How to be kind on the internet?
What I do at an individual level to keep my internet experience positive for me and others.
If you think I don’t get hate comments or hate DMs on the internet, let me clear the myths around it. I get hate DMs on a daily basis, literally daily but I prefer not to share screenshots of those with my audience.
And I never reply to these hate comments or accept that DM request because I know it takes a lot of time to bring a behavioural change in someone’s life and Instagram DM is not the right way to bring that change. More importantly, why is it my responsibility to change this person’s opinion about my content or about anything else in the world, my time is too precious to me and I am very selfish when it comes to giving my time to someone.
So ignorance towards these hate comments is what keeps me at peace. This ignorance might look like rudeness but I accept to be claimed as rude for the peace of my mind.
The second thing that I do instead of engaging in meaningless discussions is simply unfollow or mute them. I also mute my best friends (you already know that from the first post in this newsletter)
What Steve says below is something that I highly recommend to everyone, Twitter and Linkedin was more like a learning scroll for me but over the period of time I started following some journalist and it all got so much political for me that I unfollowed all of them.
This has nothing to do with their work, this was for my wellbeing.
I think this is what the benefit of internet relationships is, you can control everything unlike the real human relationships.
The third thing that I do to be kind on the internet is ‘try’ not to talk about news or COVID-19 or any Vikas Dubey type issues. If you are connected to me on Instagram, yes I do talk about these issues sometimes but only when I cannot control my urge to rant. I have to be better at controlling my urge I accept that, but sometimes it’s just difficult to see majority of people neglecting certain sides of a topic. Like what is happening recently with the comedian Agrima Joshua and what happened at The Habitat in Mumbai yesterday, yes I have a strong urge to talk about it but I will not. I might just pollute the internet even more, but if you want to know what I feel about it I am open to have a closed door discussion with you at an individual level.
You can be anybody on the internet, choose to be kind and a positive person.
What I was reading this week?
You want an easy way to brighten someone’s day on the internet? Compliment them, read here The secret of giving a compliment that make people glow.
I am sharing a NYTimes article after a long time, because this is not news, these are short fiction stories that you will absolutely love. Read here
How the grotesque online culture wars fuel populism? This is based on the book that I am currently reading ‘Kill All Normies’ by Angela Nagle, read here
Designing humility and forgiveness into social media products, de-escalating social media, read here
How to be an adult and the theory of adult development, read here
“We still lack an independent sense of self because so much of what we think, believe, and feel is dependent on how we think others experience us.”
Shubhangi Singh writes in this week’s guest blog why the call-out culture needs to be called out and why making mistakes on the internet should be normalised, read here
How ‘creator economy’ can empower artists rather than Facebook and Google, this is also relevant to what my next podcast episode will be about, read here.
Assimilating the art in science and what is SciArt, read here
Found a good Indian independent opinion blog, Democracy and Populist Politics during the lockdown, read here
To meme or not to meme? Read here, I am soon going to release a blog post about how memes have become political propaganda.
Don’t complain about problems, have fun solving them. Something that I believe on a personal level, read here
A necessary controversy defining fake news, read here.
How J.K Rowling became Voldemort. Read here, I absolutely love how these giant media houses have such intriguing titles to make you click on it.
Indian companies are behind making an app like TikTok and now there are so many. But why will these TikTok clones fail? Read here
Did I not read something related to Facebook? How is that possible, read here how life without Facebook and Instagram is mundane in the mainland China.
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What I was listening this week?
What opportunities are available for artists in the lockdown? This is a curated list of tips and suggestions that creators can take up and also what we as the PFA community is doing to help India’s Art Scene.
Listen here
Skip the initial part of ads on this episode and go directly in the middle to listen ‘Why no one is watching your content?’
What I was watching this week?
9 episodes of DARK on Netflix, and it is probably the best series I have ever watched. It is like a perfect show for me to watch.
My sister made me watch this movie yesterday ‘Failure to Launch’ and I enjoyed it thoroughly. This is a light hearted film so tune in when you need some laughter.
What Obama says about the Call-Out Culture? Here is the video
Take care everyone and feel free to forward this email or share this post on your social media platforms for good karma.
Tumhara Bhai
Bhai Bhai