow me to welcome you to the most popular and fastest growing university in India today.
It is so far ahead of the competition it does not even need to advertise anywhere. It does not require glossy colourful brochures showing gleaming new air-conditioned laboratories and conference rooms and happy students of all shades. It needs no testimonials, no motivational speakers with ponytails.
It is already the national leader, way ahead of any competition.
This is WhatsApp university, India’s most trusted source of news, facts, life hacks and the real truth about everything. Its motto seems to be seize the day, don’t hesitate, forward right now.
What is this irresistible itch to forward? Where did it spring from? Is it some leftover reflex from years of five-year-plans lumberingly taking the nation forward, dam by dam, yojana by yojana? We endured those newsreels every time we went to the movies. But still nothing seemed to move forward for most of us in India, whether it was traffic on the roads or the file in a babu’s office. Our Great Leap Forward always felt like a shuffle, two steps forward, one step back. But now 200 million WhatsApp users in India are on the Great March Forward.
100% true
WhatsApp hit our sweet spot. We felt the power of numbers. And we all felt equally empowered. On school alumni WhatsApp groups no one had to defer to the annoying know-it-all first-rank boy/ girl anymore. Now everyone had access to the truth if they could only find the right WhatsApp forward to back them up. It did not even have to be 100% true any more. Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson did not need to have really said Rahul Gandhi was no Hindu. Unesco need not have declared Bengali to be the sweetest language. Vladimir Putin did not really have to make a speech demanding Muslim immigrants learn Russian.
It just needed to sound true enough to forward.
I remember someone sharing a story about a BBC survey ranking the Congress among the top 10 corrupt parties in the world. When it was pointed out that it was obviously fake since some of the other parties that also made the Hall of Shame, like Mussolini’s Fascists and Hitler’s Nazi party, had not existed since World War II, he conceded this might be a fake BBC. But that, he said, does not mean that the Congress is not corrupt. QED.
The great beauty of a forward is that it lets us off the hook. It’s not our problem if someone gets killed on suspicion of being a child trafficker or a closet beef-eater because of the forward. We are not levelling any accusation. We are merely forwarding. The forwarding finger forwards, and having forwarded, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
The Unesco stamp
A forward adds gravitas to whatever random crackpot theory we have. You can call me uninformed. My opinion does not matter a hill of beans. But surely you believe Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson? Or the Unesco? At least the BBC? We are no longer alone in our conspiracy theories.
Never in our history has the aam aadmi had so much power over fact and fiction. Entire revolutions can be plotted and unravelled in an encrypted WhatsApp bubble without anyone being any the wiser. We grew up in a spoon-fed country. The whole world knew Indira Gandhi was dead before our Doordarshan news-readers admitted it. We knew the government was shoving propaganda down our throats but we could do little about it, whether we believed it or not.
Now, as if in some mass act of protest, we are embroiled in an orgy of disbelief. Or rather we choose to believe WhatsApp instead of the “presstitute” mainstream media. It’s just wondrous that power of creating our own echo chamber. If we cannot be a talking head at least we can be the forwarding finger.
I understand the urge to forward fake news. I really do. I’ve fallen victim to it myself when it hit my confirmation bias. I understand those who dispense spurious medical advice in good faith. I understand the rush to forward sensational news without verifying it because we want to be the first one off the block. I even almost understand the R-rated wink-wink Playboy jokes that make middle-aged men feel they are still hormonal teenagers doing something naughty.
But I just don’t understand those who send those good morning flowers everyday. I wonder if there is a special place in hell reserved for them.
But most of all I wonder how we got to a place where as a nation we seem to think that the most effective way to take the country forward, is forward by forward.
The writer is the author of Don’t Let Him Know, and like many Bengalis likes to let everyone know about his opinions whether asked or not
WhatsApp university
Yes its a very famous university in India. There are three set of people who have graduated from there -
Illiterates (Self taught Smart phone users) and Semi-Literates (What we call as half boiled eggs) - This group will believe any BS you put on whatsapp without even first thinking if something of that sort is even possible or not. Mostly supporters of the ruling party without even blinking an eye. This group firmly believes there should be no opposition party at all and Modi should rule forever. This is the group that actively forwards most of the forwards from the IT wings of the political parties.
