Social media has been firmly established as a tool for social justice. It has helped bring together communities, raise money and spark revolutions. It has also led to violence, conspiracy cults and at least one genocide. For many, access to social media is like carrying a gun — many have yet to evolve to understand the risks.

The problem is further compounded by the capitalist interests of social media companies. Social media is designed to drive engagement; unfortunately hateful content tends to be a lot more engaging than positivity. Social media is also linked to an increase in cyber-bullying, celebrity suicides and general anxiety. These appalling trends are analysed in the renowned documentary on the dangerous impact of social networking: The Social Dilemma. In Pakistan, you do not have to look further than the revolting political hashtags trending online. These include troll farms, harassing voices, and social media crusaders bullying individuals to see this vicious negative cycle play out. When negative tweets get attention, those posting those feel validated. As a result, they tweet more negative things about people which leads other people to follow in their footsteps in order to gain similar popularity.

The youth, known historically for being progressive, now sit in front of a keyboard defending their favourite political leader. It is baffling sometimes to see teenagers jump to the defence of the states to the extent of inventing and popularising all kinds of conspiracy theories peddled online. The beacon of hope that was social media is fast turning into another weapon in the toolbox of the status quo. We have seen how India has been able to exercise its might by shutting down accounts on Twitter critical of the state.

What about the values of social justice that social media was meant to promote? As somebody who had to deactivate Twitter last week because of the copious amounts of abuse my parents received just because I questioned the imposition of Urdu as national language in Pakistan in that it devalued regional languages, my hypothesis is that “call out” and “cancel” culture online has more to do with the people involved than any ideals of social justice.

It is not rare to see an account that preaches about mental health also make memes mocking a suicide. An influencer who made her name writing about the #MeToo movement now spends her days defending a man who has become the face of it. Another gets paid by several brands for her public activism but privately bullies survivors into silence. It has become a battle to see who is more ‘woke’ than the other, and many influencers are accounts for hire to push any narrative that people with money want promoted.

It has become a battle to see who is more ‘woke’ than the other, and many influencers are accounts for hire to push any narrative that people with money want promoted. 

Words like ‘woke’, ‘problematic’, ‘cancelled’, and ‘performative’ are thrown about so much that they have lost all meaning. Sexual assault and an ignorant remark cannot be equally problematic - words have meaning. If we label everything as being problematic then the worst of us can get away just by riling people against cancel-culture - being cancelled should be a nuclear option, not something to throw about fifty nine times a day.

I am not opposed to cancel-culture in all forms and situations but if Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar is treated the same way as Nimra Ali, we have a problem. We cannot be blind to the power dynamics of society. A privileged man using his pen, and his mouth, to belittle women at every turn deserves to be cancelled but an ordinary girl who went viral should not be cancelled for making an ignorant remark. The fight should be directed against the culture that normalises the use of such bigoted terms, rather than Nimra Ali. At least some of the hate she got was from individuals jealous of her popularity.

The “call-outs” often tend to be blind to their own privilege. If their elite education enables them to understand the problematic nature of certain ideas, they should fight against those ideas rather than looking down upon everyone who did not have the same opportunities as them. We all mocked the Cannoli owners – what they did was stupid, elitist and disrespectful – but nobody deserves the sexist abuse that was directed towards them. It came to a point where one of the owner’s daughters had to deactivate her social media account because her inbox had hundreds of messages calling her mother the worst imaginable things.

Unfortunately, the Right is fully aware of the power of these words. They have turned them against the Left. Dissenting voices are shut down by labelling them problematic, sexist, racist and anti-national. Many people tend to read the labels without much regard to the facts. Nida Kirmani can be ignored by many nationalists because she was labelled as a Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) supporter, regardless of her denying it, condemning the BLA and there being no evidence of her ever having supported the BLA. The label was enough to poison an educated critical voice for many.

If we are to use social media to promote social justice, we have to be conscious of the troll farms, the influencer culture and the status quo using their power to silence criticism. The least one can do is to find out the facts before retweeting the worst assumptions. The status quo is powerful and united; they will set their differences aside to ensure its continuation. They would happily sit back and see social justice warriors tear one another apart trying to prove who is the most woke of them.

The insurrectionists at the Capitol believed they were fighting a good fight. Even the most well intentioned social justice warriors online may be misguided and their beliefs may be used against them. So, the next time you want to lynch someone online remember that there is more to life than being a part of a Twitter mob.

The writer is a content creator, stand-up comedian, and the host of The Pakistan Experience