The future that monetisation of anti-establishment posturing can usher in

Time of India

30-05-2025

A nomad interested in twisting the kaleidoscope of science and looking for new patterns
Humanity has obviously gone through various transformations in how we communicate with each other, starting from languages to fiction-creation to books and then mass media that print and TV ushered in the last century. Each of these growth spurts have caused social transformations, and each changes till date are absorbed without a complete collapse of civilisation, but I am not too confident that same can be said about the arrival of social media.
Social media is a shift beyond the ordinary and it needs to be understood because how humans communicate with each other decides the fate of the systems that we use to survive.
To understand this better, we first need to understand what is a 'system'.
A system, in very simple terms, is a coming together of individuals for more gain than what they can have if they work individually.
In even simpler terms, if we are five friends making Rs 100 each, but we see that we can make more than Rs 500 if we all agree to abide by a set of rules, what we will create will be a 'system'.
If you look at the above example closely, you will be dispelled of many of the myths that you could be harbouring.
First myth is of 'privacy' that we see raging when concepts like UID or Aadhaar are introduced by the system called state.
No system can offer any member of the system to remain hidden for a simple reason, i.e., the system has to pass on the share of collective gain to its each member and hence it must know who is a member (and who is not).
While the myth of privacy is given priority in debates (probably it is psychologically more important to us), it is the second issue, i.e., allowing and encouraging dissent, that is the real deal-breaker for systems.
The biggest myth that most humans harbour about systems is that they have to be dissent-friendly, and this myth gets extended into a the popular notion of free speech.
There is nothing further from the truth if you understand how systems behave.
A system is coming together of pieces where the sum is greater for the whole and hence it is not just in the benefit of the system but also for the parts that the system is self-preserving. This means that a system must fight aggressively and oppress all forces that try to disrupt its functioning.
There is no place for an anti-system outlier in a system, and systems have inherent subsystems (like immune system in our body or police in the state) to identify and destroy such elements and force.
If we bring both of issues, i.e., privacy and free speech into modern context of social media, we can easily extrapolate the future, as social media is not just an enabler for both but has taken out the bottom from the way they used to manifest in past.
It is not that privacy and free speech have not existed in past. In fact, they always have and they have also been forces of the good as they have dethroned exploiting systems in past and ushered in much-needed changes. That is exactly why evolution has never aimed for total eradication of outliers.
If we had outliers in past, what is so scary about having them now?
What is scary is the removal of the key systemic force that kept outliers within a limit so that they do not disrupt the system constantly.
This traditional anti-outlier systemic force was the risk and cost imposed by the system on anyone wanting to be one.
Unfortunately for us, the arrival of social media has changed the above completely.
In the entire history of before-social-media world, what really kept anti-establishment posturing at bay was not the dearth of people with such views, but the lack of affordability of expressing such views.
Just a hundred years back, being anti-establishment came at a cost that made it economically difficult for most to afford.
Today it is exactly opposite. In the new environment, it pays to keep expressing anti-establishment views on social media, and it is a lucrative and attractive vocational option. The net result is an explosion of anti-establishment opinion-makers.
If we look at the above in a shallow way, it appears that we are heading for chaos ahead as hordes of self-proclaimed (in reality paid) outliers/influencers will keep disrupting the systems. But if we dig a bit further, the outcome can be exactly opposite.
With social media crusaders upping the ante, the system is also (happily) going to do the same, and the system now has an advantage, i.e., never-before ability and tools to oppress.
What the paid and unpaid 'influencers' will do is to provide a plausible excuse to the system to oppress opinions in the name of systemic stability that most of the masses will want and we will end up with what is already visible, i.e., authoritarian regimes.
What we will have will be a very rigid system that will not go for incremental changes, but will pass through artificial stability imposed by brute forces and than a destructive collapse that will hopefully put an end to the age of technology and return us back into the folds of nature.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.