Quora: What is it Good For?
I doubt substantially that either my presence or absence contributes or mitigates respectively the putative hallowedness of Quora. I would not be missed, and I am unlikely to be a celebrity. Thankfully. Having thus accepted and established my insignificance lest a reader assume I was inflated in my understanding of others’ perception of me, I can now deal with the topic at hand.
I am likely to stay active, or at least semi-active on Quora. But I would not necessarily exult in that decision. The former augustness of that platform has evidently been overwhelmed by politicization. Its users seem to have greatly lost the ability of decent conversation. They feel jubilant when someone reposing faith in a different view is banned. Politics is the new religion. In this religion, every dissentient is an apostate, and a potential inducer of cognitive dissonance.
Big Tech appears increasingly to favour one set of perspectives over another. The fact that the owner of the Space MITHILA RightLibertarians Kishan Dev was banned hammered that point home. Kishan has been very punctilious with regard to the curation of such content as graces the walls of MITHILA and the feeds of Quora by extension. His help in the cultivation of a Space that prides itself in diversity of religion, language, ethnicity, nationality, age and thought; has been invaluable. He has, in the earnest view of many like me, essayed a vital role in contributing to a positive experience for users new and old alike; and has thus earned a position of respect for many.
Perplexingly, while equanimous writers for whom civility is non-negotiable get banned, populist writers from both ends of the political spectrum who are unrestrained in their wordage are seldom if ever banned.
Some of the puerility on the “Indian People Quora” (IPQ) subreddit dedicated to making fun of romantic IITians and their cringeworthy answers (not my cliché), would have us believe that Quora is biased towards the “right” in view of its enormous influence and the number of followers that those who subscribe to the “right” amass. What they overlook, whether innocuously or deliberately, is that most of these “rightists” are plainly obsequious towards the ruling party, have little to nothing of substance to write in their answers save for “destruction level astronomical number” tweets, or “a befitting reply to that abusive pseudo-secular Hinduphobe!” tweets. The justification of every move of the Modi government seems to be their only interest — justifications which are often premised on sentiment and are thus not competent — which in turn provides the “left” with ammunition to depict how monumentally vacuous the “right” is.
Both serve to fuel one another, and while this is often necessary for the purposes of constructive debate, the manner in which it manifests is not always commendable. Both seem to wallow in seeing their minions engaged in fights online. While I remain an unequivocal proponent of India’s rightist resurgence, I am increasingly disillusioned with the manner in which the puerile ones among the “right” have gained such influence. I used to explain it away stating that this resurgence is in its nascence; that it would be a matter of time before reason prevails, but I seem increasingly to lose patience with this.
Contributors on MITHILA prefer to stay away from this dichotomy. They do not subscribe to groupthink. They are free thinkers. Freethought is the nemesis of groupthink. I wonder whether this is some kind of a panacea against Big Tech; wherefore, these platforms are out to silence voices of reason.
I for one was on the verge of abjuring the use of Quora. But then, I discovered the emollient MITHILA, and stayed.
Perhaps this is an auxesis, and my apocalypticism is unfounded. But I think this perception is only set to gather more momentum.
