Crash of reason: When social media takes off without a runway

Raju Korti
After the tragic Air India Boeing Dreamliner tragedy, something even more jarring has unfolded -- not in the skies, but in the space of social media, where a digital avalanche of opinions, half-facts, visuals and visceral reactions has taken over every feed and scroll. It is as though civil aviation has suddenly become an obsessive-compulsive disorder, a mania that has gripped everyone from armchair analysts to influencers with absolutely no aviation background.

Everyone, it seems, is now an expert, a safety auditor, or worse, a crash investigator --speculating on everything from fuselage fatigue to weather anomalies, pilot training to the conspiratorial leanings of black boxes, never mind that official investigators haven’t even scratched the surface yet.

Representational pic of the ill-fated flight

Theories mushroom faster than facts -- some dissecting Air India’s allegedly lax management, others praising its compensation packages with such emotion that one wonders if the writers are public relations officers in disguise. There are viral clips of tailspins and near-misses, infographics about the “miracle seat” 11A, emotional montages of victims, pilots being turned into either heroes or scapegoats, and an endless barrage of “top 10 safest airlines” posts, as if one can algorithm their way to a crash-proof existence.

Boeing’s reputation has become a punching bag for some and a fragile trophy for others, depending on who’s pushing the post and how much ad revenue is at stake. Stories about emergency landings are being recycled with alarming frequency, creating the illusion that the sky is literally falling. The black box, CVR, and DFDR are being decoded in amateur YouTube videos as if the very sanctity of crash investigation protocols were optional. Condolences are mixed with conspiracy, sympathy overlaps with clickbait, and what should have been a time of solemn reflection has turned into an open-air market of monetised grief and algorithm-fed frenzy.

It is hard to tell now whether we are being driven by a social media algorithm or a more disturbing human one -- one that thrives on immediacy over empathy, virality over veracity. In the name of information, we have built a parallel airspace of noise, where everyone is flying blind.

Grief has turned into a social media circus.