by Durga Velayudham
A moment after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s recent address to the nation on the calamity facing the country due to Cyclone Ditwah, a grotesque spectacle unfolded online—one that once again exposes the darker underbelly of contemporary social media culture. A former journalist, presumably now a refugee living in the UK and seemingly intoxicated by the narcotic rush of unmoderated posting, unleashed a torrent of obscenities against the President, as though digital platforms were a licence for barbarism. What was once a professional calling rooted in the ethics of truth and public service has, for some, decayed into an addiction to provocation, filth, and self-projection. And while criticism of a president is not merely legitimate but essential in a democracy, the collapse of criticism into raw abuse marks a profound erosion of civic culture.
This, however, is not an isolated eruption. It belongs to a pattern—a recurring drama in which a small but noisy group of Sri Lankan men, now living comfortably in Western capitals, presumes to dictate to the Sri Lankan public and government as though citizenship were reducible to broadband and indignation. They throw stones from afar, claiming moral authority while refusing any responsibility for the consequences of their words. But democratic discourse cannot be outsourced to those who have severed themselves from social belonging yet demand the power to influence it. And when their interventions descend into the language of gutter theatres, we must ask: what compels them to imagine that such behaviour is a substitute for political thought?
The answer lies partly in the architecture of social media itself. These platforms operate through algorithms designed not to elevate truth, dignity, or civic reason, but to amplify whatever is most emotionally charged, most polarising, most dehumanising. Outrage is profitable. Contempt is viral. Decency is invisible. In such a marketplace, those who engage in abusive theatrics imagine themselves powerful not because they possess ideas, but because the platform rewards their emotional extremism. And in that delusion, they mistake shock value for significance.
The tragic irony is that the symbolic respect owed to the office of a president—a respect founded not on personality but on the sovereignty of the people—has been surrendered to the gravitational pull of this digital economy of degradation. A president, any president, stands as the representative of a nation’s collective will. Critique his policies with rigour; interrogate his decisions with force; challenge his ideological commitments with courage. But to reduce him to a target of vulgarity is to cheapen not merely the office but the civic fabric that underpins democracy itself. The line between person and position is not an antiquated ritual; it is a symbolic boundary that protects institutions from collapse into personalised chaos.
Where such boundaries erode, society drifts towards corruption—not only institutional corruption, but moral and psychological corruption. When obscenity becomes the currency of discourse, it invites imitation. When imitation becomes habit, it becomes culture. And culture, once degraded, becomes exceedingly difficult to repair. If citizens, in their thousands, normalise following these online provocateurs, granting them the oxygen of attention, the algorithms obey; the platforms amplify; and the public sphere becomes saturated with noise instead of thought.
This is why the collective responsibility lies not with governments alone, but with each citizen who chooses whom to follow, whose content to endorse, whose worldview to legitimise. To unfollow is not merely a digital gesture; it is an ethical act. It is a refusal to participate in the degradation of the common space. It is a reassertion of dignity, a reclamation of agency from the machinery of manipulation.
Many of these digital aggressors appear less like commentators and more like subjects projecting inner turmoil onto public figures, using the national stage as a canvas for their unresolved psychological defects. The compulsion to insult rather than argue, to demean rather than analyse, hints at psychological dislocation rather than political conviction. It is not our role to diagnose individuals, but the pattern is visible: when anger becomes an identity, when hostility becomes a hobby, when obsession becomes a public performance, society must recognise that something deeper is at play. And in such instances, the response should be compassionate but firm. Those who show signs of distress, addiction, or escalating aggression should be encouraged—ideally by the communities around them and, where necessary, by responsible institutions—to seek appropriate mental-health support before online hostility migrates into real-world harm.
But the primary responsibility rests with the audience. The digital mob thrives only when it is fed. When ignored, it withers. When unfollowed, it becomes irrelevant. When refused the spotlight, it cannot perform. In the case of the recent attack on President Dissanayake, the real danger is not the obscenities themselves, but the silence of those who know better yet refuse to act. Political organisations, intellectuals, activists, and citizens who remain mute in the face of such behaviour surrender the moral ground to the very forces that corrode civic life. Silence is not neutrality; silence is complicity.
A mature political culture must therefore develop the courage to reject vulgarity regardless of who it comes from, regardless of whether the abuser stands on one’s ideological “side.” For the moment we excuse barbarism because it is directed at someone we oppose, we legitimise the weapon that will eventually be used against all of us. In that sense, defending dignity is not defending a person—it is defending the republic itself.
Those who now reside abroad and wield their social-media platforms like megaphones of contempt would do well to reflect on the privilege afforded to them by the societies that host them. Western democracies insist on one thing above all: responsibility accompanies speech. Hate speech, incitement, harassment—these are not tolerated. And if certain individuals now display patterns of behaviour that border on instability or aggression, then appropriate authorities, including diplomatic missions, should intervene through legal and administrative channels available in those countries. Such interventions are not acts of censorship; they are acts of safeguarding both the individual and the public.
The wider lesson is simple yet profound: social media, when misused, becomes a breeding ground for psychological projection, ethical decay, and communal harm. And like all tools, it is neutral until wielded by human hands. The question, then, is not what social media is doing to us, but what we allow it to do through our choices.
We must reclaim our collective agency. We must cultivate the discipline to unfollow, to refuse, to reject the digital ludicrousness. We must elevate discourse by rewarding thoughtfulness rather than tantrums, analysis rather than abuse, courage rather than cruelty. If we fail, we will find ourselves in a society where public reason collapses, where institutions lose their symbolic value, where the loudest prevail over the wisest, and where democracy becomes indistinguishable from anarchy.
In this moment, the choice is ours. We can continue lying down with dogs and rising with fleas, or we can rise with dignity, clarity, and a commitment to defend the public sphere from those who revel in its degradation. The future of civic life depends not on the few who shout, but on the many who choose what to hear. Keep away from those embodiments of banality and evil before their filth haunts you irreversibly.
