'The Asocial Networking' by Dhiraj Kumar: presence in a performing world

When Dhiraj Kumar wrote "The Asocial Networking," he tapped into a tension that millions of Indians quietly recognize: the growing chasm between the curated self we project online and the person we actually are in our living rooms, at the dinner table, in the silence between conversations.

Kumar's central argument is not that social media is inherently destructive — it's subtler than that. His concern is what happens to authentic human connection when every relationship becomes a performance. We don't call anymore; we post. We don't confide; we update our status. We don't grieve privately; we seek condolences in comment threads.

For the Indian middle class in particular, this transformation has been rapid and disorienting. A generation that grew up with extended family dinners and neighborhood friendships forged through boredom and proximity has watched its children form their closest bonds with people they've never met in person, validated by metrics — likes, shares, follower counts — that would have seemed alien a decade ago.

Kumar points to a specific psychological cost: the anxiety of the unchecked phone. The compulsive refresh. The hollow feeling when a post you cared about goes unnoticed. These aren't trivial quirks. They are, he argues, symptoms of a deeper reconfiguration of how we derive self-worth — one that corporations have deliberately engineered because your insecurity is their business model.

He is careful not to romanticize the pre-digital past. Loneliness existed before Facebook. Small towns could be isolating and conformist. The asocial nature he identifies isn't something social media created from nothing; it amplified tendencies that were already latent in how humans negotiate belonging and status.

What makes the book valuable is its refusal of easy prescriptions. Kumar doesn't end with a detox plan or a list of tips for "authentic connection." He's more interested in asking why we keep reaching for the phone even when we know it doesn't make us feel better — and what that compulsion tells us about needs that are genuinely unmet in modern life.

The question he leaves readers with is an uncomfortable one: in a world designed to keep us performing for each other, what does it actually mean to be present?