Sneha Prasad
The phone buzzes, my heart pounding, I start to fold my clothes and suddenly feel the urge to clean my room and move in panic from once corner to other with a cloud drawn to my head “did I said too much?” “why did I?” “I should’ve let it go”. Thoughts started to pile up panicking and biting my nails. I checked my phone and there it was the guardians of reminding people that they can’t have an opinion which doesn’t match with their thinking. The phone kept buzzing and buzzing. It was like a blurry edit of my life where I could see ‘oh it was a dream’. Where in reality it was just my friend telling me that her crush liked her picture and shamelessly spamming me about it. For some time, I was lost in my friend’s words but as I kept my phone down, I felt something weird about the nightmare I thought was coming true. Yes, the nightmare of sharing my opinion. I’ve been in this mesmerizing factitious world of social media where there is an unsaid battle of ‘I did it better’ going on. There are basically three wide categories of users that can be distinguished in this platform. One is the content maker. These are the people who think of an idea, work on it and then present it. They only have this single thought of just entertaining the audience with their content and getting renowned. Then come the second category the guardians. These are the people that tell you ‘oh no ma’am/sir you can’t say, think or even do that we’ll straight up assault you by making a content about it and gain my followers. They have this very simple phenomena that they’ll understand the following content only by the level of their thinking. They just can’t let it go of the fact that they don’t like what you are doing and move on instead they’ll tell you in what thousand ways your content is wrong. So, if you are thinking of making a content about religion, politics or even your roasting. Drop it now. Cause they are going to make you regret of even having a slightest thought about it. And lastly are the people like you and me the watchers. We, I must tell you are the most interesting crew. Cause we enjoy the work of the content maker and words of the guardians. Did I just spill too much in here? But I must tell you this that it doesn’t mean we don’t have an opinion. Most of the times we can actually tell that what’s right and what’s not. Its just that we don’t think that our opinions should be said out loud because there are no one listening or even trying to understand the issue, they just have this urge to be right and if they are not then they’ll make sure that you agree with them by whatever means. I’ve seen some controversial videos or statements by the people and the comments of other people stating their anger with words that can sometimes be stated as ‘inappropriate’ and I’m not saying this for a woman but a man faces them too. Its like as soon as you think that maybe by not stepping outside I might prevent myself from those judgmental eyes of the society but there it is sitting right beside me reminding me all the time that an opinion is the one to be kept to yourself if you want peace in your life. Because the constitution which states the ‘freedom of speech’ have this really tiny asterisk which is as tiny as the thinking of some people. Non-existent. So, next time if you are thinking of taking your precious time out to post something which can make a change visualize this the constant buzzing of your phone and if you are someone more dramatic than the Bollywood itself then consider a knock on your door and you turning conspicuously your head around with a fear thinking ‘is it them?’.