Hyderabad, Feb. 19 -- When the Nihilistic Penguin began flooding our social media feeds recently, it joined a long parade of hyper-specific, blink-and-you-miss-it internet moments. One week, it is a penguin. Next, it is a sound bite, a filter, a "core," or a new aesthetic. It feels as though everything is a trend now.

But according to Ria Chopra, the problem is not that trends exist; it's that we are noticing them more than ever before.

At the recent Hyderabad Literary Festival, Siasat.com caught up with Ria Chopra, the "neighbourhood internet anthropologist" and the author of the bestselling book "Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India's Gen Z".

Having spent years dissecting the digital psyche, Ria offered a calmer perspecti...