by Irshad Ahmad Mughal and Dr. Qurat-Ul-Ain Rana
Every day, we encounter countless short videos on social media showcasing reckless behavior in pursuit of viral fame—often with deadly consequences. Recently, I watched three chilling clips: a man filming himself on a cliff who slipped and drowned; a youth attempting a heroic pose on train tracks who misjudged the distance and was killed despite warning horns; and a TikToker murdered by an obsessed follower. These tragedies reveal the dark side of our social media obsession, where validation is measured in clicks, views, and comments at any cost.
Platforms trap content creators in an endless cycle—post constantly or vanish into obscurity. The algorithm acts like a cruel taskmaster, rewarding relentless output with visibility and punishing pauses with invisibility. It’s a modern-day slavery where creators carry the yoke of perpetual production, lashed by the whip of declining engagement the moment they rest.
There was once a man consumed by a single burning desire—to become rich. He approached a wise saint, begging for a secret to wealth. The saint, seeing the danger in such obsession, warned him: “Contentment is true riches.” But the man persisted, pleading day after day until the saint finally relented—with a terrible gift.
He gave the man a genie bound by one cruel rule: “This genie must obey every command, but if you ever cease giving orders, it will devour you alive.” The man, blind with excitement, saw only possibility. “How simple!” he thought. “I’ll never run out of wishes!”
At first, it was paradise. Under a garden tree, he ordered palaces of gold, feasts of ambrosia, chests of jewels. Yet with each fulfilled wish, the genie demanded another—faster, hungrier. The man’s arms grew heavy from pointing; his throat raw from commanding. When at last he gasped “Stop!” the genie bared its teeth. “No stopping,” it growled, lunging.
The man fled, sprinting past his crumbling treasures back to the saint—now trembling, the genie at his heels. The saint sighed: “Did I not warn you?” With a snap, he trapped the genie in an endless task—straightening a sleeping dog’s curled tail. Each time the genie succeeded, the tail curled again. “Now go,” the saint told the man, “before it escapes this distraction.”
The Modern Genie of Social Media
Like that cursed genie, viral fame promises everything yet demands constant feeding. Content creators—chasing views, sponsorships, and validation—find themselves in the same desperate cycle: create or be consumed by irrelevance. The algorithm never rests; it only hungers for more. Palaces of followers can vanish overnight. The dog’s tail never stays straight.
True freedom comes not from serving the insatiable genie of social media, but in recognizing when to walk away—before it demands one upload too many.
Social media operates much like that genie. It dangles the illusion of success but demands your constant labor. Stop feeding it content, and it consumes your relevance. True freedom lies not in chasing its ever-moving finish line, but in recognizing when to step away. After all, no viral moment is worth becoming prey to the very platform that promised to set you free.
About the authors:
Irshad Ahmad Mughal
Dr. Qurat-Ul-Ain Rana
Irshad Ahmad Mughal and Dr. Qurat-ul-Ain Rana form a formidable intellectual partnership in contemporary Pakistani scholarship. Prof. Mughal, renowned for his Urdu translations of Paulo Freire’s revolutionary works and decades of teaching political philosophy at Punjab University, joins forces with Dr. Rana, an accomplished sociologist and social commentator whose razor-sharp analyses regularly grace Pakistan’s premier journals. Together, their collaborative writings for Pressenza weave rigorous academic insight with urgent social critique—bridging Western critical theory with South Asian realities to illuminate pathways for transformative change.”
