Space provided by social media in our context is an arena where most of the times one sees near total absence of rules of the game when it comes to sociopolitical dialogue and intellectual debate. Half-truths are religiously peddled as absolutes, facts are deliberately distorted to advance preconceived agendas and histories are disfigured ad nauseam to suit parochial narratives. Whenever someone disagrees with such posts or podcasts in response all social and cultural etiquettes are gleefully thrown to the wind; disagreement is not taken as an intellectual challenge but rather as a personal insult resulting in obnoxious retaliation aimed at humiliating the one who dares hold a different opinion or view.

Why no holds barred attitude has such a ubiquitous presence on the screen needs to be briefly looked into in our otherwise extremely repressive and repressed social life. The situation in fact reflects our complex but highly conflict-ridden society due to its specific evolution that has created nearly unmanageable diversity and plurality.

Self-expression is one of the fundamental urges that humans are driven by. Self-expression, a paradoxical phenomenon, has not hitherto been fully grasped and tackled. What we call the march of civilisation is underpinned by it and tangible and intangible human advancement undeniably reflects it in multifarious forms. Karl Marx calls it self-objectification which, in his opinion, is what makes human life fulfilling. Society while driven by the urge of self-expression feels threatened by it and thus restrains it. Throughout history we hear a litany of ‘limits,’ norms’, ‘values’ and ‘parameters’; the phrases that clearly show how the right of self-expression is curtailed to suit the prevalent order at a particular point of time. The fear of self-expression is rooted in its ever-challenging nature that has a ‘subversive’ edge. Human potential in a process of realisation has a revolutionary capacity to debunk and reject the given and accepted. It can demystify the mythical, sanctify the profane and desecrate the sacred. Unrestrained expression can unravel the web of class and hierarchy based on an iniquitous order that seems to be an ineluctable fate of masses.

So there is a constant tussle between the urge of self-expression and established order’s imperative to control it. Denial of self-expression kills creativity while allowing it a free rein destabilizes the prevalent social structures. The way out for the regressive forces has been and still is controlled self-expression. Before the advent of cyberspace and age of information technology it was easier to apprehend and punish the ‘offenders’ who crossed the ‘limits’.

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IT, in the form of social media, has created a space for its users that is a virtual world with its virtual reality. That means while using that space you are there but not there in the physical sense. This is a new kind of freedom not experienced before which creates an illusion that you can say or write whatever comes to your mind without fear of consequences. A sense of security which eventually proves false enables social media addicts to act with impunity. So the space becomes a zone of comfort where we witness to a large extent the worst of what is apparently embodied by unfettered humans. But unfettered humans bear the weight of invisible fetters; the carry-over from the past in the form of interiorised falsehoods, half-truth, biases and prejudices that they have not been able to jettison. The worst outweighs the best because there is no immediate social and physical check on the users or fear of being held accountable. The users floating in a space unburdened by constraints throw caution to the wind in a bid to express their deep-rooted but repressed feeling and inherited ideas. The act of such an unburdening has a cathartic effect. Apart from lightening their burden the very scribbling on the screen deludes them into believing that they are unrecognized commentators, writers and historians. So they feel free to express rehash of given views on everything and all things under the sun.

In our society where social and official sensors are very stringent, space on social media seems to be a paradise regained where they can revert to their real natural state; instinct driven animals unrestrained by what we value as rationality. The ambiance of ‘no censor no censure’ brings out the ugliest in them: caste worship, tribalism, national/sub-national chauvinism, religious fanaticism, linguistic extremism and xenophobia. It’s free for all. But those who challenge and demystify the narratives of state and official faith can come under the cosh any time anywhere.

State in cahoots with multinational corporations can detect and hunt down not only ordinary users but also those who think of themselves no less than computer geeks as the authorities are equipped with the required wherewithal. But usually the state allows the things to run their course as the process allows the restless and disgruntled to the let off steam. Thus it works as a newly found safety valve and a bulwark against any threat of sudden socio-political eruption.

The state also has invisible and not so invisible trolls on its payroll, and there is a real scrum when they pursue their quarries that don’t fall in line on the issue of ill-conceived national interests. And notion of national interests is deliberately loosely defined and thus it remains vague so that action against any expression could be taken that seems to militate against the spirit of patriotism; a traditional stick to beat the dissident with.

There is no need to enumerate the benefits that that has helped us in reaching out to the world which only some decades ago seemed beyond reach. Cutting the long story short, it can be said that state as usual clamps down on the dissenting voices while people, especially the middle classes, with a modicum of freedom in cyberspace, overwhelmed by a welter of information, roll into an intellectual abyss muddying the already murky waters of our sociocultural life.