After seeing the general Indian reaction of glee and wishes for his death upon news of Afridi being tested positive for coronavirus; I can’t help but say he was right. It is heartbreaking to see people openly saying such things on twitter and really beggars belief.
There really is no humanity.
Social media isn't everything. Nationality doesn't matter, I saw hundreds of messages on twitter and FB of Pakistanis celebrating Chennai floods a few years back or the more recent Vizag gas leak. Same happens when we have some terror attack either in Kashmir or the Naxal corridor. When some Hindu celeb dies you can see many Pakistanis flock to the instagram pages and mock Hindu cremation rituals, call them names, abuse Hindu deities, use religious slurs etc. But I am sure most Pakistanis aren't like that, I also see more positive messages than negative. I desist from sharing despicable comments here because it won't solve anything, moreover it isn't a true reflection of the average Pakistani.
Social media provides anonymity for people to take out their daily frsutration and get cheap thrills peddling hate. There is also the matter of it being available to a large uneducated, unemployed, angry, fearful population. Even if a new mom posts pics of her cute baby you will get a section of people trolling the baby, mocking it and the mom, spreading negativity, that is the nature of social media. Sometimes IT cells of political parties use tragedies to polarize the public and consolidate their votebank, I admit it is a serious problem in India and have called out BJP for this tactic so many times. However there has to be an acknowledgment that this isn't an India specific problem, it is a common problem, only the scale varies and that is due to several factors and we can't discount India's population, cheap internet and large share of new users.
For the time being best we can do is ignore such low lives, maybe pity them because for all we know maybe their activity is a call for attention due to depression or 100 other problems. Maybe in real life they are good folks, social media brings out the worst in humanity. Even if they are evil I am sure goodness triumphs their miniscule numbers. None of my family members are on social media, perfectly fine people who don't peddle hate. For every online troll there will be many such offline people who have better things to do in life.
Afridi isn't right, this thread topic is nonsense. Generalization is never good, be it for a country, religion, race or gender. What he exhibited there was plain and simple bigotry.