9.5 Welcome to the Internet. It Sucks. ft. Anurag Minus Verma

Be honest. When was the last time you logged off because you wanted to, not because your battery died?

In this brand new episode of Books & Beyond, Tara sits down with Anurag Minus Verma, influencer, writer, and podcaster, to trace how the Indian internet went from cyber cafes and Orkut scraps to algorithms that know us better than we do.

From going down random rabbit holes and getting emotionally invested in strangers we’ve never met, to collectively losing our minds over the next big controversy, it all points to the same question: when did being online become the default setting, and what has it done to us in the process?
 
Talking about his book The Great Indian Brain Rot, Anurag and Tara get into the TikTok ban and the madness around it, the influence of Sushant Singh Rajput, and why influencer fame doesn’t always mean anything outside the app. He also talks about why so many creators want to shift to film or TV, and how podcasts have suddenly become the format everyone wants in on.

If your day starts and ends with a screen, and “just five minutes” never means five minutes, this episode is for you!

So press play. Then maybe, just maybe, touch some grass.

Books and Documentaries mentioned in the episode:

1. Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India's Gen Z by Ria Chopra
2. Morality TV and Loving Jehad by Paromita Vohra (2007)
3. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
4. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
5. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
6. Kasapa by Manohar Shyam Joshi

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms. 

Transcript

0:00

So which I found very interesting like a loaner from Dilshad Garden of Delhi has the power to send ripples at the Ambani homes in Mumbai. Hi everyone, welcome back. So today I'm going to ask my fellow millennials who grew up mostly offline before Wi-Fi was everywhere before social media ran our lives and when the internet was something you visited to do a small favour follow and rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and help the next generation discover some awesome and inspiring authors. Okay, let's get into it. If you've ever stopped mid-scroll and you've wondered, oh my god, how did we get here? Why am I doing this? This book is for you. The internet didn't always look like this. It began as something awkward, exciting, a little personal. It gave people curiosity, connection and now it's given us outage cycles, this performative influencer scene that's going on and a very strange relationship with attention. So today's guest Anurag Mindus Verma, he has written a book that traces the entire journey of Indian internet culture to when it started to what it has become today and his book The Great Indian Brain Rot, it's not nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, right? It investigates how the internet is shaped, how we love, how we argue, how we even grieve and Anurag has spent years observing internet behaviour from the inside. He's a participant, he's a creator, now he's a critic. So what I really liked about this book, it has reportage, it has personal memory, humour and it feels very familiar if you've lived online enough. Varun Grover has called him a thinker with an insane sense of humour, which I think is quite on the nose for me as well. That's why I really wanted to interview you Anurag. So welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you so much Tara. Thank you for this lovely introduction. And you said a very interesting thing about that millennial, we can obviously talk about it, but I just remember that two days back I was at Jaipur Literature Festival, like I was talking with Rhea Chopra, her book is Never Logged Out. So we were talking that there was a concept of logging out, like we were in the cyber cafes or we were using the internet sometime in the offices or in our colleges. So we were very careful that we need to log out, we need to log out. But somehow that, I mean, at the moment nobody logs out. I mean, we are constantly in this pleasure machine all the time and by mistake, if you log out, then it becomes very difficult to log in because the OTP and this code and everything. So yeah, that change is quite interesting. Yeah, I like that concept also. And I like, you know, you begin this book in this older India where the internet was slow, like we all remember the dial-up medium, the cyber cafes. And the book, the way the book is structured is also very interesting, because you take on different, different topics. So the first chapter, which I found very interesting is about love. And I was like, okay, you know, why have you started the discussion on the internet with the discussion of love? And then you speak about, you know, there was cafe coffee day. And, you know, how cyber cafes, you know, weren't just about browsing, but they were these safe spaces for connection. And there's a moment in the book where you describe being at a hookah bar with your girlfriend and getting into serious trouble just for being seen together. And I remember also, you know, you know, when we were growing up, it was like, kind of a scandalous thing to be dating or nowadays, I think it's kind of, you know, okay with Gen Z and everything, but at least, even in urban areas and all, it was a little bit of a okay of a boyfriend or girlfriend, when you're in, you know, school or college, it's a little scandalous. So why was it important for you to include these moments of fear and moral policing, when you were writing about India's internet pollution? And why start the book with this discourse on love? I was actually trying to trace my own college days. And I grew up mostly around the small towns of Rajasthan. So I wanted to write it. And at that time, the internet was just entering in our life. And we had in our college this computer rooms or internet hours. So we can use internet for one hour in a week or two hour in the week. And then if you have to use internet, then sometime you, I mean, go to the cyber cafe, and then there use Orkut, which I wrote about, like how Orkut used to function was very different. Like, you send somebody testing, I mean, you're obviously aware of it, sending the testimonials, and writing those scraps. And like, for example, if you have any crush on internet on Orkut, then you write a scrap to them. And then you wait for five days, 10 days, sometime one month. And sometime you think that your love didn't materialise, but then you realise that maybe that person doesn't have the money to use the cyber cafe. So there were a lot of factors, anxiety around it. And the entire process was very slow. And at the same time, love at that time was still considered as a as a taboo activity as compared to the contemporary time. In fact, I also mentioned a book, a film by Paromita Vora. So it is a documentary called Reality TV and Love Jihad. And she narrates the story how couples were beaten up in the in Meerut Park, where just couple was just sitting and then