Last week, I conducted a small experiment just out of curiosity. I created a YouTube video titled “OSHO was a Complete Rascal.”
My intention behind creating such a video was to provide a “shock” factor to boost engagement and get more views. I’m aware of the fact that any followers I gain from this experiment are not my audience, and they aren’t going to stay for long. This was not for personal gains. Just curiosity.
It’s a well-known fact that social media encourages negative engagement and shock and clickbait titles. I had to see if this is true for small channels like mine. So I made the video.
And as expected, the video did receive a lot of views (relative to the channel’s audience size) within a couple of hours, along with a barrage of disparaging comments from OSHO’s followers, which was expected.
Some of the comments were downright nasty, condemning the entire lineage of Advaita (Non-Duality) masters, and I had to delete them for fear of getting my channel banned by YouTube for offensive language.
This experiment enlightened me in two ways:
1. The confirmation that social media like YouTube promotes shock and click-bait, and negativity bias.
2. I got an opportunity to observe my own state of mind while I was going through the hate comments, which was relatively peaceful.
Two days later, I posted a clarification video explaining what I truly meant by the word “rascal.”
And another lesson learned on YouTube is that you receive flak when you make a mistake (so perceived) and that you receive more flak when you try to rectify the mistake. LOL!
I never replied to any of the hateful comments because I empathize with people — I was one of them.
Now I see that everything is the expression of the same wholeness, and people are simply acting-reacting according to their conditioning. Hating the other is hating GOD.
Most people who write hateful comments don’t have skin in the game, so their opinion does not matter. They hide behind a pseudonym and vent to feel better about themselves.
People are not evil; people are unconscious. There’s a big difference. Unconsciousness is not evil. It is simply unconsciousness. Therefore, darkness is dispelled by light and not by darkness itself.
So any effort to convince others about how wrong they are is a diversion created by the ego-mind from its own unconsciousness.
Just as I expressed my opinion, even the others are allowed to do the same, subject to the condition that they do it respectfully.
Am I going to repeat such an experiment? HELL, NEVER!!
Someone asked me why I made such a video and exposed myself to such toxicity.
And my reply was, “I, too, am a rascal.” 😂🙏🏼
