The greatest emerging global threat today

(Note: This article deliberately refrains from mentioning individuals, political parties or social groups or specific events in any country or region and only aims to address the issue from a macro perspective.) 

What is the greatest threat to society today?Financial or political scams? Terrorism? Drug abuse? Organized crime? War-mongering? Corruption in politics or judiciary? Work place harassment and abuse of power?  Of no less concern, false complaints regarding these to settle unrelated scores or bring down opponents? All of these are terrible and at an existential level the Climate Change Crisis supersedes all these. 

But from a more down to earth standpoint and with the aid of a fresh lens, one may discover that the phenomenon that really is at the top of the ladder is the abuse of popularity.  This has crept upon society in plain sight in recent times. 

Definition and categories 

Abusers of popularity may be defined as those that wantonly misinterpret or misrepresent facts to misinform and mislead everyone. In other words, those who are themselves aware that what they are portraying is false or selective information to further their own agendas rather than social well being are abusers of popularity.  

They may be classified as: 

(a) Chronic or occasional abusers or 

(b) Whole or partial abusers. 

Abuse of popularity is not necessarily a full time occupation for many.  Many of them may only indulge in resorting to this once in a while.  

Those with a popular following that unknowingly propagate misinformation but without diligence belong to the category of partial abusers of popularity, but it must be noted that in many instances, they end up creating more damage than the wholesome ones. This often happens when mendacious statements initiated by an original popular figure is amplified by even more popular opinion makers or news outlets.  

Reasons for Impact 

This tribe, once smaller numerically have exploded along with the development of Social Media. Their impact is on a far wider section of the society than most other threats because of three main reasons all of which are related directly to the SM explosion, which has spawned a high number of thought-millionaires as well as a number of millionaire-thought sellers (though not all influencers abuse their  popularity).

1. The new normal:  Social media has created a new normal in society by overturning traditional pre-requisites for Opinion-making which include:

(a) Proven expertise or at least reasonable cognisance of the subject at hand.  

(b) Hard work and focus translated into achievements over years. Without this, those with minimal track records in the real world can become super-viral rages in the virtual world within minutes.  

(c)     Investment of substantial time and money to get noticed, which was only through word of mouth or through Press Conferences until recently. The only ingredients required today are a functional smart device and a free account in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc in own or assumed names.

2. No filters:  Their words are never scrutinized for factual accuracy or for honesty of intent by their followers, who program themselves to think and act exactly as extolled to by their idols. Many followers blind themselves to concepts such as fact and evidence and not a few consign their innate sense of fairness to the attic. 

3. Mass manipulation: Because of (i), abusers of popularity are enabled to incite collective social indiscretion and irrationality - against causes or individuals they target - as recent events across the world have shown us only too well. 

Clearly, SM has elevated Abuse of Popularity phenomenon to unconquered heights as a serious threat to both social stability and sanity.  Many suicide help centers and psychological institutions would vouch for the fact that they receive calls from a number of people traumatized by the toxicity of social media around them.  

Exceptions

All those that build, nurture, use or even capitalize upon or monetize their popularity cannot all be termed as abusers of popularity. For instance:

A. Those who have used their popularity to entertain, educate or elevate those around them and have impacted the world positively

(B) Narcissists who obsess over things of the greatest consequence only to themselves  

C. Any honest popular person whose views may be different to one’s own

D. Any honest dissenter guided by principles or ideologies

Profiling 

Profiling them is impossible since no one group or type of people has a monopoly in producing on abusers of popularity. They can be liberals, conservatives, religious, caste or language fanatics, politicians, activists, alarmists, media celebrities and celebrities within the media houses, gender war-promoters or a host of self-proclaimed educators of mankind.  They can be suave or strident, savvy or silly, young or old, articulate or simply abusive.  

Characteristics

One can find some commonalities between them as outlined below. 

1. Cause-butterflies: More often than not, these people surf over one cause today and another tomorrow and yet another the day after, unlike real heroes that dedicate lifetimes to one or two causes that they intensely believe in.  
2. Pseudo-intellectualism: They trade diligence for sensationalism to paint sweeping brushstrokes about anything or anyone to manipulate anyone influenceable to use them as tools to further their agendas or settle scores with opponents.
3. Unconscionable: They have scant regard for the negative consequences of their words. Most of their follow-up talks or writings show not only an absence of remorse but an increasing presence of celebration and glorification of even high-scale violence that destroys peace, properties and lives. 
4. Choices: They prey upon soft targets who cannot defend themselves - including those too old or those no longer alive - or upon too high profile ones who will not find it worthwhile to respond to everything said about them. 

Vicious cycle

The vicious cycle is all too obvious.  Popularity abuse breeds even more popularity among the similarly minded, which of course energizes the abusers to intensify their winning formula.  

To many popularity abusers, unpopularity is as heady as popularity in an era where one is not measured by content but only by optics - number of views, likes and comments to one's post.  Even the actual content of the comments are increasingly irrelevant when even inane emoticons can pad up stats!  

Abuse of power vs abuse of popularity 

There is a lot of discourse globally about abuse of power, which is deplorable, condemnable and unacceptable and needs to be rooted out, though the subject is far more nuanced than what one may imagine. That said, abuse of power will hurt those directly under the sphere of influence of the powerful individual but abuse of popularity can have even more far reaching consequences."