Literates (Graduates who kind of somehow made it through the college) - This group though literates are mostly the descendants of the first group above and have been thoroughly brain washed by the first group into believing Congress and any other Secular form of governments are bad. Basically secularism is bad. (Yeah the fools in Congress Party are to be blamed for this to an extent as well for not concentrating on good and pure governance and rather resorting to minority appeasement politics). So this group simply believes in Whatsapp and choose not to use the rational part of their brain at all, which sorry to say is kind of not fully developed or fully matured.
Literates (Who are actually smart) - This group though highly educated and qualified (Engineers, Doctors, Administrators, Business men, etc.,) logically parse the information and then choose to ignore the facts and believe the fallacies while knowing it. Because somehow they have been convinced that what ruling party is doing is good. There could be reasons for it like - they simply hate minorities because they believe they have been sidelined for so long by Congress Governments,
Then there is one final group of whatsapp users who can never graduate from the university. These are the actual rational thinkers and smart people who still retain the capability to differentiate between moral and immoral, rational and irrational, ethical and unethical and they question everything. They have a lot of relatives and friends in the three groups above. But the moment they question anything , their very own people, friends and family members dub them as “Anti-India”, “Anti-National” , “Anti-Hindutva” , “Pseudo-secular”, etc., Basically what I am trying to say is rational thinking is dying a slow death in India.
Hope this explains the significance of Whatsapp University ran by the IT Propaganda cells of the ruling party. The opposition parties have also opened their own parallel Whatsapp universities and trying hard to beat the ruling party at it but they are far behind.
WhatsApp — India’s leading university
Sandip RoyJULY 07, 2018 18:18 IST
UPDATED: JULY 07, 2018 17:00 IST
SHARE ARTICLE 6PRINTA A A
A forward adds gravitas to whatever random crackpot theory we have.
A forward adds gravitas to whatever random crackpot theory we have. | Photo Credit: Reuters
MORE-IN
Entire revolutions can be plotted and unravelled in a WhatsApp bubble
Please allow me to welcome you to the most popular and fastest growing university in India today.
It is so far ahead of the competition it does not even need to advertise anywhere. It does not require glossy colourful brochures showing gleaming new air-conditioned laboratories and conference rooms and happy students of all shades. It needs no testimonials, no motivational speakers with ponytails.
It is already the national leader, way ahead of any competition.
This is WhatsApp university, India’s most trusted source of news, facts, life hacks and the real truth about everything. Its motto seems to be seize the day, don’t hesitate, forward right now.
What is this irresistible itch to forward? Where did it spring from? Is it some leftover reflex from years of five-year-plans lumberingly taking the nation forward, dam by dam, yojana by yojana? We endured those newsreels every time we went to the movies. But still nothing seemed to move forward for most of us in India, whether it was traffic on the roads or the file in a babu’s office. Our Great Leap Forward always felt like a shuffle, two steps forward, one step back. But now 200 million WhatsApp users in India are on the Great March Forward.
100% true
WhatsApp hit our sweet spot. We felt the power of numbers. And we all felt equally empowered. On school alumni WhatsApp groups no one had to defer to the annoying know-it-all first-rank boy/ girl anymore. Now everyone had access to the truth if they could only find the right WhatsApp forward to back them up. It did not even have to be 100% true any more. Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson did not need to have really said Rahul Gandhi was no Hindu. Unesco need not have declared Bengali to be the sweetest language. Vladimir Putin did not really have to make a speech demanding Muslim immigrants learn Russian.
It just needed to sound true enough to forward.
I remember someone sharing a story about a BBC survey ranking the Congress among the top 10 corrupt parties in the world. When it was pointed out that it was obviously fake since some of the other parties that also made the Hall of Shame, like Mussolini’s Fascists and Hitler’s Nazi party, had not existed since World War II, he conceded this might be a fake BBC. But that, he said, does not mean that the Congress is not corrupt. QED.
