Smoke and mirrors in Pakistan?

'Does social media cause this anger or does it reveal it?' Lucy Allais, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University asked in an interview with Vox. — Needpix.com

A LINE from a piece I quoted a few weeks ago has stayed with me: “Does social media cause this anger or does it reveal it?” This was from a 2022 interview Vox did with Lucy Allais, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University. I’ve been paying more attention to exchanges in the real world and the virtual world to see if I can attempt to answer whether X held up a mirror to show us we are rude and angry; were we always like this?

I couldn’t get anywhere because I was rudely disconnected from the platform I hoped would allow me to show you a glimpse of the aforementioned frustration. But I think we all kind of know that how we got here is the result of years of stoking anger, resentment, fear about ‘the others’ – for one side the others are corrupt, another blames the cult followers for all ills in Pakistan.