Dead Spirits

It’s strange the way we try to identify ourselves with people, things, or occurrences that we don’t even have a semblance of a relationship with. Robin Williams died last year, and I found my Newsfeed filled up to the brim (or, in this case, the bottomless bottom of the page) with more R.I.P. s than Sheldon Cooper’s IQ. B.B. King passed away this year, prompting me to stay off the social networking sites in the fear of crashing my brain. One of my friends, who, I’m sure, doesn’t have more than ten English songs in his phone, posted on his timeline,

“R.I.P. B.B. King. We will cherish your melodious voice and miss your sparkling personality. #SoSad”

Could he be any more specific? (Sarcastically speaking.) Or, for that matter, any more obvious? (Letting go of the sarcasm.) It’s clear he wants to show his more Western-culture-inclined friends how he’s keeping up with the times, but it’s a poor effort. He didn’t even have the common sense to Google B.B. King. Wherever he was then, Mr. King was probably scoffing.

Is it always necessary for us to have something to say about anything and everything that finds its way into the pages of tomorrow’s morning newspaper? Are we so desperate for our “15 minutes”? (More like, 15 nanoseconds.)

Incredible though it may seem, we are evidently an extremely shallow people. Folks like my aforementioned friend are more common than the common cold. The way we live our online social life is analogous to the public lives of celebrities, albeit the spotlight on you and me is miniscule in comparison with theirs. Some of us will use just about any amount of obsequious lubrication to get more likes on our photo than our friends’. We will tag all our friends on the photo, even the ones living a thousand klicks away, comment on that photo ourselves if that doesn’t work, and then, if there’s no choice, we’ll end up liking that very comment, wishing we had a few fake FB accounts. (One of my buddies insists there’s a fourth stage involving your fist, your hair, and some tensile force.)

I am not a sexist by any definition of the word, but I must say that the fairer sex are even more conspicuous than the male amateurs. Most “popular” girls behave normally for the time it takes for the first 500 likes to flow in, most of which are from their adolescent male peers overflowing with fresh testosterone. They answer comments from their friends and thus a thread starts, with the sole purpose of expressing gratitude and counter-gratitude. The constant stream of “Mwah, Mwahs” between girlfriends would make you, as a guy, question the very reason of your existence. After the influx of the likes dries up, they wait for a few weeks, and then make it their profile picture, and in the process, welcoming another couple-o’-hundred likes.

I know stereotyping is bad, but how can I help it when nearly every female of a certain age group and certain level of notoriety is doing the same thing? If I were a girl (not that I can imagine myself being one, as lazily dispassionate as I am), I would be thoroughly creeped out by all the uninvited attention. How does one not get creeped out? I’m baffled.

What intrigues me is the hypocrisy. The I-don’t-give-a-fish attitude has affirmed and secured its place in the teen world (or in my case, the immature adult world). But the irony is that we still find ourselves in front of our computers or smartphones Lol-ing and R.I.P.-ing our way into nano-stardom.

Some say that tweeting and posting regularly is a way of becoming a part of the collective consciousness, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Since I was a little unclear about what “Collective Consciousness” actually is, or what its relevance in this context is, I Googled it.

“Collective consciousness is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.”

Well, that’s convenient. Even Hitler could use that to justify the Holocaust.

Setting aside glib innuendos, let’s actually analyze the definition. Shared beliefs, okay, ideas, okay. Aha! Moral attitudes? How did the R.I.P.s and the hundreds of pictures in that same “pouting lips pose” get us to this? How is it moral in any sense of the word?

Tell you what, imagine yourself in the place of Mr. B.B. King. You have died and gone to heaven, and are still lucid enough to understand what people say or write about you after you are dead. How would you feel if some scrawny Indian kid who can’t put two English words together, and has no idea what Blues is, goes on an R.I.P.-ing spree about you? I’ll tell you. It’d feel insincere, artificial and worthy of a kick in the pants. How can anyone feel honored by something so transparently selfish? Even if our lives have been directly affected by these people, what good will our futile online exertions do anyway? I don’t think the number of R.I.P.s determines if the concerned person’s soul “rests in peace”, or not.

To the pouting girls and desperate boys who live more than 75% of their respective lives online, I have only one thing to say: do you know what ‘doxing’ is? If you don’t, Google it.

Coming back to our mass efforts of making dead celebrities rest in peace, let’s talk about something more recent: Dr. Kalam’s demise. He is not the typical celebrity. He shunned the camera unless it presented an opportunity to interact with the youth of our country. He did not own a car or a house. Most of his salary was donated to charitable causes. He lived a pure and selfless life.

And so, when the “R.I.P. Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam” messages and posts started pouring in, I was, to say the least, livid. Before that, I had spent such a long time defending the people of my country in my head, blaming the corrupt governments for every wrong done in our country. But now, I’m convinced. We are an undisciplined people, Mr. Goswami, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it.

What is this compulsion that makes people want to post, like and share unnecessarily and incessantly? Why do we feel that if we want to honor a dead person, we must let people know about it? Why are we such online extroverts? A book on the psyche of the people behind the R.I.P.s will be an interesting read, though slightly embarrassing.

I do not want to end in a clichéd manner, saying that the best way to honor a great person is to continue their work and to realize their visions. I just think it’s high time that we be ashamed of ourselves, the hypocrites that we are, and try to really understand what’s wrong with us. Dr. Kalam surely deserved a better farewell from the social media. And any attempt to pretend that the R.I.P.s were born from pure intentions, in the words of Albus Dumbledore, “is an insult to his memory.”

Soumit

5/9/15