Consequences of abuse of popularity

• Inspiring collecitve-extremes: While mass hate and violence are not exactly new to homo sapiens, the time it takes to incite either to verbal or active expressions has reduced exponentially.  The trigger-happy toxicity in some sections of the Social Media is only a small indicator of this threat.  The era of "Better to agree to disagree rather than disagree to agree" seems like a zillion years ago. 
• Translation to action: The taunts of abusers of popularity is increasingly getting translated to action in the real world.  One can no longer dismiss this by saying, "Cyber talk is cipher. Nothing much will come out of it." 
• Remote judgmentalism: Though humans have a latent inclination to judge others remotely and with scant personal evidence, the increase and severity of this can directly be attributed to the trumpeting of agenda driven popular personalities. 
• Satellite abusers: Their words end up spawning a high numbers of abusers of micro-popularity who are more than ornamental parts of the echo chambers across platforms.
• Destruction: The price of living in such denial has already been steep which is all too evident in unresolvable election disputes in some countries, escalating mutual intolerance, distrust and hate, violence, destruction of lives and monuments (be it the US Capitol or places of religious worship). 
• Scarred sentiments: It is probably the single largest factor trampling over the sentiments of millions today.  
• Detentions and punishments: In situations where incitement results in high scale violence or deaths, hundreds of those incited are punished in various ways while the inciters are too privileged to face the music. 
• Young careers in jeopardy:  Perhaps the worst is that millions of young minds that are indoctrinated at impressionable ages by such people end up darkening their own careers, chasing alluring shadows.  Even the most intellectual among these actually imagine themselves to be major players in a variety of glorious social justice or reform causes while actually doing little of value in either direction than merely doing social media posts or 'educating' others in self-engineered seminars.

A few more consequences need greater elucidation.

Freedom of speech vs freedom of thought 

It is most ironic that many of those who are most strident about freedom of speech are actually the biggest infringers upon freedom of thought.  Their biggest power lies in their ability to make millions of people feel apologetic or even guilty for 'not thinking' in a particular way till they were enlightened by their messiahs!  

Thus, abusers of popularity create alternate worlds and persuade their followers to populate it. They then rule over this virtual world as effectively as any powerful benevolent dictator in history and actively dismiss everything contrary to their agendas - from global warming to well documented events as fake!  

Re-shaping vs Re-writing history

Achievers with (or even without) popularity re-shape history in evolutionary or revolutionary ways.   But abusers of popularity endeavour to re-write history by focusing on selective, partial or slanted truths or mis-portraying or outright denying events that have been documented only too well by independent sources or watched by numerous people.  

Many abusers of popularity have resorted to vilifying significant contributors through sensationalism and judgmentalism, eliminating balance and nuance altogether that are essential for critical analysis in any healthy society. 

Macro ramifications

It would take a lot of research to tabulate the number of crimes committed in the actual world because of incitements but all the studies put together can never assess the emotional and psychological damages caused to millions of people because of this fast rising breed in today's complex society. 

It would likewise take a number of studies over the next few years to even approximately determine the exact number of hours that has been collectively wasted by sapiens in pursuing false or frivolous causes espoused by the abusers of popularity.  Other studies would be needed to calculate its economic impact at the micro and macro levels.  

Wrong counter

A lot of sensible people that see through the agendas of the abusers of popularity take the effort to counter it either in the Comments Section or in their own posts or articles elsewhere.  Even the mainstream print, electronic or online media is full of serious counters even frivolous posts of the abusers of popularity.  What is not being realized by these people is that every effort of theirs is only working in favour of the very persons they are trying to counter. 

Issues with Cancel Culture 

Recently, some Social Media companies deleted the accounts of a few major personalities to counter the impact they had on influencing even literate intellectuals. Though it was welcomed in some quarters, questions were also raised as to the ethics of it, who were in blatant discomfort over the enormous power such companies now hold that it dwarfs that of leaders of powerful nations in the world.  The next tug of war could be between such companies and rulers of nations - just as it was between religious and political leaders in earlier centuries - but that is a different story for another time. 

Blurred lines

It will take years - even decades in many countries - for laws to evolve which can tackle this growing menace.  This is because one of the most respected rights in evolved societies, the Freedom of Speech is involved. But the interpretation of what constitutes Freedom of Speech and what constitutes incitement to destruction gets (conveniently) blurred, based on the players involved.  Likewise the definition of the right to dissent is getting to be so elastic that it could very well be mistaken for the right to desecrate or right to destroy.  

Social solutions 

In this scenario, the best counter to abusers of popularity would be organically from society itself.  Since the abusers thrive on any publicity - positive or negative - the only way to clip their wings is by ignoring every single thing they say - not countering it.  A few options are: 

1. To Unfriend and Unfollow anyone that directly or otherwise (i) prescribe how you should think or act 
   (ii) ask you to believe themselves or anyone they recommend blindly at the cost of your natural intelligence, sense of fair play and balance 
   If a large section of people start doing this, chronic abusers of popularity will end up predominantly talking only to themselves on their own walls. 
2. The younger generations need to be cautioned - at least up to a stage - to be diligent in understanding the cause they wish to support from multiple angles.  They must be encouraged to choose the most serious issues to champion, from among the multiple causes that invite their involvement in one way or the other. 
3. Educative sessions must be held everywhere to prevent influentiable minds from becoming pawns of someone else's personal ambitions or frivolous agendas. 

These are easier said than done given that every individual is organically bound to react differently even when taught to react in a particular way by the ones they ardently follow. But even if 50% of the followers re-examine the situation with new lenses, it would be a great, organic and relatively painless way to negate this blooming threat of abuse of popularity.