On Instagram reels

Instagram is setting quixotic standards encouraging a culture of judgement.

(The article contains links to videos that are crucial to the subject of discussion. Please look at the videos for better understanding)

I should clarify at the outset that the phenomena discussed henceforth are not about the channel but the audience. Social media, as political satirist ROFL Gandhi says, is a mirror of the society and it behaves as the people of that society really is. I intent to think upon the behavioural change of society, or the lack of it, which is the subject of my gaze currently. 

As Anurag minus Verma discussed in his eye-opening article revealing how Instagram has become a platform for savarna aesthetics which is perhaps, naturally, promoted by the algorithm. He explained how Reels on Instagram have become redundant with the high-cost lightning setup, proper audio and thus, higher reach.

Adding into his argument I would like to point out that Instagram reels is promoting a culture of judgement, which is anyway omnipresent in our Indian Society. Being intolerant people we prefer like-minded people with similar preferences and detest any dissimilarities harshly. It is common to see abuses under a bold Instagram post addressing the mismatched taste.

With Instagram reels there is a battery of videos in which the creator is pointing out a certain behavioural aspect of a class, gender or sometimes caste too, further explaining how errored “these” people are. Sadly, often, viral content is created through a lens that is misinformed and dangerously opinionated. The subject, of humiliation, they put forth is varied from gender stereotypes, agist, body shaming, geographical disparity and classist most of all. 

Here in the viral video, the creator, with the input of 20 words on the video, generalise all the people living in a certain region in a singular box. He seems to convey that boys with such personality (which is harsh and loud but different) are all criminals, went to Goa to create a ruckus. The video encourages judgment and stereotyping of people into fixed categories, in this case; Prejudicing these boys as ill-mannered and waiting to make trouble in Goa. Instagram eventually end up promoting such videos because the algorithm does not work on rationalism but capitalism. 

In another video a guy mimics other female creators on how girls behave on Instagram, again, labelling girls under a narrow personality trait. The irony here is that the guy performs the whole act on which he is judging. The views, appreciation and reach is significant on this video as well let alone the comments which are noteworthy and probably the result of similar stereotyping.  

This verified creator goes on to the next level from mimicking to mocking people with north Indian accents from Haryana and Delhi. He recreates a scene where a Jaat boy from north India is ordering a subway sandwich and brings slapstick laughter out of the mockery. Diving deep, one might find, that these high-reaching videos play a major role in constructing pre-conceived notions about people who are unknown ‘culturally’. 

Off-late stand-up comedians have paved an easy way to bring out cheap laughter from passing judgmental remarks on people from a specific region and class. Mumbai people bashing Delhi people on their eating habits, dialects, culture and behaviour and visa-versa has stimulated this behaviour widely. A similar example is this video which poses some north Indian guys as enraged goons waiting for people to beat up again setting up a generalised view of the subject.

My argument must not be interpreted as a defence of people from north India but a call to address the stereotyping. People have layers of personality and they can not be catalogued into pigeonholes like a north Indian guy or south Delhi Girl or a Gujarati trader. Far from similar, we Indians, are the most of the diverse people on the planet and there are chances that someone from Kerala might beat you up without any specific fault of yours. That’s how vivid our country is. As Amit Varma loves to say ‘People have multitudes’, hence cataloguing them as per narrow mindsets and generating cheap laughs should not be so much prevalent. 

In another created category on which people are bifurcated to be judged, hence humiliated, is on the basis of class. Creators of these content are mainly upper-class people commenting on someone’s dressing habits and other lifestyle habits. Video like these simply vilify marginalised people who wear their jeans a little higher on the ankles, speaks differently than others, sport loud shiny clothes and often drives a KTM bike. Hence a huge population, generalised and maligned by so-called creative influencers, are segregated aside instigating inferiority complex further resulting in low self-esteem and sometimes giving up of dreams or life too. 

This video seems to be created by an upper-class creator with festive aesthetics, goes on to bash boys by directly attacking their class. She points out the cheap soap he uses to take a bath, which is also very rare according to her. Then she suggests some good, Non-cheap, deodorants for the boy to smell nice. This widely circulated video generalises boys into one category, which is not the subject of my critique but stereotyping of the boys who can’t afford expensive soaps and deodorants is. 

Coming to this problematic video. The creator starts with mansplaining that there are certain kind of boys who wears certain kind of clothes and dress a particular way, they should not mix up these low-class boys with an upper class like me/us. He further goes on to abuse these boys. Hate in this 15-second video is ubiquitous towards people from the lower end of the society just on the basis of their class which indeed differ them culturally and physically. 

In this video the creator, like all of his other video, encourage judgment towards people who write their Instagram Bio with clamour. He states that these people like to celebrate their birthday and tell other people about it with witty phrases like cake murder. He further goes on to say that the same kind of people does drive KTM bikes also, which is again generalising people into narrow categories. 

Reels on Instagram is promoting the national game of our country; poking nose in other people’s life and expression of it. The deluded half baked opinion of some of these viral creators has contributed to a toxic judgmental culture, especially in India. The age-old plight of “log kya kahenge” which has been pushing us into self-doubt has been enlightened by viral videos like these. Many of these people specialise in “people ranting”, once you visit such profiles you will find a plethora of videos judging girls and boys on their social status, class or lifestyle choices. 

We often, nonchalantly, label content creators like these as cringe and irritating. We have all heard this phrase that “Instagram has become the next Tik-Tok”. Sit back and think about this phrase again. The seed of judgment is rooted deep inside us. We have been living in the binaries of Us and them ever since and social media has just enhanced that. The internet is for everyone and pointing out fingers at people who are dancing to a different tune is simply refusing equality.  

However an important consideration should be made here that a large chunk of Indian internet users are subsequently new to this world; social media being a recently emerged phenomenon. Internet maturity is yet to prevail among most of us and sensitivity will follow soon. We should, while thinking of ideas of creation, must be inclusive of the “other” point of view because there can be laugher without hurting someone, in that case, everybody is laughing. 

Disclaimer 

I am not from the cancel army and I certainly do no advise filtering the creation of art; doing so will only leave us with dog posts on social media. The free flow of thoughts while making such content must not be barred but creativity should not lounge on slapstick humour by degrading others and their lifestyle. Creators, influencers should be thoughtful of that while scripting ideas for such videos which promote laughing down on marginalised or, often, different lives.

Mentioning limited video links and creators for my critiques is not to call out specific creators only. This depicts a lack of capacity to watch so much of these reels on my own.  

-Aditya Mohan