Dystopia’s Online. And It Will Not Die.

It’s been called “a graveyard of bullies” by Chetan Bhagat. American talk show host and political humorist Bill Maher often describes tweets as brain farts. Lamenting his deteriorating Twitter experience, Pritish Nandy writes, “The virtual worlds we build are eventually becoming an exact replica of our own dystopian society.” All of that is real and it is what makes Twitter a complete experience. And since it’s the season of making unwise predictions, let me be audacious too: Twitter will not die. It will be the path to survival for the human race. It will remain a significant influencer of politics, culture and human behaviour for a long time. It will evolve or mutate, just as the human species does, and it will be the barometer of our evolution or our decay. This is why it is important.  

To me, Twitter was a revelation. I was not an early adapter. During my flirtation with ‘activism’, I was pointed in the direction purely for utility, by colleagues. Working on the Right to Information and later the Jan Lokpal movement, it came across as a free and effective tool—so I was told (and it delivered)—to amplify one’s voice and reach out to others for support and to organise. For me, there was no pleasure or fun element to it. It was part of my job as a wannabe activist. But then I discovered the bogs of political thought, the dangal of rajnitik daav-pench and nukkad of gaali-galoch. It had the raunak of a chaotic mela. It was the world in my palm, a study in human emotion and culture, and on how we eng­age with each other, on trends (not hashtag trends, but real pop culture ones) and frustrations, prejudices and personalities. It was as transparent a landscape as I had ever seen. All in one place.

What has been pointed out way too often is that a tweet is a fool’s uninformed rant, not a deeply thought out profound articulation—except when it is. And it often is, inadvertently. You want to know about a person, check out his or her Twitter timeline. It has helped me get to know so many people so much better. For me, that’s the quintessential Twitter ­experience, other than trying to create ‘social media buzz’ and direct traffic to our news critique portal, www.newslaundry.com, which I try to plug at every opportunity I get (see what I did there?). But other than that, it is how I judge people. Yes, I know one shouldn’t be judgemental. Don’t judge me, but you will, it is human nature. My Twitter time­line will serve you better.

Traits of our personality that we otherwise keep under wraps when in physical proximity­—where our tolerance thresh-holds are higher and we’re trying to be socially compatible­—are revealed on Twitter because the intimacy of being alone with the world through a keyboard makes us a little more reckless and ­honest. Also, not having to deal with ­instant consequences of our utterances brings out the person hidden below the many layers of politeness, cowardice, ­tho­ughtfulness, decency or any other characteristic that having to fit into a soc­iety has thrust upon us. Psychologists have come up with a phase for this behaviour—the “online disinhibition effect” as I learned from Time magazine. We reveal ourselves in profound ways—the bully, the meek, the eager to please, the needy for ­attention, the lonely, the angry, the righteous, the angry because they are lonely or righteous, the coward, the bigot, even the very careful and guarded who do not want to reveal much about themselves will be found on Twitter being very careful and guarded and unwilling to reveal much about ­themselves—which tells us much about them. Hell, sometimes I can even tell who’s got a crush on whom by their Twitter conduct.

What Twitter reveals about society is way more fascinating. I remember watching a talk online (possibly a Ted Talk) where the speaker described the biggest game-changer in the journey of motor-­vehicle safety in the early days of the motor car. It wasn’t the gear or an innovation in braking technology. It was the speedometer. The dashboard that told you how fast you were going. And just making “the invisible visible” brought down accidents by a factor way beyond anything had before the speedometer. Because now we could see what we merely knew. Sure, people knew going fast was unsafe, sure they ­realised they were going fast when they stepped on the gas, but until they saw it on the needle right before them through the steering wheel, they didn’t act to correct themselves. Showing them exa­ctly how fast they were going did what invisible information could not. Twitter has that ability to hold a mirror to us as a society.

To share a personal experience, I have often been told by friends and acquaintances that I have a tendency of being very aggressive and often rude. I kind of agreed for the sake of politeness, but not really. Twitter showed me that in real time. An innocent question sometimes elicited a searing res­ponse; a good-natured jibe was met with a scathing insult. I saw me in front of me in real time, my own behaviour written out by me for me to read. It told me something about myself that many had told me several times earlier, but Twitter made the invisible visible. It was a personality dashboard. And it was more eff­ective than any whiny complaint by over-sensitive friendly types or hol­ier-than-thou good-natured “feedback” by defect-laden pop psychologists (Yes, I know—irony alert. Congrats, you just came up with the most predictable comeback, ever) who should just shut up. I’m still working on the course-correction.

But seriously, Twitter makes the complexity and ugliness of society visible. If people feel trolls are ruining Twitter, they have just got a taste of what the world is. Online trolls aren’t ruining Twitter; they are doing a service by making the invisible visible. Physical world trolls could possibly be ruining the world, and now we can see it in on a map—that’s Twitter.

Twitter is the only place where strangers will breeze past each other and exchange the vilest and most personal slur and nod (tag) an acknowledgment a few days later. It’s where those who feel weak and irrelevant will find their voices and voice their anguish in full public view. It is the online equivalent of a full-blown flip-out in the middle of a public square. Bullying in the physical world happens in hostel rooms or locked-up classrooms; online, it happens sare-aam for all to see and judge or collaborate. We can see what we are.

This is indeed transforming the world. How would human behaviour change with Twitter being part of our lives? How would relationships change, how would our engagement with each other be influenced? Substantially. The possibilities are endless. New laws will have to be drafted on account of problems never faced before. New medical conditions will need to be dealt with.

On the bright side, a new acknowledgment of the collective conscience (or its absence) will emerge. Brushing it all under the carpet will no longer be an opt­ion because invisible anxieties will be visible. New problems will be thrown up and new solutions revealed. Who knows what applications one could put Twitter to? Psychologists and psychiatrists could use Twitter timelines to study behavioural patterns. Forget about asking aunts or unc­les and trying to track down relatives for doing background checks on prospective brides and grooms, the Twi­tter timeline will be the new age bua ke damaad se poochna woh ladka kaisa hai.  Sentiment analysis and political trends are already an area all social networking sites, including Twitter, are working on.

In the future, the very existence and direction of the human race could be graphed and plotted by the Twitter timeline of humanity as a whole. Even if we can’t fix the impending self-inflicted Armageddon in time, the survivors of the rupture of the human race could see on a graphic the exact point and ridiculous hashtag where mankind went over the tipping point and reached the critical mass of suspicion, cynicism, rage, hate and des­truction to sound its own death knell. How awesome is that? Yes, the ­f­­uture looks mighty bright. That may be an overstatement, but what the hell, it’s the age of reckless prophecies on Twitter.

(Abhinandan Sekhri is co-founder and CEO, www.newslaundry.com)