To understand WhatsApp Uncles
Over the last decade, too much has been said about the so-called WhatsApp University, but sadly, too little has been done to understand this phenomenon. At the root of this nexus are the much maligned Uncles from varied housing societies and backgrounds. Old men who have a problem with everything, from gully cricket to furry pets in the neighbourhood to women whose bra straps are unwittingly visible. Men who not only learned to unlock their phones with their opposable thumbs but also found a way to reach out to family and friends in the most bizarre manner. Online. It started with the ever-punctual warm wishes—good morning posts, remember them?—on family groups. Later, they graduated to sharing not-so-benign hot takes on current events and historic arguments. That’s when things got murky, to say the least. Nobody seems to notice that these Uncles are just the front. They are merely tools. There is a bigger element at play behind them. Why? Because they are not creating the said content.
Anybody who has access to WhatsApp on their phone would know what WA forwards look like. Particularly the religio-political ones. Most of them are exaggerated in nature and delve mainly on fearmongering. Yes, there are also content that are designed to invoke pride in the receiver regarding their civilizational history. For example, pictures celebrating the architecture of wonderful temples built centuries ago. The problem here being, instead of focusing on the unparalleled designs in place, the caption would make a wry comparison with Taj Mahal. The faceless copywriter doesn’t even realize that he is inadvertently demeaning the very thing he is supposed to cherish by comparing a 2400-year-old mind-boggling structure with a 400-year-old pre-modern mausoleum. This happens because none of the involved parties have the intellect or the intelligence to gauge, let alone appreciate, the extent of our ancient geniuses.
The uninhibited spread of the internet, and with it, the unprecedented gush of shareable material, has made it possible for anything to float in public. At the end of the day, each one of us is biased as fuck and we’d believe what we think is suitable for us. Even those who call others bigoted require too little of a nudge to expose their bigotry. That’s the sad beauty of social media. Nobody is safe anymore. Everybody is on the edge of entertainment. To be fair, nobody really cares about anything. Just a matter of (fleeting) interest. Those who really care are too busy offline. You’d assume that this lack of stillness in attention is attributed to the millennials but in practice, this hypothesis applies to all age brackets. And that includes the WA Uncles. They care about certain things because the content-makers have programmed certain information in a certain style. The messengers—or should we call them forwarders, to to be precise?— don’t have any control over the shape of the content. Let’s not forget this core truth.
Interestingly, WA Uncles exist everywhere in India: the cities, the wannabe cities, the smaller cities, big towns, small towns, smaller towns, villages. They exist in different demographies too. We tend to believe that they belong only to the majority, simply because the mainstream media attacks them in regular fashion, but that’s not at all true. The non-majority WA Uncles are also catered content daily according to their tastes and dislikes. They have their own version of fearmongering to spread. Be it the Right or the Left or the Centre, everybody is seeking the holy grail of victimhood. And what could be cheaper and easier than forwarding some words and visuals curtailed to one’s perspective of the tiny world they live in? Echo chamber much.
It took me a while to understand WA Uncles from the majority side though. Earlier, I thought they were simply bored, had too much time on their hands—quite literally— and didn't know how to deal with the magic of technology. Imagine a chimp in a space shuttle. Two clicks and a message is sent to 10 people at once. Too much to handle, maybe? But later, it dawned upon me that there could be a deeper anguish in order here. WA Uncles used to be important not very long ago. Being retired can be a funny feeling. All of a sudden, your relevance is limited in the very house you built as your children take over the mantle of decision-making for the most part, and you are reduced to a titular figure. Can be tough, no? Once an ex-breadwinner, always an ex-breadwinner.
So, when you collect all these suppressed sources of angst and channel them through a medium that makes you feel important and relevant, then why won’t you participate? Nothing like the good ol’ politics and religion to soothe one’s battered ego. Forwarding long paragraphs decorated with provocative emojis, visuals bordering on paranoia and even audio files where a nameless person is sharing ‘expert’ opinion on subjects apparently close to your heart and a lot closer to your spleen. Those who tailor these contents know exactly who their audiences are. The question remains, why are WA Uncles so angry about the past?
My theory is, this anger has more to do with themselves than with others. When they forward stuff pertaining to loss of culture and ruin of civilization, they are basically trying to shift blame. Deep down, they know they have failed as fathers. They couldn’t impart the right education at the right time to their children while they were growing. Instead of addressing genuine questions raised by their children and helping them develop a stronger identity, they shushed up them. The fact of the matter is they had no answers because they never had the mental bandwidth to give adequate significance to the study of culture and civilization themselves. They were busy making money to run their families and had other priorities. Had they known better back then, they would have fulfilled their paternal duty of raising children who take effortless pride in their ancestors as well as the traditions that survived centuries of persecution. But no, that’s not what happened. Since the WA Uncles don’t have the gall to accept their shortcomings, they look for scapegoats. And that’s where the disinformation brigade of WA forwards come into play.
It’s a sad lesson in social experiment, if nothing else. When a person weeps for a lost opportunity, another opportunity is passing by fast. Something the WA Uncles don’t seem to accept. If they care so much about our civilizational identity, then they can do much more constructive work by extending help (and/or time) to institutions that are quietly making a difference in spreading the word of truth about our land and ancestors. Instead, they choose to marinate in the deadly combo of fearmongering and victimhood. Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened had they stuck to sending good morning wishes on family groups. Maybe they would have found the time and the positive mindspace to educate their grandchildren.