“Instagram open karte hi Jantar Mantar pahunch jaata hun (I open Instagram and I’m at Jantar Mantar),” says a social media user. “Modi ji, please break up with us,” a placard read. “Kucchu Pucchu tum kahan ho? (Baby, where are you?),” another placard displayed.
These comments reveal how Gen Z are mixing humour with defiance as thousands of students have taken to Jantar Mantar in Delhi, alongside the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), demanding accountability from the Centre and the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET-UG paper leak.
The past few nights have been an emotional roller-coaster—in the best way. I laughed until my stomach ached watching a Gen Z protester sprint away from a police lathi charge with the unhinged energy of a Subway Surfers run. My screen time crossed 15 hours as I found myself endlessly sharing Instagram Reels by the so-called “lost” generation—accused of having attention spans shorter than a goldfish, yet one leading one of India’s biggest and most consequential student protests.
What sets this protest apart is not that a satirical party initiated it, but that Gen Z are owning their unapologetic personality. Not through traditional news footage, but through viral audios, memes, and the kind of absurd humour only they could produce. The ‘unserious’ generation has been facing police brutality, tear gas shells, and lathi charges–all while keeping the algorithm game intact.
Instagram has turned into a live archive of the demonstrations. Placards referenced everything from pop culture and internet slang to viral memes—references that would leave many millennials, Gen X, and boomers reaching for Google.
One widely shared video showed students breaking into the national anthem as Delhi Police and Rapid Action Force personnel tried to disperse them. As the protesters sang “Jana Gana Mana,” the officers paused and stood at attention.
A moment for “Saiyaara” paglus
This protest has blended dissent with internet culture in a way rarely seen before. The demonstrations even had their own army of ‘Saiyaara’ fans, or “paglus”, as the internet fondly calls them. Mohit Suri’s romantic film, starring Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda, sparked a social media frenzy last year.
Among the countless memes and reels that followed, an AI-generated audio clip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi singing the film’s title track went viral on Instagram. Now, that very meme has become part of the protest itself. One viral reel showed protesters playing the AI-generated ‘Saiyaara’ track through a loudspeaker while singing along. The text overlay read, “U think lathi kha k ghar me chup jaayenge. Ab gaana bhi gayenge wo bhi Modi ji k awaj me. (You think after we are hit, we will quietly go home? We will sing now, that too in PM Modi’s voice) 2:21 am, Jantar Mantar.”
The clip has amassed nearly four lakh likes and over two lakh shares, with thousands of users flooding the comments.
The creativity did not stop with Bollywood references. Protesters embraced pop culture in full force, turning the demonstrations into something of a multiverse. Several arrived dressed as Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, and even Godzilla, giving the protest site an unlikely cosplay twist.
As the movement spread across the country, several public figures joined students in solidarity. In Mumbai, comedian Raunaq Rajani was detained along with other protesters. Even then, the jokes did not stop. Inside the police van, Rajani and fellow detainees recorded themselves participating in the viral ‘Clock It’ trend.
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The video carried the tongue-in-cheek text, “Me n ma homies in the police van on the way to Deva Bhau’s birthday party.”
“Masti nahi rukni chahiye (the fun shouldn’t end),” Rajani wrote in the caption.
In another standout moment, Mumbai-based model Riya Ahir stood in front of a police van during the protest at Shivaji Park. The striking image quickly went viral, with filmmaker Zoya Akhtar sharing it on Instagram.
Movement that feels native to internet language
For decades, public imagination has associated protests with solemn speeches, handwritten banners and images that communicated urgency through seriousness. Gen Z has flipped the script entirely. Their protest signs look like Instagram posts. Their marches have become trending content.
Far from diluting the movement, humour has become one of its most effective communication tools. To many, that can feel contradictory. How can someone dance to a trending audio one minute and stand for a good cause the next? How can a protest coexist with jokes?
For Gen Z, the contradiction doesn’t exist. This is the first generation to grow up without a distinction between online and offline life. The internet isn’t a distraction from reality, but it is part of reality. Their friendships, identities, politics, and communities have all been shaped on social media. Naturally, their activism reflects the same language.
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In doing so, they have discovered something that traditional political communication often struggles to achieve: attention. From Instagram to X or even Substack, every platform rewards engagement. Humour travels faster than outrage. A detailed policy explainer might attract a niche audience, but a meme referencing the same issue can reach millions in hours.
Gen Z understands this instinctively because they have grown up learning the mechanics of virality. From “What I eat in a day at protest” to “Get Ready With Me for the protest”, they are carrying out a movement that feels native to the internet language.
Can memes replace activism?
This isn’t the first time humour has intersected with politics. Political cartoons mocked parties for decades while satirical magazines challenged governments. Comedians have long held power to account with their sets. Memes are simply the newest chapter in that tradition as they are shorter, faster, and infinitely more shareable.
What has changed is scale. A clever meme resonating with a protest can become thousands of Instagram Stories by evening. A spontaneous joke shouted during a march becomes a viral audio overnight.
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Of course, online visibility is not the same as political change. Viral content cannot substitute policy, nor can memes replace sustained civic engagement. There is always the danger that social media reduces complex movements into aesthetic moments curated just for engagement.
Yet dismissing Gen Z’s style of activism because it looks different would be a mistake. The same generation once criticised for “only caring about social media” is now using those very platforms to mobilise, document, and amplify. The humour doesn’t erase the seriousness of the protests; if anything, it makes the images more memorable.
Long after people forget statistics, they’ll remember the student who ran like a Subway Surfers character, the placard that had a viral meme, or the protest reel that made them laugh before making them think.
Perhaps that is Gen Z’s greatest political innovation. They haven’t made protests less serious—they made them impossible to scroll past.
