Beyond toxic rumours and sexist jokes Whats up inside Indias Whats. App groups Whats the worst thing you can do on a Whats. App group send good morning quotesforward marriage jokesmake up convenient facts Think again. In my school group, there is a friend who cannot be bothered to write happy birthday. She copies and pastes the last sent message, spelling mistakes and smileys included, which looks quite weird when read, said Riti Khanna, a beauty care professional based in Delhi. The worst are sales moms. We had one in our mom group who started dealing in China sourced baby productstoys, blankets, bottles. She would send 1. When I objected to it on the group, she called me a dictator, said Amrita Gupta, a banker based in Mumbai. There are people in my alumni group who, when they dont agree with what I am saying in an argument, get personal. For example, when I expressed my doubts about demonetization on the group, one of them said I must have hoarded black money, said Aman Malik, a product designer based in Gurgaon. Its hard to find today someone who isnt tired of Whats. App groups, but its harder to find someone who is not a member of one. Whats. App is to middle class Indians what Snapchat is to American teenagers a social network that really, truly gets them. While they account for most of the backlash against the messaging platform, deadly rumours arent the only thing that circulates through Indias Whats. App network of 2. Extremely open free to download, easy to use and entirely closed end to end encrypted, Facebooks instant messaging app is central to the making of community and consensus in India today. The Family Group isnt Whats. Apps only offering to Indian society. North American evangelicals read the Bibleand the worldthrough Western eyes. Indeed, all human beings come to the Bible with cultural habits, deeply ingrained. The platform has created whole new virtual communities school mom group, condo groupas well as animated old associations like alumni and party members. How is a What. App group different from one formed over email or Facebook Its urgent and intimateurgent because it exists on the Smartphone and intimate because its held together not by common interest but core connections, as members of a wfamily, office, building, or alumni. Whats. App provides not only a channel of communication but also a template for it. There are no limits you can post as many updates in a day as you like on as many topics as you like, making it totally normal to go from talking about maids to talking about Modi. The conversations bare the soul of modern India likes and dislikes, pride and prejudice, fear and loathing. Watch Avos Streaming there. So, what are Indians currently talking about over Whats. App MAJORITY RULESSandip Kumar, a Delhi based lawyer, is a part of an alumni group from a prestigious law school. BW5vwCocyaoQUtI2kmQQrO.jpg' alt='Pride &Amp; Prejudice Full Movie' title='Pride &Amp; Prejudice Full Movie' />Everyone is placed high in their careers. Members are added selectively there is even a waiting list for entry. Its meant for networking within legal and public policy community. But people are constantly posting about current affairs, often without checking their facts, he said. In August, the outgoing vice president, Hamid Ansari, ruffled feathers by saying that Muslims felt insecure and uneasy in todays India. Within seconds, smartphones across India were buzzing with Whats. App alerts. A college senior on our group said Hamid Ansari was a cousin of Mukhtar Ansari, the gangster politician from eastern Uttar Pradesh. Writing the Comedy Movie. Marc Blake. Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. Wzg2aPhFavR1RkpnUtlUP.jpg' alt='Pride &Amp; Prejudice Full Movie' title='Pride &Amp; Prejudice Full Movie' />I pointed out that it was not true. He got aggressive and said he knows best because he is from the same area. Watch Gridiron Gang Online. I sent him a link to an article stating his family background he sent me a link to postcard news affirming his relations with the criminal. I said this is bullshit, but he still didnt back down. Few of the groups 2. Muslims, said Kumar. They just go quiet when something like this happens. As do women when male members of the group post jokes about the glass ceiling and participants from Dalit and tribal communities every time someone brings up merit. I usually stay quiet when a man posts a sexist joke, said Amrita Gupta who is a member of an alumni group from her business school. Earlier I used to call the men out. Once, when one of them posted a sexist joke, I said is that what you think of your wife The jokes might stop for a month or two, but always come back. I am a feminist and a vocal, outspoken one, but I have given up within the group. I dont have the time or the bandwidth. In India, its really difficult to change a mans mindset. As in real life, minority groups dont always stand for each other in a Whats. App group. At the time of the debate over whether security forces should use pellet guns on protesters in Kashmir, a woman posted on the alumni group that all Kashmiris should be killed, said Kumar. I asked her, are you calling for a genocideLast month, after years of checking facts on his many Whats. App groupsschool, college, familyAman Malik quit them all. People were pushing content without verifying facts or caring about the agenda behind them. I became notorious for posting links to articles by credible journalists. But after failing to convince fellow members on his B school alumni groupeconomically top 2 percent of the countrythat Urdu is an Indian as Hindi, he gave up. It was pointless and a waste of time. Everything was polarizedpeople are either for or against something. The idea is to create a community of peers. Structurally, Whats. App groups work on a sense of likeness, a unifying basis. They are made up of People Like Us. A Whats. App group is a cohort the idea is to find comfort in sameness. Thats why its natural to exclude or silence others, says Santosh Desai, social commentator and a reluctant member of an elite condo group. The process of consensus building is embedded in the way a group is created and conversations are conducted. Jokes gain currency through successive rounds of validation. No matter what the make of a group, a lot of their energy comes from attacking the liberal opinion. The moment a liberal point of view is posted on a group, you can sense the breathing becoming shallow. FAULT LINESThe politics of Indias Whats. App conversations isnt hard to guessits pro Hindus, pro BJP and pro Narendra Modi. Neither is the worldview reflected in the updates circulating through the network, whether on terrorist attacks in Europe or Donald Trumps proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim majority countries. However, no public opinion is above personal interest. So, Trump is only a hero on NRI family groups until he turns his attention to H 1. B visas and Modi a visionary on business groups until his decision threatens to affect profit margins. Member of a Whats. App group made up of factory owners operating in one industrial zone, Delhi based Amarjit Singh says conversation on his group has lately revolved around frustrations with the implementation of the Goods and Service Tax GST. Stung by the blow, even the most passionate of the prime ministers supporters on the group are reacting to GDP figures from UPA years with a thumbs up and Achche Din jokes with tears of joy. Politics isnt, however, the only thing that unites and divides members of a Whats. App group. Solidarities can as easily make or break over a subject like breastfeeding, as Amrita Gupta realized after forming a Whats. App group with fellow expecting mothers in her prenatal classes in south Mumbai. Certain mothers on mom groups get so judgmental. After our deliveries, when a mother mentioned she was feeding her child formula, another said, you are giving your child poison. Watch Independence Day Mediafire. Arguments also broke out over whether to keep your dogs away from your newborns. I mean dont expect me to take a stand on it. Her own disillusionment with the group began over class. Most of these women were filthy richbuilders wives, Bollywood wives. They had separate staffnanny, cook, driverfor every child. And then there were Burberry Moms women who dress their children in designer wear from head to toe.