‘Anti-national Nominations’ Go Viral On Facebook

The Lok Sabha has seen an impassioned debate on anti-nationalism and sedition, but that hasn’t stopped some from having fun while taking a political position. Some Facebook users have begun participating in an anti-national nomination game, which works like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral back in July 2014.

Here is how it goes: upon being declared “anti-national”, you put up a status announcing the same, and nominating five other friends who you believe are fellow “anti-nationals”. These five, in turn, must respond within a day and nominate another set of five “anti-nationals” each, and so on. Failure to respond, according to the rules of the game, is punishable –the “anti-nationals will come to you and sing revolutionary songs of freedom and throw roses” at the defaulter, say the status messages going around.

A similar tagging chain, listing 10 favourite books had become popular in September 2014 Facebook had analysed these statuses and later officially released anonymised figures on the top most mentioned books.