WhatsApp and Ego

Portrait of a WhatsApp Admin

On Wednesday, Baan sent me notices of some exciting musical events he was curating over the weekend. I wouldn’t be able to come, I regretted.

“Put them out on your WhatsApp groups”, he requested.

“My WhatsApp groups are RWA Uncles warring over the coming elections”, I told him. Not to mention Aunties.

Our Society election campaign, largely fought on WhatsApp groups, has been vile beyond belief. Allegations, slander, personal comments, unfortunate skeletons pulled out of closets; some desiccated - the skeletons, I mean - some putrefying in courts of appeal, exuding the malodor of criminality.

I just don’t get it. These are elections for a housing society. The work is pro bono, and in the last nine or ten years that I have closely observed the functioning of the Managing Committee, I don’t get the sense that anyone is in it to make money from tenders or contracts. The sums involved are tiny compared to the average net worth of my neighbours.

I just don’t get how and why the stakes became so high.

The vileness seems to be driven solely by ego, by the conception of how your self-esteem is impacted by losing elections, by loose words exchanged at the club bar, or - even worse - over WhatsApp groups after the Uncles have had a drink or two.

As administrator (does anyone say administrator any longer, or is ‘admin’ the accepted term?), of a Society WhatsApp group, I received my share of flak.

“Delete that post, now!”

“This person should be removed from the group.”

“You allowed your group to vilify the dignity of a woman.”

“This is criminal defamation!!!”

Little matter that the said defamatory message pulled down a summary of court proceedings in which the said Uncle had been implicated; he followed up by sending all admins notice of a suit for defamation. Ooph!

One night, when the exchanges were particularly vitriolic and personal, I found myself composing the responses I should have sent, or would send, to the most egregious response, for hours after my normal bedtime. The next morning, after coffee and Wordle, I was back to drafting WhatsApp responses in my head, trying to reason with people, help place things in context.

It took a whole day for me to find the real context, my own context, that is.

That this was not my battle; that, irrespective of where my sympathies lay, I was not central to these elections. Battlelines had been drawn, people had taken their sides, and it was not my role, nor within my abilities, to influence the elections. What happened, I asked, if I removed myself from this frame, stepped back to be better able to observe the larger picture?

It worked like magic. I could see the principal actors much more clearly for what they were, rather than in relationship to myself. The storm clouds lifted over my head, and that afternoon, after the equity markets closed, I listened to my favourite Blues bands, rather than scrolling through my WhatsApp feeds. Later, I could ask myself the obverse, and obvious, question - Why did I insert myself into this storm?

I think this is a family of questions I need to ask myself more often:

Do I need to get emotionally involved in this now?

Is this a central concern for me?

How much can I influence this?

What happens if I vanish from this scene?

I am actually central to so little. If I reduce my ego to a little squidgeon of a dot, which is its appropriate size, the world will not be a worse place. Neither will I.

I will, in fact, be profoundly liberated.

And I can go back to listening to Spotify

Which is a much better use for a phone.