Vacuity

The 12th of June 2025 was a sombre day for Indians and the world of aviation. We witnessed one of the largest aviation disasters unfold in real time. Hundreds of lives were lost and several questions are yet to be answered. Amidst the shock, grief, and speculation, a number of individuals dusted the cobwebs off their brain and thought, 

'How do I make this tragedy about me?'. 

These ghouls co-opted a national tragedy to flood social media with platitudes about the fragility of life. The posts they put up used photos of the victims, in some cases in their final moments, along with the most generic quotes about life, loss, tragedy, no doubt generated by ChatGPT. I cannot fathom what the friends and families of the victims had to endure as the loss of their loved ones was the subject of intense gossip. On the internet, genuine sympathy does not matter. Insincere overtures of sympathy that earns you some social mileage does. Anger, disgust, grief, joy and other visceral emotions are merely performative. This charade has us robbed us of our sincerity. The only sincere emotions that knock on our door are envy and anxiety. 

An acquaintance of mine put up a story on Instagram mourning the deaths of innocent tourists in the wake of the Pahalgam terrorist attack. His next story was on him sipping a cocktail on the beach. His public display of grief lasted as long as the time between his two stories. The hollowness of social media is disturbing and amusing. I have seen my younger sister ‘gush’ over her friends pictures in the comments sections with a deadpan face. When I asked her why does she do this, the answer was simple, it is an obligation. Liking pictures, re-posting stories is social currency. Not adhering to these norms have real life consequences. Friendships between youngsters are only as strong as their ability to hype each other up on social media. Unfortunately, artificially propping each other up has only served to perpetuate our delusions and develop an insatiable appetite for dopamine. The direct consequence of such actions is the unfeterred rise of several monstrosities such as pre wedding shoots and crying selfies.

However, this is just one instance that speaks of a great malady that has pervaded society. A greater ramification is that social media has convinced ordinary people into believing that the world waits with bated breath for their opinion. The stink of everybody’s unsolicited opinion on matters that require nuance is nasty and noxious. The stench is particularly bad on LinkedIn. The fact that LinkedIn started out as a professional platform, the absolute shit show that it has become seems almost sad. I believe Microsoft intends to keep it that way. No amount of curating my feed seems to get rid of the nonsense that keeps popping up. Any engagement is good engagement after all. I solely blame LinkedIn for the proliferation of ‘thought leaders’. Thought leadership is a part of the latest snake oil: brand building. Everyone is supposed to build a ‘brand’ to stand out in these competitive times. Is such a brand rooted in anything genuine? Well of course not, this is social media. Noise takes precedence over substance. In the race to be a ‘thought leader’ most folks have left thought behind. My feed is filled with people ripping off each other’s ChatGPT generated content. Thought leadership has become a euphemism for engagement at all costs. Post something asinine like you are poor if you earn 30 lakhs per annum and watch your engagement metrics go through the roof. Visibility is all that matters. This is the white collar ‘nanga naach’. Women posting entrepreneurship lessons with a restroom selfie and men posting leadership lessons with a gym selfie perfectly encapsulates the nanga naach pradarshan. And of course, we have the worst of the lot, HR professionals. If I had a dollar for every time I read a story about how a candidate on his way to job interview displayed kindness to a dog and the dog later turned out to be his interviewer, I would not be looking for side hustles. Is there a nefarious secret HR organization that asks its members to post the same kidney touching story, at the same time? It would do us a world of good if HRs actually practiced and advocated for the empathy they espouse in posts meant for engagement farming. I sometimes do think that there might be something of substance written by an HR professional, but unfortunately has been buried by their bot-like brethren.

I do admit that my ridicule for LinkedIn grifters comes from a place of envy. Unlike Instagram, LinkedIn profiles are accessible to almost everyone. Yet, these people with their names, faces, organizations, and designations visible to all, have the audacity to post howlers. If I had a fraction of this courage and drive, I would be on a podcast with Raj Shamani. I wonder if polluting the feeds of others has actually helped anybody? Is there someone who has leveraged visibility and engagement at all cost to land a good gig? If there is, I would be happy to jump on that train. I will also apologise to the LinkedIn community for doubting its wisdom.

The bottom line is, the bottification of the human mind is quite dystopian. As a species we are becoming less sentient. The only emotion that has proliferated is unadulterated misery. Despite of this misery people have put on a happy façade on social media. This cognitive dissonance experienced due to trying to put up a brave front in the face of overwhelming self-doubt and sadness, will eventually fry our brains. The bottification will then truly be complete. LLMs, what we call AI, is reducing our ability to think. The use of AI has been quite innocuous till now, but our dependency on it will only grow. Once we fall completely prey to this new beast, it will be the death of critical thought for good (not that critical thought is in abundance at the moment). Mr Jhukerberg and likes are throwing billions of dollars at AGI. I think they are spending way too much money on this. What I suspect may happen, is that eventually our species will be so bereft of emotion and logic that the current LLMs will be touted as AGI. I do not think technology needs to radically progress to enslave humanity. The current technology needs to progress just enough to have us all utterly and completely hooked on to it. We are almost there, we are now on the home stretch. Billionaires should instead spend more on trying to immortalize themselves. I suspect they are, the idea is just not as mainstream. They just have to wait for humanity to become dumb enough. After a hundred years or so, the billionaires having hacked life itself can emerge from their luxury bunkers and rule over what is left of mankind. I also predict that Mike Judge, the writer and director of the film Idiocracy, will be recognised as a far greater seer than Baba Vanga.