police comes and that really, because at that time, the TRP was a very big thing. So people used to sting and how all the couples were beaten up in that park. And I realised at that time, getting beaten up was pretty much normal for love. It was considered as a part of love aesthetics, especially in small town. So there were many people around me who were beaten up, my relatives or people whom I knew who were beaten up because they tried to love someone. So it was very normal at that time. So I mentioned about that particular incident of having a hookah somewhere on Valentine's Day. And then there was some dal who enters and vandalised the whole space. So I thought it would be a very interesting start to how culture was very different at that time. And since there was Internet was also very, the usage of Internet was very low at that time. So a new kind of culture, which later on converted into these apps, these love apps and these dating apps. So the world was very, very different. The approach was very, very different. In fact, it was a saying in that part of the world that if you have to love someone, then love your parents. That's it, which I found some kind of a very weird fluid in analysis later on. But yeah, that was the that was the discourse in those towns. So I thought it's very interesting to also look at the history of that India where I grew up at least and then, you know, parallel it with the Internet story, because my focus of writing this book was to look at the human story. I am not just looking at from a technological point of view, but more from how society is changing as as the Internet itself is changing or the user who use Internet are changing. So how is it is affecting the culture, behaviour? So in that sense, that was one of the reason I wanted to start it from from that era. And obviously, love, I think, is a very central thing to the Internet, as we know that now every I mean, everything is used as a dating thing. For example, I come from Sikar, Rajasthan, and a boy from my town, Lakshmangadh town, got married with a European girl whom they met at the comment section of YouTube. They finally got married. It was a big news on the comment section. Maybe they were debating something. I don't know what was happening, but they got married. Or even one of the greatest love story of our time, which is that Seema, Heather and Sachin Meena from Greater Noida. You know, remember that Pakistani girl who came to India to get married to marry the love of his life and it became a very big thing. So they met through some some gaming app. So so so in that sense, I find everything has that concept of love on Internet. And so it would be very interesting to decode it from from that that perspective. So so yeah, that that was one of the reasons I started it. That's interesting. I also use obviously spent so much time on the Internet and some of the stories that you talk about in this book are just so fascinating, which we'll get to later. But why this book on India's Internet story at this moment? Because I think we are consistently online. I mean, at least everybody around me is. And there is a lot of information around it and we are bombarded by the information. But there is less of a curation like that. There are very few people who are curating and talking about the culture. What exactly is happening? For example, obviously, people are saying that Internet is a dystopian place. Internet is a hateful place. So that kind of discourse is there. But I also think these are very sweeping analysis of how we look at the Internet. And I couldn't find something which is much deeper than that. For example, that there is a writer, American writer, I think, Gio Tolentino. So she wrote a very interesting book, Trick Mirror on Internet culture, which I really liked. And I thought that in India also we have to look culture from a more of a human side and more from a grey and interesting zone rather than just single sweeping analysis of that. So I couldn't find it anywhere. So that was one of the reason. And since I am also extremely online and I somehow understand some aspect of Internet, because I also can't claim to understand the Internet is extremely vast. So I thought I should convert it into something. And maybe third thing is that I might be guilty of over consuming Internet and I wanted to make some usage of that. So the book was so erudite. I mean, like some of the comments are so incisive, you know, I've actually written some of them as quotes. So you have this whole section on influencers and this is the big thing nowadays. Everybody is talking about, you know, influencers and people are saying now influencer marketing is dying. Influencers are no longer relevant. You're fake followers that a lot of people have fake engagement of those things. And one thing I really was very interested in, you know, you said that Internet popularity is not a portable asset. And you said that nowadays with these influencers, it's becoming more and more, you know, earlier it was more about authenticity. And now it's becoming more and more about a performance and how these influencers kind of become less relevant. Like some of them, you know, maybe they create content when they were young and then they're now growing older, their audience is changing. What is the future for them? And what is happening in the influencer world? You know, they don't have a graceful exit. What is in it for them? So please decode. So I call them as a migratory birds, influencers, because they are always trying to migrate it to something better. So right now there is a culture of migrating to web shows and all migrating to the film or migrating to something else. So this has happened where people do. I mean, many of the influencers realise that the shelf life of the Internet is very less as compared to any other medium. So this is one of the reason there are many influencers who are now very desperate to go to some other medium. And I also mentioned many of the examples, for example, Bhuvan Bam, who was a viral on one of the like peak viral guy on Internet. He tried very, I mean, I think he also maintained marginal success also. He tried very well to go to the web series and films. And there are many examples. Ashish Chanchalani is there was very big name at one point of Indian YouTube. And he also is struggling to make his mark. Then Prajakta Kohli, then Kusha Kapila, there are many names. So everybody wants to migrate. And then I also parallel it with that Cairns controversy where many influencers were called to the Cairns and they got very angry when pointed it out that this is not a space for you. Although I defend them, I said that you shouldn't keep any space as a cultural and elite hub. And I think it's okay to go there as a as a marketing type, because even before influencers, there were many stars from Bollywood who used to go as a from the marketing team. So that's okay. Idea of old prestige and chasing those monuments of old prestige is still very much a thing. So now an influencer or let's say may not be that excited to