My Debut Non fiction book is now out!

The Great Indian Brain Rot: Love, Lies and Algorithms in Digital India

After two years of writing, deleting, and arguing with myself, my first book is finally out.

It’s called The Great Indian Brain Rot: Love, Lies and Algorithms in Digital India (Bloomsbury).

In each generation, cultural critics emerge to decipher the strange dance between technology and culture. Marshall McLuhan once gave us Understanding Media. Jean Baudrillard gave us Simulacra and Simulation to explain the complexities of reality, symbols, and society.

The idea of decoding our current age becomes very complicated because as we step into the hyperreal stage of the cyber world, the notion of reality itself becomes slippery. In India, where culture, caste, and aspiration constantly collide, everything changed in 2016 when Mukesh Ambani launched Jio and made data cheap. Overnight, India became the global hotspot of the internet. Ambani himself, India’s richest man, gave a 90-minute speech promising to “reshape the future of the internet in India.”

This book is my attempt to make sense of that very post-jio world. It doesn’t stick to political binaries or the cliche debates on whether social media is good or bad. Instead, it explores the wild subcultures of the post Jio world, digital mythologies, cringe content, internet conspiracies, caste wars in forms of memes and livestreams, fake gurus, YouTube philosophers, and influencers born out of the cheap data revolution.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing here, you’ll find the same mix of absurdity and critique in the book.

Since this is my debut with a big publisher, pre-orders matter a lot. They decide rankings, visibility, and how far the book travels. Right now there’s a good discount too. So if you’d like to support the work, please pre-order your copy today. 👇

For readers outside India, you’ll have to wait a little longer. The Kindle edition will be released on 18th November. We’re also working on securing rights for overseas distribution, but that will take some time.

In the coming months, I’ll also be doing book signing events. So if you’d like your copy signed, you can purchase the book and bring it along to these events.

Your early support means a lot. More updates, events, and Substack posts about the writing process will follow soon. Thank you for always being so generous with your support:)

– AMV