The great beauty of a forward is that it lets us off the hook. It’s not our problem if someone gets killed on suspicion of being a child trafficker or a closet beef-eater because of the forward. We are not levelling any accusation. We are merely forwarding. The forwarding finger forwards, and having forwarded, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
The Unesco stamp
A forward adds gravitas to whatever random crackpot theory we have. You can call me uninformed. My opinion does not matter a hill of beans. But surely you believe Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson? Or the Unesco? At least the BBC? We are no longer alone in our conspiracy theories.
Never in our history has the aam aadmi had so much power over fact and fiction. Entire revolutions can be plotted and unravelled in an encrypted WhatsApp bubble without anyone being any the wiser. We grew up in a spoon-fed country. The whole world knew Indira Gandhi was dead before our Doordarshan news-readers admitted it. We knew the government was shoving propaganda down our throats but we could do little about it, whether we believed it or not.
Now, as if in some mass act of protest, we are embroiled in an orgy of disbelief. Or rather we choose to believe WhatsApp instead of the “presstitute” mainstream media. It’s just wondrous that power of creating our own echo chamber. If we cannot be a talking head at least we can be the forwarding finger.
I understand the urge to forward fake news. I really do. I’ve fallen victim to it myself when it hit my confirmation bias. I understand those who dispense spurious medical advice in good faith. I understand the rush to forward sensational news without verifying it because we want to be the first one off the block. I even almost understand the R-rated wink-wink Playboy jokes that make middle-aged men feel they are still hormonal teenagers doing something naughty.
But I just don’t understand those who send those good morning flowers everyday. I wonder if there is a special place in hell reserved for them.
But most of all I wonder how we got to a place where as a nation we seem to think that the most effective way to take the country forward, is forward by forward.
The writer is the author of Don’t Let Him Know, and like many Bengalis likes to let everyone know about his opinions whether asked or not
WhatsApp university
Yes its a very famous university in India. There are three set of people who have graduated from there -
Illiterates (Self taught Smart phone users) and Semi-Literates (What we call as half boiled eggs) - This group will believe any BS you put on whatsapp without even first thinking if something of that sort is even possible or not. Mostly supporters of the ruling party without even blinking an eye. This group firmly believes there should be no opposition party at all and Modi should rule forever. This is the group that actively forwards most of the forwards from the IT wings of the political parties.
Literates (Graduates who kind of somehow made it through the college) - This group though literates are mostly the descendants of the first group above and have been thoroughly brain washed by the first group into believing Congress and any other Secular form of governments are bad. Basically secularism is bad. (Yeah the fools in Congress Party are to be blamed for this to an extent as well for not concentrating on good and pure governance and rather resorting to minority appeasement politics). So this group simply believes in Whatsapp and choose not to use the rational part of their brain at all, which sorry to say is kind of not fully developed or fully matured.
Literates (Who are actually smart) - This group though highly educated and qualified (Engineers, Doctors, Administrators, Business men, etc.,) logically parse the information and then choose to ignore the facts and believe the fallacies while knowing it. Because somehow they have been convinced that what ruling party is doing is good. There could be reasons for it like - they simply hate minorities because they believe they have been sidelined for so long by Congress Governments,
Then there is one final group of whatsapp users who can never graduate from the university. These are the actual rational thinkers and smart people who still retain the capability to differentiate between moral and immoral, rational and irrational, ethical and unethical and they question everything. They have a lot of relatives and friends in the three groups above. But the moment they question anything , their very own people, friends and family members dub them as “Anti-India”, “Anti-National” , “Anti-Hindutva” , “Pseudo-secular”, etc., Basically what I am trying to say is rational thinking is dying a slow death in India.
Hope this explains the significance of Whatsapp University ran by the IT Propaganda cells of the ruling party. The opposition parties have also opened their own parallel Whatsapp universities and trying hard to beat the ruling party at it but they are far behind.
No comments:
Post a Comment