A very interesting division is slowly nurturing in social media. It is now vertically divided into two parts. Half follow, comment, share and support only one side of any story – whether fabricated or truth. The other also does the same. These two sides never merge or sync. They do not want to listen to anything that offends their belief. In other words, dissent has forever gone for a toss. Even if they do view the dissent, the first attempt is to malign the dissenter. The second is to counter it with another stupid comment or reference which may not have any relevance at all.

Politically India is divided into four spheres. Let’s ignore the fact that 69% of Indians did not vote for the current party in power – BJP. Leaving statistics, let’s come to social media because this is what determines the front page news of many newspapers. A major part of social media crusaders are doing a disservice to the current regime and its leader by spreading lies and falsehood which at times becomes embarrassing even to counter. There is another set of Congress supporters who are not as active as their counterparts. A small party named AAP is much better in social media than a century old party like Congress. The Left parties have no idea what social media is all about. They need not because their constituencies are people who are struggling to have both ends meet. Their reach is ground level poor people who cannot afford the social media luxury.

But interestingly there are large number of people who are centre left or centre right. They are cautious in their approach. The Centre Left could easily be branded as Communists, Maoists and pseudo Secular Congress supporters. The Centre Right can be termed as BJP sympathizers, Modi supporters etc. Both are factually wrong. These two groups get sandwiched for their sane approach and rational thinking for calling spade a spade. Both groups are not able to justify their independence from the blind hooligans.

The interesting part is that this branding is done by none other than the well to do extreme thinkers, mostly rich and well settled supporters whose only job is to be a catalyst to the rumor mongering. They could be in any Indian metro or settled in the US struggling to find themselves their identity as an Indian or an American. They become vehicles to carry lies and make them appear as facts. They act with vengeance. Their language is vulgar and they do not generalize. They attack you by taking names. Though members of these two groups make all attempts to defend a just cause, they will be cornered by a mob with unwarranted comments and reasoning. Many of them start teaching and professing idealism. Being in minority, it will be one against many. But the level of discussions and debates reach to such a level that these groups quietly makes an exit.

There are a lot of social media super stars who have made a name for themselves by spreading messages that their followers see either as patriotic or mimicking the opposite number. The more foolish your comments are, the more likes you will get. And immediately this gets viral into mobile through WhatsApp. The conviction at which these messages are forwarded, one feels if the same conviction they had showed in their day to day activities of life, India would have been a much better country.

The most dangerous consequences are now emerging. Social Media updates are now taken seriously by people who have grown up with only social media. They dont see the difference between responsible reporting and user generated content. They are not at fault. After all, how many media outlets today report responsibly issues which affects the real humans?