collab with some big influencer. But even if they get a very small role on in a film, they are extremely excited and you know, they'll post it everywhere or even some news channel call them for comment, then they get very excited. So in their mind, also the old area of prestige is still there. And the second thing is that I quote Arpit Bala as a there's a very popular streamer and a rapper Arpit Bala and I quote him that. Then he says that he replies, because it's a difficult job. It's not just that you said it and it's over. Because then the comment section, you have to see the comment section, they will get the nastiest of comment every day. And are you able to deal them? Or are you able to look at the metric every day? Your followers are decreasing, sometime it is not increasing at the speed you want. So there is a lot of it looks very simple job like just a camera and you and anybody can succeed. But I think there is a lot of things which are happening outside of the frame and also in the mind of somebody who's on internet, and which makes it a very, very difficult place. And I also mentioned some of the unfortunate incidents that have happened to influencers. So yeah, overall, I wanted to decode it not just from a very singular site key influencers but that that's a very small part in even the people who are earning money through this caught quote unquote creator economy are very less still very less who are making good money. So there is an other side of it and there is an extreme hustle of it, which I think not many people people see. So I wanted to give it a certain kind of a perspective through, through that particular chapter. And even in the migration things in the earlier time when there was no internet, then there were many TV stars who used to who had dreams to migrate to films. So TV was thought as a as a something which which pays you well, but still the film has the prestige. But that migration was easy because TV that the actors of TV were trained, they knew how to handle camera, they knew how to capture that attention of the people and they had training in the obviously in the acting. But the influencer game is a very different game, which which which is still a very platform specific, for example, Instagram influencer may not have may not succeed very well even on the YouTube. And it happens a lot. There are people who are very good in that vertical frame in in creating some kind of a habitual content, which which people are habituated to by now, and they can succeed on that. But the same audience don't migrate to YouTube. So it becomes very difficult. So when they go to cinema, which is an extremely difficult art form and requires a lot of training and skill set of a very different game. So that struggle then start to happen. And this is one of the reason why many, many of the influencers don't get the kind of the success that they are used to on the Internet. So even their fans also not don't come to watch them in many cases. So so I just wanted to decode so many different shades of what exactly is being an influencer, meaning of being an influencer in India is. So yeah, these were some of the some of the points which I yeah, although there are many other, but then I will read in the whole chapter. But there are many different shades of influence. There is so much in your book, you know, this like, I would like just go on and on talking to you about all of the different, different points. And when we spoke about, you know, an influencer not doing well on one platform and the other, the story of Puneet, superstar, I think that story kind of like, really shook me also. And you said it also, like, you know, shook you as well when you came across it. So this guy basically, he was on TikTok, and he makes his living, you know, saying happy birthday, and he's smearing cake on his face. And then he kind of like, switched to Instagram. And he started sort of trying to and he was really down and out because he was not getting the kind of traction that he got after TikTok was banned. And he was like, really, really upset about it. Because that was his whole life, right? Just doing these kind of reels and making, you know, money off them. And then, you know, he got even hacked by some Turkish guy. And then, yeah, and then sort of dealing with all of that. So can you tell me a little bit more about your interaction with this Puneet? And, you know, you talk about how you went from Puneet superstar, and then he ended up being Lord Puneet. Can you tell us how that transition happened? And what is this? This story is also very filmy. So initially, when I watched, there was a certain video, which I mentioned that that's how the chapter starts. There was a certain video in which he is under Gurgaon flyover. And he's sitting behind the bike. And he's passing through the tunnel and recording it as a selfie. And he's just screaming, just screaming, nothing. He's just screaming. And that scream goes on for one minute or one and a half minute, which is very weird. The man just screams and I connected it with that painting, you know, that scream by Edward Munch. So I thought it is some kind of that kind of a cinematic scene. So then I started watching his video, and I realised that he had around 1000 followers or 1200 followers, something like that. And in his video, nothing happens like he's making around 60 or 70 deals a day, or maybe more than that and doing nothing sometime just breaking a cooler. And sometime doing strange thing like putting using agarbatti as a cigarette. I mean, it was a very weird kind of a performance art, which intrigued me a lot, because it looked like some kind of a character from Dostoevsky's novel. So I thought he's quite interesting. So I called him to the podcast. And at that time, I used to host many scholars and intellectuals for my podcast. So many people wrote to me in DM that, are you out of your mind? Why are you inviting such cringe people and everything? But I thought everybody has a story. And there's also concept of street intellectual, anybody can be intellectual in that sense, if they have some kind of a point of your philosophy of life to tell. So I thought, let's listen to what he has to say. And then he told me about how he was a very big star on TikTok, when TikTok was banned one night, and then he had nowhere to go. And he narrated an incident that when TikTok was banned, he just rode on the bike and wandered aimlessly in Delhi, because he had no idea what he wanted to do. And then I realised this is a story of many people who left completely aimless and jobless after the TikTok ban. And I call them digital refugees of internet, because then they were uprooted from one medium and trying to find their way on another medium. So that was the transitioning phase when I met Puneet Superstar. And then I interviewed him and asked him about his story. And it was also a very emotional connection that was formed at that moment. And then I talk about his struggle to become viral on internet. And then finally, he started doing birthday greeting because somebody who