By Lalit Shastri
There is something profoundly rotten about the social media ecosystem that we have allowed to take shape.
Every time I come across reels of self-appointed influencers making a spectacle of themselves, and now see reports of a female influencer being rounded up by Delhi Police in the wake of the CJP protests in Delhi, I am left with an unmistakable feeling: the cockroaches of the social media world are crawling out of the woodwork, emboldened by the attention, amplification and apparent importance these platforms have bestowed upon them.
This is not about one individual. It is about a system that appears to reward noise over reason, provocation over thought, and spectacle over substance.
I have watched this ecosystem with growing dismay. Those who have something meaningful to say, who question, analyse and attempt to bring sanity into public discourse, often find themselves speaking to a handful of people. My own experience has been that posts on YouTube, Facebook and X can struggle to reach even 20 to 25 viewers, while content that is crude, frivolous or deliberately inflammatory can command audiences running into millions.
One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise the disturbing consequences of such a disparity. When a handful of private platforms exercise extraordinary power over what people see, what they discuss and whose voices acquire visibility, the algorithm ceases to be merely a technical instrument. It becomes an invisible gatekeeper of public opinion.
I have come to suspect that these systems are doing far more than reflecting public taste. In their relentless pursuit of engagement, they appear to privilege the sensational, the divisive and the intellectually impoverished, while reasoned argument is pushed to the margins. Whether by design or by the commercial logic of engagement, the result is the same: sanity is buried under a mountain of manufactured noise.
And the implications go beyond entertainment.
When influencers turn political mobilisation into a performance, when slogans demanding regime change are celebrated without any serious discussion of constitutional limits, and when the distinction between peaceful democratic dissent and unlawful attempts to subvert constitutional government is blurred, we have a problem that cannot be dismissed as just another social media trend.
In a democracy, a government can and should be criticised. It can be opposed, challenged and voted out. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. But no individual, influencer or online mob acquires the authority to replace constitutional processes with extra-constitutional methods. The Constitution is not an inconvenience to be discarded whenever political passions run high.
Nor should a viral reel be mistaken for a measure of public opinion. Millions of views do not confer wisdom. Followers do not confer credibility. An algorithmic boost does not confer legitimacy.
I have spent decades in journalism believing that facts must withstand scrutiny, arguments must stand on their merits, and public life must be judged by something more substantial than the volume of applause. I find it deeply troubling that the digital public square increasingly appears to reward precisely the opposite.
I have no intention of pleading with these platforms for visibility, nor do I intend to seek their validation. I will continue to say what I believe needs to be said. If an argument has merit, its worth does not diminish because an algorithm chooses not to circulate it. And if a piece of nonsense attracts millions of viewers, those numbers cannot magically turn nonsense into wisdom.
My objection is not to the existence of social media influencers as such. It is to the culture of manufactured importance in which celebrity is mistaken for competence, provocation for courage, and reach for intellectual authority. It is to a system in which the loudest can drown out the thoughtful and the most outrageous can eclipse the most relevant.
If these platforms are becoming instruments through which public consciousness is shaped, then their power deserves far greater scrutiny. No private algorithm should be allowed to become the invisible arbiter of what a society is permitted to hear, debate or remember.
Let there be no confusion about my position. I will not mistake popularity for intelligence, virality for truth, or online noise for the voice of a nation. And I will not remain silent merely because the machinery of digital amplification appears to favour those who have the least to contribute to serious public discourse.
A society that allows its intellectual life to be dictated by algorithms risks losing the very capacity to distinguish substance from spectacle.
When cockroaches become celebrities, the problem is not merely the cockroaches. It is the ecosystem that feeds them, the machinery that magnifies them, and the society that is expected to mistake their noise for the sound of democracy.
That is my position. And I see no reason to soften it.
