Uncles and aunties today have not just made it to Instagram; they’re the primetime performers on our feeds.
This is how it was in my day: The adults had crossed over from WhatsApp to Facebook, but they were safely quarantined there. ‘Good morning’ posts were being circulated, and fake news was being spammed with great abandon.
One by one, the kids began to trickle out of the blue app for the pinker pastures of Instagram. Two swords, one social media platform, you get the gist. Our worlds were separate once again, and that, it seemed, was that.
Gone are those days. And this time, it looks like Gen Z might even learn to share the platform with ‘uncs’.
The most popular genre in uncle-aunty content is kitty party videos. They’re a recurring viral presence in the spiral of our social media feed. From Dhurandhar to ‘summer vibes’, every topical moment has a ripple effect in the kittyverse. While the Akshaye Khanna dance trend died down soon enough, there’s no stopping the desi Bridgerton theme.
Influencer Riya Jhalani recently posted a reel of her group’s kitty party, where the women seemed to have rented a palatial building. The flowy sarees and net fascinators were straight out of the Noida kitty playbook, which has featured in the writings of yours truly before.
Some commenters are a frequent presence. A queer fashion professional keeps commenting, “Can I join too?” An uncle’s comment, which appears under the ‘hidden’ section, proclaims him to be a 41-year-old divorced Punjabi Baniya looking for a “serious lifelong friendship”. The message seems to have been copy-pasted under more than one kitty party reel.
The commenters often have favourites. “Pink suit auntie is a baddie,” proclaims many a girlie. “Blue suit wali ko fir invite mat karna. Nagin (Don’t invite the blue suit woman again. Snake.),” warns a humble well-wisher.
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A cure for loneliness?
There are easy answers to why Gen Z loves kitty reels so much. The loneliness epidemic is on its nth wave. Everyone I know is going through a friendship crisis in some way.
“Aunty got a bigger circle than mine” is a familiar comment.
For a generation that rejected smothering family ties and other ways of relation-making, friendships were supposed to hold us through the misery of modernity. Clearly, it’s a harder path than we were prepared for. The joyful kitties are a familiar alien. We watch with part envy, part fascination, part cringe — but we watch, all the same.
The younger generation’s lone wolf way of being gets reflected in our social media experience. To be cringe is not to be free, actually. Social media is a panopticon of judgement, and one wrong caption can cost you many thousands in aura points.
Are kitty parties the answer? Delhi-based creator Sabhyata wants to launch “Creative Kitty” for those suffering from the loneliness pandemic. “YES!” said over 30 vociferous commenters.
In a recent reel, Mallika Dua sought justice for kitties.
“Women my age, hum toh bed pe baith ke doomscrolling kar rahe hain aur f***boys ko gaali de rhe hain. Usse achha mera mixer-grinder hi nikal aaye?” she said.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)