On a normal day, social media networking sites are great for connecting and sharing with friends and family. They are also perfect to exchange ideas, thoughts and even become platforms for mobilizing people within minutes like in Egypt.
Where one cannot deny the positive aspects of these social platforms, they also have a darker side to them which can wreck havoc with the lives of people targeted by mischievous and nasty elements out to have vicarious fun at the cost of others.
According to estimates, cyber crimes, phishing and transmission of objectionable content had increased two-fold when compared to previous years in 2011 in Hyderabad alone.
There are numerous examples of objectionable content going viral and nasty comments being posted against individuals, especially on Facebook and Twitter. There are increasing number of cases of boys and men posting indecent pictures of their ex girlfriends or female collegues for fun or simply to take revenge. And if the person involved is a celebrity, then the content goes viral within minutes.
Take the recent example of Shruti Haasan. Sleazy pictures of hers were leaked on various websites without her permission. One argument is that she is a glamour heroine and since she is in the film industry, these incidents are bound to happen. But Shruti was very clear that she did not give permission to release the pictures and lodged a complaint with the Cyber police who then jumped into action.
Another incident, involving a heroine resulted in a slew of hate comments being posted all over Twitter by angry fans. At that time, Samantha had said that she found a particular scene derogatory in Mahesh Babu’s One-Nenokkadine. Within no time, Samantha was bombarded with hate mail and her Twitter account was full of nasty comments by Mahesh Babu fans. Finally, Mahesh Babu had to intervene and request his fans to stop making such nasty comments. The incident clearly shows the intolerance of certain sections towards anything and everything that is not in sync with their beliefs and thoughts. Unfortunately, this is just one example. There are many instances when the heroines get to take a lot of flak for unintentional comments or gestures.
The same pattern was observed during election time this year. Well-known comedian Kapil Sharma was flooded with angry tweets when he retweeted Narendra Modi’s tweet on Rahul Gandhi. Eventually, Kapil Sharma had to remove the tweet from his page and he even wrote an apology to Modi fans saying that he did not mean any harm while tweeting Modi’s comment.
Closer home, four youth resorted to morphing objectionable images of YS Sharmila, sister of YS Jagan and posting them with vulgar comments all over the internet. Three of them have been caught by the Cyber police while one is absconding.
The misuse of social media platforms points towards an unsettling observation about the Indian society. The miscreants involved in such activities are not the uneducated, rural poor. In fact, most of them are educated, semi-urban and urban people (mostly men) who derive pleasure from such acts.
It also shows that there are an increasing number of faceless people who enjoy ‘creating’ trouble for others without caring about the repercussions that their selfish acts could have on the victims. India is a country where its citizens have freedom of thought and expression. But it is sad that this basic right is being misused by people in the name of ‘expressing’ themselves.
A society which once believed in respecting each other and accommodating multiple views is now shrinking into an intolerant society which flaunts its rowdy behavior and is unabashed while criticizing others and being judgmental.
Education at grass-root levels coupled with consistent messages targeting audiences and pro-active campaigns taken up by celebrities could lead to change in perceptions. For now, however, social media platforms in India continue to thrive with good, bad and ugly content.
