In December 2024, an 81-minute video recording and a 24-page note titled “This ATM has been closed permanently” suddenly surfaced on Indian social media feeds. Left behind by Atul Subhash, a 34-year-old Bengaluru-based software engineer who tragically died by suicide amid a bitter matrimonial dispute, the material quickly transformed from a private tragedy into an absolute algorithmic wildfire. Fast forward to June 2026, and a similarly intense digital frenzy has erupted around the murder of a Pune-based businessman, Ketan Agarwal, who was pushed into a 350-foot gorge at Lohagad Fort by his fiancée, Siya Goyal, and her associate.To the casual scroller, the explosive digital reaction to these cases looks like a collective, organic human cry for justice. On closer inspection, however, the digital ecosystem reveals a deeply coordinated ideological backlash. In a country where gender-based violence remains structurally and overwhelmingly tilted against women, these specific, anomalous cases where women are the perpetrators are being heavily weaponised by a growing online “manosphere.”This digital phenomenon does not simply seek justice for individual victims like Atul or Ketan. Instead, it relies on a deliberate strategy: using shocking anomalies to engineer a narrative of “male victimhood,” push back against feminist legal safeguards, and subtly re-legitimise traditional patriarchal control among India’s tech-savvy Gen Z and millennial youth.The ‘man bites dog’ anomalyTo understand why these cases go so incredibly viral, one must look at the baseline of criminal violence in India. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data has consistently demonstrated a massive, deeply structural gender gap in spousal violence. In the most recent report of the year 2024, India recorded 4,41,534 cases of crimes against women. Of these, the absolute majority were cases of ‘Cruelty by Husband or Relatives’, accounting for 1,20,227 cases. Thousands of women are subjected to domestic abuse, dowry deaths, and marital homicides every single year. Still, the digital ecosystem often absorbs this reality as a grim, almost normalised statistic, a quiet headline buried under the weight of systemic repetition.Social media algorithms do not feed on the systemic, they feed on the anomalous. In media sociology, the classic saying holds perfectly true: “When a dog bites a man, that is not news. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”Because violence committed by women against their husbands runs completely counter to historical, societal, and statistical expectations, it possesses an innate shock value. Content creators, meme pages, and algorithmic feeds exploit this anomaly for hyper-engagement. A pre-wedding plot featuring a 20-year-old woman weaving a web of deceit over months, or a raw, hour-long video of a broken man detailing his legal trauma, provides the exact narrative tension that tech platforms reward with maximum visibility. The tragedy is instantly flattened into clickbait, engineered to generate outrage, comments, and shares.The underlying danger of this algorithmic frenzy lies in how isolated criminal acts are generalized to indict an entire demographic. When a man commits a heinous act of violence against a woman, public discourse correctly labels him an individual sociopath, a criminal, or a monster. The blame rarely expands to suggest that his actions represent the core moral fabric of all men.Conversely, when the gender dynamic is reversed, the online commentary shifts sharply from criminal analysis to collective misogyny. In the comment sections of posts tracking the Siya Goyal investigation or the ongoing legal delays in the Atul Subhash case, individual crimes are immediately converted into systemic indictments: “Women are naturally manipulative,” “This is why young men shouldn’t trust modern women,” or “Feminism has created monsters” leading to generalisations such as “All men are under threat.”By hyper-focusing on these rare horrors, online Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) successfully weaponise anecdotes to obscure systemic realities. A singular, shocking story is visually packaged and blasted across platforms to neutralise conversations about everyday structural violence, marital rape, and the historic subjugation of women in domestic spaces.This vocal anger among India’s urban youth highlights a growing cultural shift. Over the past two decades, sustained conversations around women’s safety, the criminalisation of domestic harassment, workplace POSH laws, and gender sensitisation have fundamentally altered the legal and social landscape. While these changes represent hard-won protections for vulnerable citizens, a loud segment of young men experiences this shift as a loss of traditional male privilege.Because direct, open defences of patriarchy are increasingly unpalatable in modern corporate and academic spaces, the pushback has mutated into a digital grievance culture. Young men who feel anxious about changing dating dynamics, financial expectations, and modern relationship standards find an easy outlet in these viral true-crime stories.The attack on modern relationships, pre-wedding live-in arrangements, and women’s financial independence is frequently used to advocate for a return to traditional, submissive family structures. These viral true-crime cases are weaponised to push a conservative political agenda that labels westernisation, feminism, and individual liberty as outright “hazards to the traditional Indian family.” The frenzy is used to validate the surveillance and policing of young women by their families and society at large.When Atul Subhash framed his suicide note around the metaphor of a “closed ATM,” he unknowingly gave life to a viral catchphrase for a subset of middle-class men who view legal provisions, such as Section 498A (dowry harassment) or maintenance laws, not as lifelines for abused women, but as tools for financial extraction and legal harassment. The genuine, tragic mental health crisis of an individual man is co-opted to completely delegitimise the very framework of matrimonial laws designed to protect millions of disenfranchised women.The highly selective nature of this online outrage becomes clear when contrasted with parallel tragedies that completely fail to spark the same digital frenzy. Just days ago, in Delhi’s Nangloi area, a 24-year-old woman named Tina died by suicide, allegedly due to persistent marital cruelty. Like Atul Subhash, she left behind an agonising final video message on her phone, tearfully pleading with her parents to protect her infant daughter and keep her far away from her husband’s family.Despite the striking narrative similarities, a young parent, a final video message, and immense psychological trauma, Tina’s case did not spark nationwide hashtags, coordinated digital campaigns, or sweeping indictments of the male gender on youth-dominated forums. It was largely ignored by the very same content creators who spent weeks dissecting every single frame of Siya Goyal’s CCTV trail.The ideal victim and the culture warCriminologist Nils Christie’s “ideal victim” theory helps explain why this happens. Christie argued that society is much more likely to grant “victim status” to individuals who fit a specific, relatable, and respected social profile. Atul, Ketan and other such victims, young, successful, tech-savvy, middle-class urban professionals, are the absolute “ideal victims” for India’s internet-using youth. They see themselves in them. Tina, on the other hand, represents a demography whose suffering under patriarchy has been completely normalised.This loud silence proves that the viral outcry is not driven by a universal, empathetic concern for victims of domestic trauma. Instead, it operates on a strict ideological filter, outrage is manufactured only when the victim’s story can be leveraged to challenge the progress of women’s rights.Violence is an anomaly of human behaviour, not a monopoly of any single gender. A crime remains horrific, tragic, and entirely inexcusable regardless of who holds the weapon or who orchestrates the conspiracy. Ketan Agarwal and other such victims deserve the absolute full protection of the law, and their families deserve swift, uncompromising justice from a judicial system that must process matrimonial and criminal disputes without systemic delay.However, society must learn to separate the pursuit of justice from the currents of online gender warfare. The current digital trend among India’s youth, where rare tragedies are monetised to fuel a broader backlash against gender equality, does a grave disservice to everyone involved. It reduces the genuine suffering of male victims to mere rhetorical ammunition, while simultaneously gaslighting and endangering the millions of women who continue to navigate systemic, life-threatening patriarchal violence every single day.If India’s youth truly wish to build an equitable and just society, they must reject sensationalist baits on social media. Justice cannot be achieved by using the tragedies of a few to defend the systemic oppression of many.Sanskriti Pandey is a research scholar at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU.If you know someone – friend or family member – at risk of suicide, please reach out to them. The Suicide Prevention India Foundation maintains a list of telephone numbers they can call to speak in confidence. Icall, a counselling service run by TISS, has maintained a crowdsourced list of therapists across the country. You could also take them to the nearest hospital.