Guess what? Two weeks after the Cholesterol joke and cartoon, there will still be guys who have got it the first time. Somewhat similar to boys and girls who figure out how to masturbate, the guys who got it ‘the first time’ are excited and want to share with their friends not knowing that the guys are up to their necks with Chole and Sterol having the wrong spellings for Bhature.
What exactly is a Forward? Anything and everything that you or someone shares from the net, which is not your own writing, is a Forward. Such Forwards include nearly 100 percent of all Good Morning messages, jokes, cartoons, poems, songs, and even opinions such as political.
Knowing the kind of damage that these are doing to our society (dumbing down as never before) I wrote two essays:
One was called ‘Are ‘Forwards’ Backward?‘ and the other was ‘Confessions Of A New Age Intellectual‘.
We know about the dumbing down. We know about the enormous damage. But, as brought out in the essays, we find it very convenient to push the Forwards further. Indeed, some even take credit for having found them in the first place and hence being worthy of comment and appreciation. There is a sizable number of people who justify pushing Forwards through one argument or the other; eg, “These are harmless and easy way to start the day rather than having to go through other people’s Gyan (translated it means Knowledge but what we intend is Bullshit) early in the mornings.”
Forwards are also meant for people who are in a hurry (Fast Food types) and who just don’t have time for reading anything original. These are more than ninety percent of all people. WhatsApp, for them, is a quick way to socially connect and they don’t want to waste their time on reflection before commenting.
So then, we can conclude that the popularity and lure of Forwards are unlikely to die down. If hundreds of years after the advent of religion, people haven’t reflected upon whether it is still meaningful and sensible, they are unlikely to be swayed by arguments against WhatsApp Forwards. And currently, these Forwards are more attractive than Sermons on the Mount.
Therefore, we can at least have some rules about Forwards and that’s why this essay. Here are they:
1. Verify the Facts before Pushing Forwards. Even though you are hard-pressed for time (it is another thing that you are almost perpetually on WhatsApp) you would find that verifying facts is always a revelation. For example, I came across a post about a popular song of the lyricist Shailendra that was claimed to have been used in 
a movie much earlier than it was known to us. On the second round of it being pushed, I merely rang up Dinesh, Shailendra’s son, and came to know that this post was a hoax. Take the recent case of Prime Minister Modi collecting garbage from a beach in Mamallapuram whereat he was to have an informal summit with the Chinese President Xi Jinping. People were impressed with the sincerity of the gentleman towards Swachh Bharat until three days later there were the following pictures pushed by the other party:
These pics were accompanied by a message that the PM was grandstanding for the mediawhereas the beach was already combed for garbage much earlier. Now the entire lot was swayed in the opposite direction until it was revealed by India Today that Karti Chidambaram had cleverly used the unrelated pictures above to show Modi down(Please read: ‘Fact Check: Karti Chidambaram posts unrelated image from Scotland with plogging pics of PM Modi‘). But, Karti Chidambaram must have convinced people – at least those who are die-hard fans of the Congress – that Modi is a fraud. There is, therefore, always a need to check the veracity of the facts enumerated in the Forwards. It doesn’t take too much time.
2. Caption the Videos being Forwarded. Nothing takes as much space in cellphone memory and as much of pe
ople’s time as plodding through videos only to find that either these weren’t worth seeing or, worse, you had already seen and downloaded these earlier. When you press down on the video and use the right arrow to Forward it, you have to now select up to five individuals or groups to forward it to. After you have selected these and press the Send arrow, it would go without any caption from you. However, if you Forward it from your Gallery, after selecting the people that you want it to be sent to and before you press the Send arrow, you have a choice to ‘Add a caption…’. At this juncture, you have the public duty to tell your recipients as to what this video is all about. About an year ago, I stopped looking at all videos without captions and I never forward videos without an introduction from me. Hence, if I am one of the recipients, it is even more important that you caption it. If you write an introduction about the video just before sending the video, that would suffice too.
3. Always Date Tag the Forwards and Check If A Forward is Still Current. Many posts are date and time dependent. These are not current for all times to come simply because you can push these at a date and time of your convenience. As an example, two days ago (12th Oct 2019), someone shared a post with the title: ‘Today is Mirza Ghalib’s 220th birthday. Lovely lines from Mirza Ghalib…’. This anniversary was on 27 Dec 2017 and naturally this post was considered current for nearly two years after the anniversary.
4. Reflect Before You Opine. You feel that there is an urgency to comment on a Forward lest you should miss the opportunity later. Your excuse is: “After all, I get thousands of posts everyday and I can’t be expected to reflect on issues.” This is exactly the mindset that makes the society dumbed down. Don’t post off-the-cuff remarks and something you only feel strongly about without knowing facts. Satisfy that you are adding value to the post and not just letting people know how astute you are. As an example, if someone has forwarded a post about some new facts that have surfaced about Einstein’s Relativity of Time Theory, your this comment is adding no value to it: “Ah, I just love Einstein. He was great. There was a time when I couldn’t sleep without reading a chapter of Relativity of Time. I would still read it if I could get a little more time. But, you know how times change.”
5. Don’t Comment on the Thumbnail Only but Read the Article and Comment. When we were in Staff College, we were required to write Book Reviews of nominated books and then present these in the Syndicate. One of the officers – call him Cdr A – presented a book review and it sounded great. Well, until, during questioning, the Syndicate DS brought out that he had merely copied the back cover of the book and hadn’t read the book at all. What was true for Cdr A is true for a large percentage of readers on Social Media. They comment on the thumbnail of the article without reading it at all.
6. Write Something of Your Own at Least Once in a While. Yes, with the Forwards you are winning a lot of popularity, eg, “Your Good Morning messages are really very beautiful.” However, do think if you ever wrote something of your own. Let me give you an example. There was a time when in the Navy we used to present in-house talent during the Navy Week Balls or for that matter even during stage-plays and cultural programmes. Nowadays, a lot of sponsored money is spent on hiring artistes from here and there including from the Hindi films industry (I don’t like the bastardized word: Bollywood). A lot of other people and I still long to have the sense of belonging by presenting or seeing in-house shows. Your Forwards have as little sense of belonging as those sponsored programmes.
That’s it from me, then. I am sure if we follow these simple rules, something can still be salvaged from Forwards.
