Dystopia's Online. And it Will Not Die.

It’s the season of predictions, so let’s be audacious: twitter will be the human race’s #pathtosurvival

- Abhinandan Sekhri

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 wanna be activist. But then I discovered the bogs of political thought, the dangal of rajnitik daavpench 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.