A Sneak Peek Into The Internet Lives Of People From The Hills

"Hello guys, aaju chay mo / hami…”
We are all familiar with this line once we open our social media page, which revolves around the people from our neighbourhood. Yesterday evening, as I was scrolling through Facebook, a reel popped up on my feed, and it left me quite amazed to see that it was from my relative, who has started her space for vlogs, nature, and lifestyle on Facebook. 

After the world began to return to its daily routine following the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020-2021, we saw drastic changes in the number of internet users and the data web around the world. Also, the advent of Artificial Intelligence in our mundane lives. 

Stepping into a new era where there is an increase in people producing or creating content, the number of such creators has increased in the hills, especially in my hometown, where I get to see familiar faces creating content on Facebook and Instagram, sometimes on YouTube. 

Content creation boom

The last time I was travelling with my family, we discussed how everyone lately has been getting involved in content creation. From showcasing their everyday workspace to the food they are feasting on, and the people they are with. 

I overheard my mother saying that the government also supports them because people are earning through content creation, and the government believes it is mostly benefiting them to have a side hustle and helping the economy of the society. 

In Sikkim, there is at least one family member who creates content in each household. Talking about the monetary benefits, there are a number of processes, such as posting regularly to earn enough badges and stars and reaching a certain dollar limit with the number of views, shares, likes, and comments you get, which ultimately leads you to a paycheck. 

The challenges

Even though this might seem cool and an interactive space for people to communicate and share their thoughts and snippets of their lives, it is not always the case.

A coin has two sides, with all the positive sides and benefits these apps and websites provide us; likewise, many of us are also unaware of how these spaces can be storing every post and upload in the database, and this is where we come to the term “digital footprint."

I was recently reading a book called “Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India's GenZ" by Ria Chopra, where she talks about the history of the internet and its evolution from scratch to date.

She informs us on how we are unknowingly or knowingly leaving digital footprints of our present actions for the future and how it can affect us both positively and negatively. 

Positively, it brings us a piece of memory to remember, which might have occurred a few years ago, and we might have forgotten it. This happens in apps like Facebook and Google Photos, where they send us a reminder about the pictures that must have been stored in their databases.

Ria writes about how some scandalous news of a particular person can affect their career and how only the rich people are privileged enough to afford the removal of the news from the Company’s database. 

For the hill people, their sole aim is to create memories on a digital platform and also earn some money online, but at times, they might upload something that might trigger the government and evoke trouble for themselves. Hence, the creators should be mindful of what they put out on the internet and the way their activities are being monitored. 

Although content creation may be in vogue and seems like a fun thing to pursue, it is, without prejudice, draining, and many creators feel burned out because they might not get enough reach. Because it is all about the algorithm, which takes you either up or down.

Media literacy, or lack thereof

This leads to another segment of this essay, the internet words that take over the youth of society. We are busy doomscrolling and are on the verge of consuming content which the young generation refers to as “brainrot.” With the fifteen-second reels that pop up in our feeds, there has been a drastic decrease in our attention span and creative energies.

"Ignorance is the root cause of suffering." -Lord Buddha

The life before this can be imagined as days spent in the backyard, playing, jumping, and running, reading books as the sun sets in the west. Getting to bed early, having our loved ones around, not virtually but physically. 

When I was a kid, my daily routine after school would involve playing with my friends for hours until dusk, and my mother would come looking for us in the khetbari near our home.

"Capitalism breathes loneliness," is a line said by our lecturers, and it indeed has veracity in a generation where people prefer solitude over companionship. As humans, we are meant for civilisation, but with an isolated mindset, we are bound to be misplaced in the future.

"People these days are not dying of hunger but of loneliness."

My cousin sent me a reel some time back, and I was stunned to see my sister in it, rating pictures of some boys. I still remember the trend where creators ask people in the street to take a few minutes out of their routine and "rate" people. 

While this might seem like a fun activity for some, it is equally demeaning and rude to rate people, but I was even more disappointed to see people commenting that they would be willing to send in their pictures to be rated by people whom they do not know, for a mere chance to be in the spotlight for some period of time.

This could have taken a reference from the famous film Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham, where in a scene, we see Kareena Kapoor as Pooh rating boys in her college. It is nostalgic that people are taking references for their content, but they must be mindful of how the consumers are affected in such cases.

While these days everyone has the liberty to post anything on their social handles, one must be ready for the consequences that might follow their actions.

Taking into account the millennials from the hills who are predominantly active on Facebook as compared to other social networks, the internet works for them as a pass time and a platform where they can interact with their family members who are far away from home, connect with their old friends, and engage themselves in sharing stories, recipes, and songs from the past, even after the internet rules apply equally to them.

But there is a certain sense of respite that they find on the internet. The internet can be a place of joyous refuge for people who choose not to use it out of desperation to be popular, but a place to make genuine connections and store memories that may last a lifetime. 

Article submitted by Lungmying Lepcha. Views expressed by the author are their own.