comes from that class don't really get at that time, algorithm is also changing at that time, they don't really used to get any brand collaboration or anything. So he found a way that he will say happy birthday, and then put the cake on his face. And for return, you can give him 1000 rupees or 2000 rupees. So that was his new model of brand, or new model of monetization on Instagram. And he was doing that, and he was earning some income through that. He doesn't come from a stable, economically stable family. So he was trying to do run his livelihood. And then suddenly, some Turkish hacker hacked his account. And he started talking to him in Turkish. And he told me that he just said, please, man, I can't really and he would reply something in broken English. And then I felt very emotional about that whole thing. Like he's trapped in that whole situation. And he can't do anything about it. And I tried to help him. And I also talked about that very disturbing and dark phase he was going through at that time in this phase. Then suddenly, something has changed. When he became a little popular, because the many podcasts started calling him and many memes started making videos on him and he became popular. And then Bigg Boss called him and then in the Bigg Boss, he was removed just in two, three days because of his hyper performances that he does. But next, next day, something very interesting happened. He by then got so much of fan following that when they removed him from Bigg Boss, so internet, entire internet went crazy and then downrated the rating of Jio cinema. So which I found very interesting, like a loner from Dilshad Garden of Delhi has the power to send ripples at the Ambani homes in Mumbai. So that can only happen through internet. And it becomes very difficult to also explain to people why, you know, they like this kind of content or this man who, who does, you know, very unusual things on video. So that there was kind of a graph in that, like from where I discovered him, and then how it happened on internet and power of the internet, you can you can say this is. So yeah, it was a cinematic story. Although after that Jio and everything, we stopped talking to each other and our relationship became, I mean, didn't go any further than that. So that was my point of contact with him. And now I also don't like his journey in that sense, not a big fan of that journey that he started after that, the Jio thing, Jio Bigg Boss thing. But by then I found a very interesting, very, this very interesting story. So I wanted to mention that. And then I also mentioned about other creator who now are labelled in that cringe universe, be it Sherpal Bhairagi or Puneet Superstar. I also mentioned Rakhi Saman. There are many other creators who I mentioned, who also operate in that economy of cringe. Yeah. Yeah, I find that cringe economy in the digital nomad thing, the sorry, the digital refugee concept, some of these concepts, the framework that he put was very interesting. And I was also thinking, you know, because bound, you know, everything that we do is on Instagram, and we've also been following on Instagram. And it was in 2021 that my Instagram account had got disabled. And I don't, I didn't know, I don't know why it got disabled. And we fought very hard and it luckily got enabled again. But during those weeks that it was disabled, I feel, oh my God, you really feel like I've put in so much of my heart and soul making my business, my thing on this platform. And now it's gone. Horrible feeling. It's a horrible feeling. It's gone, it's wiped. It's gone, wiped. And you're not in your control. You can't do anything about it. So yeah, that as a guy, I mean, I kind of understand. I mean, it's crazy. But you know, while I was reading this book, I had these moments that, oh my God, this is insane. Like you talk about things like prison vlogs, where inmates are filming their daily life inside. You talk about the Reddit spaces where people are just going wild, exploring sexuality and sex. You know, each chapter has so much research, so many stories like this Puneet story. There are many, many, many stories like that all over the book. And then even in your acknowledgements, you have a list of people who've helped you gather all this information. Yeah. So I know you're on the internet a lot. But this was a lot of data that you've collected, a lot of stories, a lot of research. How did it all happen? How did it all come together? I think I have unhealthy curiosity about things which I like. It's really unhealthy because I just go deeper into that. So it doesn't, that gathering of data never felt like work or labour in that sense, because I have extreme interest in these fields. So those were of my interest. But to write them, to articulate them, to convert these topics which are very unusual and which are, where there is also chances that they can be taken very lightly by people as very trivial information. So then it became very challenging on how to write it in such a way that it becomes an important documentation of culture. So that was, that writing and framing and articulating this whole thing was a challenging thing. Collecting data was not that much of a challenge for me, because I have seen these people around me. So I don't have an exotic lens, like people like, somebody like Puneet Superstar who comes from this background can be my relative also. I don't have any exotic lens. I don't even have that kind of a degrading lens, as if they are from the other side and they are cringe, they are, they don't have any talent in life. I don't have that lens. I just try to look at from a neutral perspective. To sum it up, data was something which was super fun, but writing it and stitching it together was very difficult. Tell me a little bit more about, because it is very well structured, you go from love, you know, there's a whole history of the internet, you go from love to what's happening today, you have the influencer chapter, you have the podcasting chapter, you have the chapter on, you know, the datification of some figures on the internet. So tell me a little bit about how you structured this whole, your commentary on internet culture. I think it was written, there were many commentary I used to write on my stories, which people used to like a lot. So that was there. So I had so much of material in that sense. Then I also started writing a lot on Substack. So it also gave me some kind of a practise in writing because I was very regular to Substack. And apart from that, I think it has also became a style because this book is one medium in which I work in that format, but I also make a lot many video diaries, video. I work a lot with videos. So there my point of view is to break this boundaries of high art and low art and how can I remove that distinction and merge both of them and still not make it sound ridiculous. So that has been some kind of a practise which I have been doing since very long, since maybe last 10 years or 12 years through my work in different forms. So the same kind of approach I have also