The most creative place for listening to political discussions is my regular teashop at Parvathipuram in Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu’s deep south, where people from all sides of the political divide chat over tea and banana fritters. It is generally seen that people who do physical work do not take politics too seriously. They have political opinions, but they do not experience intense emotions about them. This is because they are not depressed or bored or inactive. But retired persons from the middle classes—whom Gen Z popularly refers to as “uncles”—they can be really malicious; for them politics is a channel through which to express the frustration and unhappiness that comes from their lonely and meaningless everyday lives.

At the end of the day of counting, one retired person, who used to be a panchayat officer, shouted, “They won by using social media! They used cinema power and social media to cheat people!” He pointed his finger towards the sky and said, “DMK will fight! We will fight against them!”

The DMK’s defeat is attributed to two elements of pop culture: cinema and social media. But the DMK itself has a powerful and highly organised social media unit. And everyone knows the DMK itself used cinema in a formidable way as its propaganda medium and that it drove the Congress out of power using this weapon. The DMK has an official social media unit, office bearers, and paid promoters. Populus Empowerment Network (PEN) is a strong institution created by the DMK to exploit the power of social media, and its presence has been significant across all platforms over the past five years.

Where then did the DMK fail in the social media battle? And where did the TVK win? The answer is simple, but nobody, neither intellectual nor party worker, seems able to communicate this truth easily to the DMK regime.

The DMK entrusted its social media activities to old-world propaganda personalities. These individuals are journalists with backgrounds in print and TV media or are veteran bloggers. The party used political writers who can only produce long arguments with a lot of data and details. But this failed to impress the younger generation, which is immersed in a different reality.

These old-fashioned media warriors of the DMK focussed on television discussions and Facebook posts. And everybody, except these DMK warriors, knew that the younger generation never listens to TV discussions or sees Facebook posts. Their world is Instagram, which is quick and visual-based.

Another mistake made by the older members of the DMK media cell was to focus on the ideological conflict, pointing to the Dravidian model and its fight against the entry of Hindutva, which became a significant political issue in Tamil Nadu. The keywords of this campaign were “Dravidian model” and “Dravidian stock”, which was used by all their followers, who declared “I am of Dravidian stock” on their social media handles. Anyone who criticised the DMK on any ground, even on legitimate issues, was immediately branded a “Sanghi” and attacked vigorously.

The attitude of these DMK campaigners created an extremely toxic atmosphere on social media, which was almost as bad as the religious madness of the BJP in north India. The methods used included character assassination, abuse, and trolling. For example, I have written many times about the contribution of the DMK government in the field of education, but when I wrote an article about the growing trend of violence in schools in rural Tamil Nadu and the alleged use of drugs, I was abused and trolled by DMK’s social media handles continuously for more than a month. A few months later, when one student stabbed another in a school, the party’s Education Minister echoed my own words, but DMK handles only abused me more. Ironically, however, they used my words of praise in their election campaign!

According to this brand of DMK propaganda, M. Karunanidhi, a follower of E.V. Ramasamy or Periyar, is the foundation for the entire modern State of Tamil Nadu. Anybody who asks about the contributions of statesmen like K. Kamaraj, C. Subramanyam, or R. Venkataraman or the role of bureaucrats like N.T. Sundaravadivelu are labelled, predictably, as “Sanghi”. In the past five years, almost everyone, journalists and writers, have been labelled “Sanghi”. Samas, a journalist, who created the myth of Karunanidhi in his book A Sun from the East, was also labelled a Sanghi traitor because he pointed out after a survey that Vijay and his party had popularity in Tamil Nadu.

The DMK social media army also coined words to abuse and troll personalities. For example, they used the word anil (squirrel) for Vijay, tharkuri (uncultured fools) for TVK followers, and referred to Edappadi Palanisami as “Pallu” Palanisami (Tooth Palanisami). Yes, they had an abusive name for me too!

Paradoxically, the DMK itself succumbed to social media propaganda. That is why the party is unable to comprehend the wave of change that defeated it. The truth, however, is that the party’s aggressiveness is its main problem and the real cause of its downfall. Speaking to people on the street, one sees that this aggressiveness created a revulsion that worked against the party.

One must understand that the younger generation is, in a way, “ideology-free”. Young people consider political ideologies as pretentious talk, just tools used to grab power. They identify with how power operates and dominates from within the technocratic and corporate worlds in which they live. These worlds in which the new gen lives is made up of consumerism, trade, and modern financial power. These youngsters are not susceptible to ideological narratives. In fact, I believe that the phenomenon of ideologically motivated masses is slowly disappearing worldwide.

Another aspect was the negativity of the DMK propaganda, which contained anger, abuse, and scorn. The younger generation cannot tolerate anger, hatred or negativity in their everyday lives; they want to deal only with positive emotions. Journalists and editors are often asked to cover only “positive” stories. This generation wants even art to only radiate positivity. They want political campaigns full of fun and joy, and even political dialogues need to be playful. When Vijay in his speeches said, “Stalin uncle…” the people laughed. Vijay did not need to deploy ideology.

The DMK urgently needs to include youngsters in its campaign team; it must get rid of the old bloggers and tired TV faces from its bandwagon. It should stop encouraging pseudo writers to settle their personal vendettas under the cover of party propaganda. The party needs to develop an entirely new way of campaigning that gets rid of the toxic negativity that was being radiated this time. In other words, the DMK needs to recast its social media strategy altogether if it wishes to appeal to younger generations.

B. Jeyamohan is a Tamil and Malayalam language writer and literary critic from Nagercoil.

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