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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Counter-Intuitive Think: Is Outrage Just Another Hashtag?
Because my daughter is addicted to Peppa Pig, anything remotely pig-like catches my eye immediately. And that’s how I ended up reading this incisively contrarian piece on digital outrage, puzzlingly accompanied by a Peppa Pig snap. Well, the pigs were beaming at us because, you guessed it right, people were outraged by the talking animal family too.
Which is really the point the article is trying to make. With our exhausting social media protests, have we effectively (and dangerously) devalued the currency of protest? Has outrage, once empowering, selective and challenging, become just another hashtag? Another way to climb on to our high horses? Is indignation the latest fashion – one that has the advantage of showing off our virtuosity as well?
These are questions we are being forced to ask today because almost everything outrages someone or the other and everyone else joins in. As the author passionately argues, it was outrage that fought against brutality, segregation and voting rights; it gave “voice to the voiceless”, it defeated apartheid and abolished slavery. But when it did all this, outrage was accompanied by “action and intent” and not a “caption under a reposted picture”.
While there is still so much to be distressed about in our times, our collective anger is directed towards literally everything – from H&M’s poor marketing to Kardashian’s braids to Peppa Pig’s portrayal of the NHS. Thus, not only are the real issues getting buried under this barrage, but we are also spreading ourselves thin emotionally. As the author eloquently puts it, “if we are all outraged all the time then outrage simply becomes the default setting.”
And what if it does? She has the sobering answer. “By shouting about everything, we are creating a deafening silence where outrage is without consequence. Politicians can avoid law reforms, newspapers can side-step retractions, murderous police officers can evade prison sentences, safe in the knowledge that it will all blow over.”