followed. So you can look a certain element and mundanity of it through many different point of views. So I try to put them together in that sense. I think there are a lot many factors. I cannot pinpoint exactly, but my training also comes into that. So I studied at Art and Aesthetics. I studied at JNU, Masters in Art and Aesthetics, then at film school. So there when you are interested in literature, in cinema, then you are interested in people, interested in human being. So somehow that can be one of the angle which I also followed in these. And while pitching the book, you have to also give them the chapters. So I try to put them, put everything in the chapter form even before starting the book. And then when I was writing the book, I just have to follow those chapters or maybe delete some of the chapters and add new chapters. So yeah, that became a blueprint for me to get a certain kind of direction in that complete mess and complete chaos that I have collected through internet. Yeah, it's a lot you've collected. When someone finishes The Great Indian Brain Rod, what do you hope will stay with them? Ah, maybe a different way of looking at the internet culture, which is neither extremely dystopic, which is, nor it is extremely beautiful. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle. And maybe try to look things not just from good, bad or this perspective, but more from a, also from a certain kind of an absurd perspective, which is, I think, becomes the only way to understand the contemporary world. If you're applying too much of logic in everything, you won't understand anything because our world is extremely absurd at the moment. So in that sense, I think the book can give you a new insight of how you can look at the culture. So that can be, that can be one aspect of it, I guess, because I still feel that not many people are decoding our contemporary culture, especially in India. So this can became some kind of primal so that more people can look at the culture from a different perspective and write about it, maybe. That makes sense. And I found very interesting that you had a whole chapter on Sushant Singh Rajput. And I felt that, yeah, you know, it makes sense, because I remember even when it was going on, I felt it was crazy. And you talk about this guy, he's called Vibhor Anand, and you call it the Oracle of SSR. And he's just sermonising on the internet. He's coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories. Can you tell me why, you know, you wanted to have this whole chapter on Sushant Singh Rajput and what you wanted to show about the internet with that chapter? I think something extreme. At that time, the events which were unfolding, it never looked like these are the part of some real life. In fact, one of my mentors was a filmmaker, he told me that if you have to make an experimental avant-garde film, then just make it about Sushant Singh Rajput's theories which were around it, and how world has changed when he died. So that was one of the things which kind of stuck in my head. And then I was making a video diary about Bhangarh, which is considered one of the most haunted place in Asia or whatever. So I was just making fun of that place when I was making a video. So through that, because I was talking about ghost, and then I realised that there is a video where a paranormal expert from US, he claims that tonight Sushant Singh Rajput's ghost soul or ghost will talk to me. And then he has machines everywhere around him, and he's shooting everything obviously. And then he says that now Sushant is here in the room, the spirit is around us. And then he plays a button, he can come here anytime. And then some electronic broken sound comes out of that and it's a they are trying to kill me, something like that. I mean, then they try to decode it. It's like that cyanide, like somebody dies from cyanide and they try to decode how it tastes like or something like that. Then they said that he's trying to say that they are trying to kill me. And then it opened up a new conspiracy theory box because at that time, there was a lot of theories that he was killed by somebody, especially by many powerful people from politics and from Bollywood and from other parts. So I found this whole situation extremely bizarre and absurd. What exactly is happening? Why are people doing it? And then obviously, and at that time, every creator who had nothing to do with this conspiracy theory, who had nothing to do with Sushant Singh Rajput started making content around Sushant Singh Rajput's death. I was doing a podcast with Varun Grover and he said he wanted, he was wanted to learn a certain musical instrument. So koi ustad the jinka channel tha, wo music instrument sikha rahe the. And then he said when Sushant Singh thing happened, he stopped those tutorials and started making video, kisne mara Sushant ko. So he said, I couldn't learn that instrument till now because of that whole thing. So the thing was that then this whole topic became a monetizable topic and everybody on internet look at it as a very easy and a cheap way to earn money, to earn influence, to earn views. And then in fact, Bihar police also arrested someone in Bihar who has earned through this conspiracy theory some 20 lakhs, some 25 lakhs. So there were many decades of YouTube monetization programmes like that I mentioned. I call them bounty hunters of YouTube monetization programmes. So there were many people like that at that time and how it became, I mean how the whole country went into a completely surreal zone and everybody was ready to believe every wild thing. Why do you think it became so crazy? I mean, I remember when it was and, you know, even on TV and people on the internet, why do you think it became like this? I think it is one of the reason is that like, for example, misinformation, disinformation, these are not new thing. We all always had conspiracy theory and misinformation. But something has happened after the internet where democratisation of misinformation has happened. For example, in the earlier time, if you want to spread a misinformation, then maybe media channels would spread it. But there are limited media channels like four media channels, six media channels can spread it. So there was some kind of a monopoly on misinformation. But after internet, if I am sitting in Chhapra and I have my own version of truth that can go viral, if somebody is there in Kurla, he can, you know, spread a certain kind of a misinformation around the event that has the possibility to viral any part of the world. So this is one of the reason in the contemporary time, things became very unusual because of that whole, whole, because of how internet operates. And then any conspiracy theory can go around. And you can also build, since internet works on that rhizomatic structure, on that group structure. So through the groups, through the power and sometime also, obviously, because of the west, there is also not everything is organic, there are also vested in interest who also used to, you know, pull off certain kind of propaganda