The rumoured statement given by Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel (later denied), which allegedly stated that Snapchat is not for poor countries like India and Spain took Indian Snapchat users by shock. Many Indian users uninstalled the application and boycotted it. While some saw it as an act of patriotism, there were people who thought un-installation does not prove their loyalty to their nation. The question here is, is our nationalistic spirit defined by our social media choices, or are we only patriotic on virtual platforms but not in reality?
“It is rare that we become patriotic or nationalistic. The sad part is that even when we do, it is purely virtual, like changing our profile pictures during Independence and Republic day. At the end of the day nothing changes at the grassroots level,” laments Vaibhav a second-year hotel management student. The fact that our patriotic spirit is only to display it to the rest of the world shows that we fail to imbibe the love for our nation.
“I think we should learn to take critique positively; no one can deny the fact that we are still a developing country. The Snapchat users here cannot even be seen as a microcosm of our society, and uninstalling the app while sitting in our air-conditioned rooms will not change reality. On the contrary, I feel if we wanted to prove them wrong, more people should have downloaded Snapchat to show that we too have the resources to use such an application,” says Zorawar, a second-year LLB student.
Reactions
“I don’t think a nation is governed and driven by social media platforms. Everyone is entitled to their own views; what we need is to accept differing views and criticism. No country is flawless and neither is ours but it is high time that we started accepting our flaws gracefully,” says Mayank, a first-year media studies student. Even the most developed nations have troubles, but they do not react in the manner we did. We have to differentiate between reacting and responding. We react to everything but we fail to respond.
“At first, I was offended too, but when I read more I realised that the news had not yet been confirmed and allegedly happened in 2015. We need to learn not to have such strong opinions on unconfirmed news,” believes Mehak, an engineering graduate.
“I firmly believe that we need to look at various other important issues and stop paying heed to such baseless controversies. There are other major issues like terrorism which, need our immediate attention. I think it is important that we as Indians understand that reacting to such issues will not change anything. For that to happen we need to adopt a more ground-level-up approach,” says Aditya, a first-year management student.
