From Tragedy to Trend: Meme Culture, Content Creation, and the Legal Vacuum in India
Modern digital technologies enable the progressive disappearance of boundaries between entertaining people and exploiting their lives. Human experience has become abnormal thanks to two factors: the widespread development of memes and the pervasive practice of converting daily occurrences into social media content. A worrying practice has emerged that turns the 2025 Meerut murder case involving the brutal murder of a merchant navy officer into a viral meme after his remains were discovered in a blue drum. The article examines the trauma-commercialization activities of meme culture as it affects public awareness and ethical, legal aspects. A socio-legal investigation reveals that Indian laws fail to properly govern digital content so that digital public participants can protect their dignity.
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