through them. So there are many factors which has made internet such a potent hub for misinformation. And I think in the future, it is going to get more darker than this, sadly, although YouTube has now came up with that, they, they don't allow the monetization of any video, which is sensitive, which is made on a sensitive topic. So maybe if there is a less opportunity for monetization, then there is also less opportunity for misinformation. But now we have x, which is obviously monetising all kind of hate all kind of misinformation. So yeah, it's, it's all over the place. Yeah, I think speaking of monetising misinformation, monetising hate, even said that, you know, threads didn't work, because it was too boring. It's too positive. Yeah, it's too positive. And you said that, you know, the human, the internet is a mirror. And the internet is mirroring kind of what we ourselves are drawn to. And we ourselves, as human beings, we all love to gossip, you know, like these are gossiping when they go on their walks. So this is just an amplified version of that as well, right? People are gossiping about different things, people are commenting. But I also like the other side of it, we spoke about sort of, you know, this misinformation, all of that. But there's also this toxic positivity side of it that you spoke about. I actually found that very, very interesting, because I think I'm on that corner of the internet right now as a consumer where I'm bombarded with productivity reels, and health reels, and this is how you should get better, this is what you should do, you should wake up in the morning, you should eat this, not have that, all of that stuff. And then I follow all of these channels, which people are picking up garbage, or they're doing nice things for people. So I think I'm on that corner of the internet. And it was a mirror for me also. And one of the stories that I really liked is the story of Baba Ka Dhaba. And basically, this guy, what he did was, he found this dhaba and this person. And he said, Hey, look, I'm going to popularise this person because he's so poor, and he's not getting any business and everything. And then he made a reel and everybody was travelling and everybody came to this dhaba and said that, you know, I'll patronise it and I'll give money and they were donating and all of that. And then the Baba said, I didn't ask you to make this video. Yeah, he said that I didn't ask you to do this. And you are now, he accused him of stealing money which he hadn't done. But the fact that he did that, you said that, you know, he became the ultimate anarchist because it was a layer that he removed. Like you said that, I love the way you phrase that, you said there's a particular violence to kindness, there's a theatre. Violence of kindness, yeah. Can you please, like in your own words, explain this because I found it very... Yeah. So that whole chapter was based on the internet kindness, and which I said that there is also a certain kind of a violence of kindness, which you can also see it in the, especially in middle class morality, in which there is a very arrogant concept of daan and punya or, you know, giving charity to someone. And then when you are giving charity to someone, then in your mind, that person is always inferior to you. So you want to help them and you also score some karma point or some kind of a point through that. And you also feel good about it because niceness is also a human need. It makes you feel good. If you're nice to someone, it's not that you like other person, but if you're nice to someone, kind to someone, then you also like yourself because you think that you are a good person. It gives you some kind of an assurance that you are a nice person and good person. So similarly, this thing has happened. This whole baba ka dhaba thing became a very important goldmine in that sense to understand internet culture because initially, you remember the whole incident, right? Initially, he became viral because nobody is buying his paneer. So, and then some blogger came and said, baba ka koi paneer nahi gharida. Everybody became emotional on internet. And then there was a pilgrimage on his dhaba, which was a very small dhaba. And everybody wanted to click selfie, give baba some money, give them something. And everybody was saying that hume bude log ki madad karne chahiye, kuch na kuch hona chahiye. So at that time, I also posted a story. And I said, this baba ka paneer doesn't look good. Everybody's pretending. So everybody hated me. They comment that you are a disgusting person. You are a very bad person. You don't know how to. I said, I'm just a normal person. I can see the hypocrisy of these people who are just behaving as if, you know. So, and then obviously, when after things started become ugly for baba, because he thought that now he can jump from this venture to some maybe bigger venture. And maybe this blogger who came to me is making more money than I'm making. And so he also hired a manager with him. And they then tried to set up a bigger restaurant somewhere. And they thought that first thing we should do is to do something, do a legal case on this blogger, because I think he got more money than me through this whole, you know, YouTube blogging and everything. So he then said these famous line, when some reporter asked, ki aapne uspe case kyun kar diya? He said humne kisi ko bulaya thodi tha, wo toh khud aaya tha yahan pe. And then that angered everybody. And every people then started abusing baba. And they also saying this paneer is also bad by then, which I was saying initially. So it became a very interesting study of how kind people want somebody whom they helped to be in the same position to not behave outside a certain kind of box. That person can't be cunning. That person can't be manipulative. That person has to be within a certain Gandhian niceness. But everybody is, I mean, everybody is aspirational. And they have their own shades of good, bad, ugly. So people were removing that and just putting them into a certain kind of a certain kind of an idealised image, which eventually have to be broken in some sense. Because earlier the same story we have seen in the political sense with Anna Hazare. Initial days you thought the Gandhi, there is some kind of a Gandhi reborn thing kind of in their mind. So they thought that Anna Hazare is also an ultimate display of what a modern God looked like. And at that time also, there were many pilgrimage to Jantar Mantar. And I remember there was a very interesting interview. So there was a father with his child and interview asking, ki aap yahan kyun aayo? Then he says ki humne Gandhi ko toh kabhi hum dekh nahi paya, humein saubhagya nahi mila. But aaj main apne bachche ko Gandhi dikhane aaya ho. So even with Anna Hazare, that whole theatre of niceness lasted for a very small time. And then everybody was against Anna Hazare. And then obviously after 2014, that whole crowd then many of the people also shifted to a different political ideology. So I have seen this on internet, this whole concept of niceness and