Photo source: thebetterndia.com
A 20-year-old girl whose father was killed in the Kargil war uploaded a video with a series of placards passing on a message of peace. She assumed it would spread love and peace among both the countries. Her step backfired, as she herself got angry remarks, rape threats and being bullied over the social media by Indians. She gave up and also withdrew her agitation against ABVP.
What went wrong? If you look closely, things went wrong at many places. She lost support from people on social media because people focused on one of her placard that read 'Pakistan did not kill my father, war did.'
How did this happen? ALL human beings operate through cognitive biases when they come across something. These biases act like sunglasses or colored glasses, so the way we perceive things isn't always accurate. One such bias led people only to selectively focus on a seemingly negative aspect of her whole video and ignoring the bigger picture. Such focus is backed by some truth (eg. Pakistan army actually intruded the Indian territory at Kargil and killed many soldiers including her father). So the readers perceived her statement as false, as an insult to the whole nation, and many got angry and offended. People like GurMehar are soft targets for bullying too. Many respected personalities also took offense and condemned her action.
Other cognitive biases involved were labeling the whole person as bad (antinational), jumping to conclusion (she is hostile), disqualifying the rest of the positive messages in her campaign, thinking that the whole post by her was bad when only a part of it was not written carefully as she didn't even anticipate that framing of the sentence in that way would seriously backfire. The audience failed to empathize with her situation, pain, and motives. Since cyberbullying is pretty easy, as easy as sharing a post, commenting or liking, people went ahead and joined the masses. Since we have a low tolerance, low acceptance of others and high impulsivity these days, things escalated pretty quick.
In the whole process, she backed off, sending out a message to all the girls all over the world. "Keep your mouth shut!"
Dr. Shishir Palsapure is a trained psychotherapist and supervisor for therapists, life coach, and a life skills trainer.
Hats off dear.....
ReplyDeleteTrue that
ReplyDeleteWhat an insight....and totally endorse that cyber bullying is so easy and the low tolerance levels.
ReplyDeleteGood insight
ReplyDeleteWell said
ReplyDeleteAwesome Analysis
ReplyDeleteIn the video, not only is there an accusation of our leadership calling it "third world" aka "third class" but also of state-sponsored terrorism, state-sponsored spies, state-sponsored hatred. India doesn't harbor any of these. So it's not a mere childish mistake of denying wrongdoing by our flagrant neighbor but accusing our country of malice. It appears that this psychotherapist himself is a subject of untoward biases towards the Indian people, as is clear by his words "Since we have a low tolerance, low acceptance of others and high impulsivity these days..." And he analyzes the situation through his tinted glasses. No doubt this article is foul and contortive, even in its mildest form.
ReplyDeleteIf you think India doesn't harbour state sponsored terrorism, spend a couple of weeks with tribals of Bastar. What else is Intelligence Bureau if not a domestic spying agency that has been surveilling political opponents of the government since it was formed. Situation has been same regardless of which party is in power.
DeleteIf you think India doesn't harbour state sponsored terrorism, spend a couple of weeks with tribals of Bastar. What else is Intelligence Bureau if not a domestic spying agency that has been surveilling political opponents of the government since it was formed. Situation has been same regardless of which party is in power.
DeleteFirst of all psychologists are human beings, and its likely that I am also biased. No denying. But when I say we (as human beings, not just Indians) have low tolerance and low acceptance, I have concrete evidence to this, a study which I was a part of. So I am NOT BIASED when I say it. You can access the study here, Sir.
Deletehttp://gradworks.umi.com/35/80/3580802.html
Wrongly perceived write up. You ignored the very basic why Ms Kaur started her campaign. A seminar focussed on separation of Kashmir & Bastar was organized in a college. This seminar had to be called off because of protests from the other students. The organizers had to call off & they arranged a protest March. In this protest March anti India slogans were raised (check video on AajTak website).Students from ABVP opposed & beat up the protest marchers.
ReplyDeleteMiss Kaur was raising her voice against this 'Gundagardi' of ABVP through her campaign 'I am not afraid of ABVP', she is talking about freedom of expression to talk about dividing India.
So whatever sugar coating she tried to give, whatever priviledge she tried to extract on account of her age, womanhood & her Marty father could not fool people for a long time.
It was not one slide, it was her intention which people could read & understand that backfired.
Gurmeher drama is fully political. I am not agree that she was innocent... She knew all game. Now rape threats... Shame for that... But she did not go to police... why? He inform all by twitt... why? He publicly announce this threat on NDTV.. why? tweet is proof of threat and that person who send it to him. But Innocent Gurmeher delete it... why? Is this innocence?
ReplyDeleteAll patriotics are biased when it comes to any negative comment related to their own countries...no psychologists should try to justify such foolish comments in any way. I don't understand that Why these intellectuals choose to speak on selected national topics and not all...
ReplyDeleteAll I can say about the article other than being biased is
ReplyDelete"It's a very misinformed opinion"
Just because there are other explanations doesn't mean the facts mentioned in the article don't hold true. I have no intention to take any side, I just presented my view based on evidence based theories. I agree there are so many other aspects of the whole scene, and I do not know a lot of it, and there's even more nobody other than GurMeher knows...
Delete