Is social media Boon or Bane?

Boon or Bane


Is social media boon or bane? Can be argued endlessly either way. One thing is clear though, this painful lockdown would have been absolutely unbearable without social media. 


An adjunct of social media is fake news. It originates in fertile brains of mischievous individuals or cyber commandos of political parties operating in cells. 


A torrent of fake news has kept us feeling amused, alarmed, confused, ecstatic & foolish; a bundle of emotions. The messages are cleverly planted in whatsapp or such other groups, swallowed hook-line-and-sinker depending upon the degree of naivety of the members. Often plant is done by a stool pigeon from the group itself. Once a group is infected every member lends a helping hand in forwarding fake information to their numerous contacts. And any news capable of becoming viral is considered to be authentic by gullible recipients.


Concocted news has its underlying humour if read/ watched carefully. Some examples: 


  1. Rickshaw puller's daughter topping in IAS (visual of a decrepit man pulling a finely attired smart girl in his rickshaw).

  2. Backward girl comes first in State Police Service exam (visual of the same model)

  3. From someone who claims association with "Three Idiots" movie (believable). He passionately advocates deletion of all Chinese apps from all smartphones. 

Instead he could have asked for trashing of Chinese phones along with Apps. Such an action would of course leave Indians (perhaps he himself included) without any smartphone at all.

  1. A mushroom cultivator pays for and sends his farm labourers home in a plane!

  2. A 15 year old girl carries her hefty, well fed father 1200 km, from Gurgaon to Bihar, on a rickety bicycle during lockdown, in summer heat.

  3. A man drives 2400 km from Agra to Agartala in 4 days with wife and daughters through badlands, during lockdown when food, fuel, hotel were unavailable and crossing state and even district borders was a nightmare. He traveled through UP, Bihar, WB, Assam & Tripura very smoothly!!

  4. There are numerous videos and pictures of Public serving refreshments to Police, Police feeding poor migrants, Netas distributing food packets. Very moving indeed.

  5. It is difficult to keep track of prescriptions & advisories on Corona. Simply too numerous and totally bizarre.


So keep watching and get entertained in lockdown 5.


Vijay Mujumdar

01.06.2020


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