charity, even in the political circuit as well. You can also translate it to, let us say, somebody is doing something for a political cause as an ally. Or even especially as an ally, they will expect the other person to behave very nicely. They will also tone police. They will not like if the person they are helping who is from disadvantaged background to be, let us say, cunning, aspirational or maybe not fitting in that scenario that they have thought that he or she always has to be niceness. So this thing, the scattered form of this attitude can be seen in many different spheres of internet. So I used the example of Baba Ka Dhaba just as an anecdote in that sense, and then applied it to many different sphere. And I thought it is quite fascinating, that whole chapter. And now the Baba, also it is very interesting, now the content of the Baba has also changed. He is still active on the internet. But now, earlier he was also pretending to be Gandhi and a nice person. But now, if somebody goes to him, and then he just abuses or throw paneer on him, throw plates on him. So now they are relaxed. Now the audience is not seeking any niceness. And the creator is also not performing any niceness. And there is some kind of a balance restored in the universe. Yeah. I love it. And speaking of performance, and, you know, like the act of sort of like the creator and the viewer, let's travel to another corner of the internet, which is what we are doing right now, which is podcasting, which I found very interesting, because you have podcast, I knew you were coming on my podcast. And the kind of things, some of the things you say about podcasting made me also kind of reflect, you know, some of the things that you say, you know, you talk about the concept of class hopping, which I found very interesting. So talk about this concept of this cute cutification of which I found very interesting. So you tell me a little bit more about, you know, and also as a podcaster yourself, what is it that you wanted to say about the podcasting bit of the internet culture nowadays, especially now, with like, so many people starting different different podcasts, biceps was a kind of pioneer of that format. And we see, and there are a lot of you know, what I really like about podcasting is I like the deals of people making fun of podcasting, because it's so funny, because they're like, Oh, somebody will say something. And then the podcast is like, that is so interesting. It's earth shattering. They would have said the most mundane thing. But the podcaster is like, Oh, this is so interesting. It's so fascinating. Your podcast started in 2019. Right? That's what it Yeah. So at that time, the podcasting was very, as you are aware, there was not many podcasters at that time. And it was still a very small niche group kind of a thing. And podcasting was also considered a very interesting medium, but with a very dedicated audience, which is some somehow newsletter is in that stage at the moment in India, which is currently evolving through substack and other other other medium. So the podcasting in that time was in that stage. But after I'm also trying to remember when it started, maybe after when the pandemic was about to get over, there were many podcasters, which got famous. And there were many celebrities started coming to these podcasts. And yeah, that's how it started. And then I mentioned they became a very genre among podcasters. So there can be like Jyotish podcast, astrology podcast, geopolitical became a very important buzzword in the current political time geopolitics podcast. And yeah, I mean, many, many different. So I give an example of my own podcasting studio, where I record in Noida. So one day, so that studio has a small small, small alley. And on both sides, there are rooms and you can just peek in, in the room. And I was just one day walking. So one, I was looking inside one, one room, there was some liberal podcast, which is going on. Then on the right side, there was some right winger was doing, then there was some Baba, then there's some astrologer, then there was some beauty tips. And I mean, I thought that I'm walking inside a reel. And then I realised that and it's always jam packed, because podcasting were are trending, were trending, at least at that time. So everybody then started making a podcast about something like even I give an example of that ABP podcast. For thinking that interview is boring, we must make podcast, but they don't understand what exactly podcast. So for them, podcasting is that that mic, the big mic is podcast. So there was one interview of Salim Khan, who's the father of Salman Khan, it was about that threat that Salman Khan was getting from Lawrence Bishnoi. So he thought that he should come to that ABP new podcast. And then he was speaking something on that podcasting mic. And they said, this is a new podcast and all that thing. Then I realised there is no wire. So that podcasting mic was there as an as a prop as an accessories. So there was no mic in there. He was just talking from a different way. Then I realised that many people started thinking that what makes an interview different from a podcast that that big mic, and which I found very funny and every every new channel started doing it. But one of the interesting thing which which you said about class hopping, which I mentioned in the book, so which became a some kind of a pretty dangerous aspect of the podcasting, because then you can call any any public figure who may not have a great views related to society related to politics, but you can ask them certain kind of a mundane question to cutify them like how much do you buy this, what do you do here, you know the price of coriander, who does that more than you and your wife, who does this. So that certain kind of a cutification started happening in the podcast. So then you can change the image of somebody, anybody through that cutification, then you realise that and especially even in the comment section, you'll get most of the comment like, okay, I didn't think about them. Like I used to think that they would be such people, but they are very cute. So that thing, it became a one of very important, very important element in that whole narrative and the propaganda factory, the podcasting has shifted to that, that, that space, I think, after a while. And now, as we all know by now that every podcaster has a certain rate list, which is, I mean, monthly, they send it to all the agents and all the people, and it's updated monthly. And they will tell you, etna lakh is podcast ka abhi chal raha hai, etna lakh is to chal raha hai. Then you can go there and spread your own propaganda or spread your own, let's say, narrative of yourself, of whatever you think about the world. So that slot, that paid podcasting became a very big thing. And now, because of that thing, many podcasters are also suffering because they started doing these things, but their audience also got bored with them. So we are now moving in a very different phase where there is a possibility that those style of podcast may