Late on the night of July 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared on Instagram in an unusual selfie-video. His post went viral soon after – but for all the wrong reasons.
The video was aimed at addressing the growing anger among protesting young Indians, led by the fledgling Cockroach Janata Party movement, demanding the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over examination glitches and paper leaks.
Modi’s video was an attempt to reach out to students and young Indians on Instagram, a platform they have used to organise the protests. However, the video exemplified a complete algorithmic and cultural disconnect with how Gen Z communicates.
The prime minister’s upload violated almost every aesthetic rule of short-form content: it lacked an engaging visual hook, featured unusually slow speech and used an awkwardly-framed front-camera angle. Why are
The reel shattered viewing records, crossing over 300 million views in 24 hours. But the viral explosion was driven by Instagram’s unique sharing dynamics: millions of young users flooded private group chats with the clip, passing it along via direct messages to mock Modi’s stiff delivery, to overlay ironic audio tracks and slice the video into endless reaction memes.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party celebrated the raw view count as a monumental digital triumph, failing…

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