For a very long time, we have been guilty of something in our online lives. It isn’t trolling as a blatant exercise to establish power over another’s presence in the same space, but trolling because everyone else is doing it. Sociologist Erving Goffman called it ‘backstage behaviour’ — a presentation of one’s self to a stage drama. While the drama in itself will be ‘frontstage behaviour’, sitting in the second row creates a space that is relatively anonymous, thereby making room for behaviour that would otherwise be private but has now been made public.
Similar to a real life lynch mob, we have all at one point or the other, joined in on a feeding frenzy because it is how we are wired. It is why we have all cheered at blood sports, at exhibitions of human physical endeavour and never stopped to think what this means, or how it may change us as a people.
When the Andhra Pradesh police gunned down 20 people, just on suspicion, while a good number of us were angered at this fundamental violation of human rights, many were happy that they were shot at sight. These were people who weren’t carrying firearms, or even proven to be guilty. It was shocking to think that people who were, in many ways, similar to us could think it a reprehensible manner. But these were also people who were flowing with a crowd. It is hard to recognise one’s own thoughts in a place so crowded by other anonymous people who can be very determined to speak for everyone.
When a man was beaten to death by a horde of people in Nagaland, none of us batted an eyelid, because we believe that a suspected rapist deserves no less. But have we ever stopped to think if this changes our value for human life or the rights provided to us by the state we occupy? To quite an extent, this occurs because of a conscious ‘othering’ of the victim. We don’t recognise the victim as one of our own and we don’t usually like someone we cannot identify with.
Dimapur was disturbing because we didn’t expect it to happen in modern India. Public memory is short, as Khairlanji was not very long ago. As of now, even Dimapur is a vague memory that we will eventually have to Google to remember. And a few months later, the Chittoor massacre, for that is what it was, will also be forgotten.
It is a great failing of the human race, that not only are we violent and incited by bloodlust, we are also sadly quite apathetic. Online mob psychology isn’t the only example for this. It’s bystander behaviour at its best, caught between not knowing what to do, and not caring enough to do something about it. Apathy has driven us to leave the world in neglect, a moment between action and indifference, one which could have made a lot of difference if only we cared more.
