Lies, damned lies and fake news
There’s some comfort in having an explanation, however outlandish, for every tragic event. But where does it end, if we exchange logic for lies?
As news of actor Sidharth Shukla succumbing to a heart attack hit the headlines last week, I was boarding a plane to Kochi, on my first trip outside Mumbai since March 2020. I was headed back to the city where my dad once serenaded my mum before they married. A place that holds fond memories of summers idled away as a child.
Even so, the news stayed with me. Shukla was, after all, so tragically young, at just 40. Little did I know that the news would tail me in an altogether different way after I’d landed. For my time in Kochi, I had hired the services of an autorickshaw driver that my father implicitly trusted.
The man was unfailingly honest, dependable and softspoken. As he ferried me about, he invariably talked about how good things were “in the old days”. On one such ride, we started to discuss films.
I thought I could see the man’s demeanour change. Agitation gave way to incoherence, until he started to curse the film industry, investigating agencies and the political establishment. He started to shout.
“Why did they have to kill Sidharth?” “Who?” I asked, totally lost.
“The same people who killed
Sushant Singh Rajput.”
I ought to have guessed. This man believed Sidharth Shukla was murdered. The insane claims of foul play that followed the tragic death of Rajput in June 2020, despite all evidence to the contrary, had now carried over to this young man’s sad demise, and this kindly driver had bought into them.
In Malayalam, he told me “some large production houses and established actors” were responsible, acting out of insecurity over Rajput’s rise and Shukla’s imminent rise to the top. Where was he getting his information, I asked. Whatsapp, he said, as if that ought to conclude the argument.
Among the millions of people confused by the proliferation of sources now pinging at them via their smartphones, Whatsapp has come to represent a trusted aggregator / truth-teller. Even though it is nothing of the sort. If something makes it to the viral forwards, it is assumed to be at least some version of a truth. And that’s enough; it’s neater and simpler than having to assess and analyse information for oneself.
Claims thus adhered to include the idea that Covid-19 is part of a Chinese bioweapons programme; and that the vaccines are designed to make people impotent. That certain Indian megastars have roots in Afghanistan and can therefore call upon the Taliban to execute anyone. That governments and investigative agencies know all this and are complicit in keeping it under wraps.
Once that commitment has been made to the University of Whatsapp, you’d have to admit you were a fool on several levels, in order to rescind it. And so most people never do. Attempting to counter the theories with logic is, in my experience, totally futile.
As to the question of what kinds of people would buy into such theories, the truth is it could be anyone: schooled or unschooled, literate or not, savvy, thinking, sensitive, kind. The more interesting question is why, and there is much literature on that.
Our brains are wired to seek an answer to any big question that impacts us. Psychologists call this the Proportionality Bias. Add to this the Confirmation Bias, which means that most people will incline towards answers that support an existing belief system. When inexplicable things happen, in the absence of credible data, the combination of these biases can lead the most sensible people to set credulity aside and buy into the narrative that suits them best.
Believing that stars can order violent fundamentalists to murder their rivals while the authorities stand idly by infuses sudden, tragic deaths with cause and effect. There is no random threat of illness or loss lurking unseen around a corner; you’re fine as long as you don’t cross the wrong superstar or annoy the Chinese.
In a world being savaged simultaneously by a pandemic, climate crisis and economic meltdowns, most people are unsure of what their future, their children’s future, will look like. In such a time, the conspiracy theories don’t just help explain a tragedy, they also distract from other tragedies.
It’s human nature, born of fear, and so perhaps ought not to be judged too harshly. What can be judged are primetime narratives that seek to turn the deaths of two young men into fodder for ratings. There’s never an excuse for that.