not get the same views as they used to get. A new kind of format will emerge in next two, three years, but we have to see what it will be. It made me also remember another thing that you wrote in the book, that you said that, you know, before 2018, when Tanmay Bhatt and AIB was there, then they were kind of like this progressive voice of the internet. And then after 2020, you said that he's consciously let go of that burden. And, you know, you said that there's difference in the internet. So what is the difference in the internet when it was AIB's time? And then what is the difference today, where you say that today's internet doesn't demand the sincerity of ideas? I think the brands and influencer culture completely changed. At that time, there were no reels also. And YouTube was also very different. But at the moment, the brands becomes very central to your existence as an influencer. And if you are a political person, then you are in that category of not brand friendly. So it becomes now even very difficult to even post a story or comment on some political issue, because then there are chances that there can be some kind of a trend, boycott trend, and then the brands may not come to you. I was talking to somebody who was a manager of someone and he said that I want to manage you and manage your content and everything. Then he said, but you have one problem, you make 2-3 political jokes in between, reduce them somewhere, don't put them. I said, that's not possible that it will just cut out all the rough edges from my work. Then he said that that is the only problem. And then he said that the brands look very carefully at what you are doing, what reel you are putting. And so this can be one of the reasons that nobody want to take any challenge to say something which is anti-establishment or say something which is socio-political in nature. Within capitalism also, although there is a certain kind of space that is allowed. So there is a very small space where you can say something about certain groups and a little bit of niceness is allowed in that sense. But you can't go all out and speak your mind or speak about the social issues or speak about the politics. That culture now has gone, we can see that, from Instagram at least. Now if there are people, then they are labelled as a political influencer, who are a political influencer. So it became a different category. And within that category, there are people who then are expected to say political all the time. So they are, that's a very different kind of a category altogether. Now mainstream influencers are somehow not expected to go into that zone, which can be a mix of their own personal ambition, their own personal viewpoints, and also because of the society and the culture which has changed in the recent times. So I don't entirely blame them also, but in some sense, I do as well, yeah. Actually, it reminds me, there's this very interesting article that came out, basically about the performance of literature festivals, like that happens at literature festivals. And there was an example where one of the panels had called Prajakta Kohli last year. And then the moderator said that, you know, we're not here to answer any political questions. We're going to talk about the book. But the next question about was about her fashion label or sustainability, when she answered that, that also was not about the book. So I found that very interesting. So that's what I was saying about a space within the capitalism about some safe topic that you can talk about this topic. But yeah. So that was the example, perfect example of that. But that culture has been extremely normalised in India. I think we don't question our influencer, there should be some kind of a good cultural critique around these things. And there has to be, I mean, some voices who says that our job is not just to sell product, but also elevate the cultural spaces, which is not happening, which is, which has become completely dead, sadly. Yeah. I think books are going to make a big comeback in this space. I think so, which I can see the trend, like more people are now moving towards the book, which is very interesting. And there were many big books came recently, like big in terms of the market share, like Arundhati Roy's book was there, and that loneliness of Sunny and Sonia, that that was also there. So there were many, also many Booker Price recently. So something is changing in that field. Definitely, I think that it's hard to filter, let's say on the internet, maybe with books, it's easier to filter because it takes that much more, the barrier to entry is so high to write a book, you know, you can't just open your phone, click a video. And, you know, though, obviously, the barrier to entry to becoming an influencer is huge. I mean, it takes not everyone can do it. But I think maybe because it's hard to even sort of get this book distributed or seen, maybe people will sort of want to be consuming more of that. But anyway, that's a conversation. Even that analogue, we have to return to the analogue somehow, that screen is the new smoking. So that discourse is there that this is not doing us any, I mean, this is like a junk food, we like it, we enjoy it, obviously. But this is not nourishing. At the same time, one has to do something outside of the screen as well. So that that discourse, I think will also gain momentum. Now, this year, you'll see a lot of these discourse, I'm 100% sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm as a person and someone who creates, I'm very happy. Moving to the last section of the interview, just a rapid fire round. So I'll ask you just a few questions. And you can answer in one word or one sentence. Okay. One internet habit you're actively trying to unlearn. Scrolling, loom scrolling, obviously. Yeah. A book that everyone should read. One book that comes to my mind, which is very absurd is a book called Kasap by Manohar Shyam Joshi. It's a very wildly funny book. I think one should one should check it out. Yeah. Okay. What's next for you? What are you working on next? A documentary film, which is going to be released this year, hopefully. So that that is something I'm working. I mean, I finished the film. Now we are sending it to film festivals. So hopefully this this year, we'll release it for the public. Yeah. It sounds really cool. Thank you so much for this conversation. I had personally had a lot of fun reading the book, because it took me down, you know, different, different rabbit holes. And you've done the hard work of, you know, being on the internet and culling out all of these stories for us all to enjoy. And I think, I mean, we're all online. So having somebody sort of decoded a little bit is always helpful. Really. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tara. Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books and Beyond with Bound. This podcast is created by Bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Find us at Bound India on all social media platforms. Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia.