The 'Viral' Virus

There is apparently a serious virus - more contagious than Covid - which afflicts humanity. The virus manifests itself in the insatiable desire for your social media outpourings to go 'viral'. When it affects someone severely, the patient will do anything - absolutely anything - for their posts to have a huge number of 'Likes', 'Shares' and comments.

The problem with viruses, in general, is that they cause damage to the host organism. This virus, though, is peculiar that way. It routes through the host organism but afflicts others who come in contact with those posts.

This 'Viral' phenomenon is not new. Ever since news became Infotainment, the idea prevailed that it is more important for it to be sensational than for it to be news. If it is sensational, more people watch it...more 'Likes' in Social Media terms. What is new is the NUMBER of people that are now afflicted by it.

The consequences of this affliction is what they call 'Click-bait' headlines, where someone writes a post in a online blog or mag. "X (Famous Actor) blasts Y (Some political or policy action)"; "A (Former Cricketer) trashes B's (Coach of the team) strategy" and so on. If you actually bothered to read the post, the famous actor would have said something bland like "This policy may cause distress to the poor". The former cricketer would have been asked whether he agreed with the batting order and he would have replied that he would have done it differently.

But...in these days when people start yawning midway through a tweet because Twitter has made it possible to have tweets all of 240 characters long...in these days, who really clicks on those headlines and bothers to read the piece? Outrage, rage and hate gets spawned just by reading the headline, people take sides and start sniping at each other and, in no time, there is a full-fledged war on in the comments. Those unnatural people, too arthritic to jump to conclusions and with the time to actually read the post, pathetically bleat that the concerned people actually did not either 'blast' or 'trash'. That bleating, though, goes largely unheard.

And then the same blog or online mag will also carry a headline, "Facebook propagates hate speech" and out come the swords with some saying 'Of course it does' and others saying, 'Irony that you discuss all this on Facebook' , yada yada. The true irony is that the fact that this blind seeking of virality, and the sensationalism which is the tried and tested measure to achieve it, is exactly what waters the seeds of hatred. AND those who seek it are the first to blame the hate as well!

All of that is probably a storm in a teacup. But...when your world is IN that teacup...