I have realised that no one can stay immune to the information epidemic around us for long. Not yours truly. Not my father. Not my best friends. And not my sister. An information epidemic, or an ‘infodemic’ ,could be described as a rapid proliferation of reliable and mostly unreliable information.
The world around us is churning these days, moving and moving but never reaching anywhere. Lies are being mass-produced in digital factories and greedily bought while the truth is up for sale, desperately waiting to be taken home. And amid this mess, it is a commonplace occurrence that we all, at some point in our lives, have bought into some news that wasn’t news at all.
I would like to confess that there is no end to the things I have been told by people around me, and more often than not, I use that information to argue with my friends. And more often than not, I lose my debates. And sometimes even my friends.
For example, I have been told, despite my disinterest and anti-colonial rant, about the alleged love affairs of the British royals when all I could think of were reparations and apology. Then there is something about Shakespeare and how he never really wrote his plays. And then there are things like meditating sages who are still alive and have been alive for thousands of years in the Himalayas and a certain country that claims to be the mother of everything you can name. Rocket science, demagoguery, denial and the ability to be the mother of everything on this planet. Mother of mothers. And to my shock — or the lack of it —it’s not the Europeans, Canadians or the Americans this time. Trust me. They have moved on to more sophisticated activities such as lecturing the Global South on human rights, climate change and freedom of speech and expression. Postscript: I’d love it if they could also tell me about the slave trade, indentured labour, the Holocaust, sanctimony, amnesia, systemic racism and how to protect students from gun violence.
Anyway, some good news. Last week, my sister told my mother about Pinterest. I am glad now that my mother has migrated to Pinterest, she will stay away from the royals and the meditating mountain sages. I didn’t tell her about Shakespeare because she couldn’t care less about Shakespeare.
For my father, I have asked him to go for those ancient things called ‘a reliable newspaper’ and not the good-morning forwards. Do you know about reliable newspapers? Great. Terrific. Go find one now.
To my sisters and my best friends, I have too little to offer. Just stay away from the enablers and the observers; from the prime-time yellers and mediocre truth-tellers; and from everything else that serves no purpose. Like royals, meditating sages and Shakespeare’s mother.
And for myself, I am still oscillating between different newspapers and articles, trying my best to dodge every WhatsApp forward, YouTube reel and Instagram post that comes my way. And as I do that, my head keeps saying what Judy Geller said in F.R.I.E.N.D.S: “That’s a lot of information to get in thirty seconds!”
sachinsinghsolanki.india@gmail.com
