In a world where oversharing has become the default, where meals get photographed before they’re eaten, where milestones go straight to Stories, where even grief gets a caption, there are people who stand out simply by doing nothing at all on social media. And that deliberate stillness, psychology suggests, is more meaningful than it first appears.

You know the type. They’re on your followers list. They watch every Story. They’ve read every post you’ve ever published. They know about your trip to Bali, your new job, and your Thursday brunch.

But scroll through their own profiles? Almost nothing.

No selfies. No hot takes. No “feeling blessed” captions. Just… silence.

So who are they? Why do they do it? And is there something the rest of us could learn from them?

The Scale of the Silence: You Are Not the Majority If You Post

Here’s a number that might reframe everything: according to research from Northeastern University, up to 90% of social media users are “lurkers,” people who consume content without liking, commenting, sharing, or posting publicly.

Ninety percent.

That means the people posting, the influencers, the over-sharers, the daily selfie-posters, are a tiny, vocal minority. And yet, almost all of our cultural conversation about social media behaviour, the studies, the think pieces, the moral panics, focuses almost entirely on them.

The vast majority of users have been quietly, collectively dismissed as background noise.

As data scientist Anees Baqir, who led the Northeastern study, pointed out: the content people consume still influences their choices, even if they never publicly engage with it.

In other words, lurkers aren’t disengaged; they’re just engaging differently. They’ve found a way to access the information stream without wading into the performance.

The performance. That word keeps appearing in the psychological literature on this subject. And it is, for many experts, the central key to understanding why so many people choose silence.

The first and most important misconception about people who don’t post is that they are somehow broken, avoidant, or socially deficient. Psychology says the opposite is often true.

As Lachlan Brown, a writer and editor with a background in psychology and behavioural science, has observed, “Psychologists argue that this preference isn’t just about being shy or antisocial. It often reflects deeper traits, values, and coping strategies.”

Lachlan Brown, speaking with VegOut magazine, also said, “While most people use social media as an outlet — to express, react, or broadcast, silent scrollers use it as a mirror. They’re more interested in understanding than being understood. Psychologists describe this as an introspective orientation, a tendency to observe one’s inner thoughts and the behavior of others before taking action.

For them, social media isn’t about validation or self-promotion. It’s a tool for reflection. They scroll not to compete, but to quietly study human nature: how people present themselves, what topics trigger emotion, how trends reveal collective values and fears.”

For a significant portion of silent scrollers, the silence is not a choice freely made, it is a shield.

Brown, commenting on this, said, “Social media can be intimidating, especially for people who fear being judged, misunderstood, or ignored. The online world amplifies the pressure to say the ‘right’ thing, look perfect, and avoid backlash. So instead of engaging, they retreat. They scroll silently, consuming rather than creating.

Psychologists call this social comparison fatigue. Even if they don’t consciously compare, repeated exposure to others’ curated lives can trigger self-doubt. Maybe they start to think: ‘Everyone else seems happier than me.’ ‘What if no one likes what I post?’ ‘What’s the point of commenting? No one cares.'”

There is also the phrase ‘selective vulnerability,’ which is used in psychology, meaning the ability to open up only to those who have earned trust, not to anyone who happens to be watching.

Brown explains this as “Private individuals instinctively understand that not everyone deserves front-row seats to their life. This isn’t secrecy, it’s discernment.

They share their personal life with people who truly care, people who don’t gossip, people who handle information with maturity, people who are emotionally safe. This trait protects them from drama, manipulation, and emotional exposure.”

As Brown articulates it: “Many people don’t realise how posting affects their experience of life. When you document everything, you subtly shift from living the moment to performing it. The private individual sees this clearly. They know that pulling out a phone can sometimes remove them from the beauty, rawness, or intimacy of a moment. These people understand something profound: the best memories are lived, not posted. Instead of thinking, ‘This would make a great story,’ they think, ‘This is a moment I want to fully feel.'”

Read More: An App Called Are You Dead? Has Gone Viral In China For All The Right Reasons

The Mental Health Evidence: What the Science Actually Shows

The psychological literature on the mental health effects of social media abstinence is increasingly clear.

A study published in JAMA Network Open found that even a one-week reduction in social media use led to a 16% decrease in anxiety and a 24% decrease in depression among young adults after just three weeks.

Research cited across multiple psychology publications notes that intentional non-participation, choosing not to post while still browsing selectively, offers sustained versions of these benefits.

As one analysis summarised: “Lurking isn’t laziness. It’s a choice to consume without performing, to observe without being observed, and to stay informed without handing your mental energy over to an algorithm that profits from your participation. In a world that rewards noise, choosing silence is one of the most deliberate things you can do.”

Katherine (Schreiber) Cullen, MFA, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker, identified the mechanism through which active posting drives unhappiness: “The more we passively scroll through social media, the more unhappy we become as we use it.”

Active posting, which invites comparison and evaluation, compounds this further.

And the clinical psychologist Rob Whitley, PhD, draws a precise distinction that matters: “Passive use refers to the practice of quietly observing other people’s social media profiles and pictures, sometimes known as ‘Facebook stalking.'”

But, as the broader psychological literature makes clear, this is not the same as purposeful, intentional non-participation.

What This Means for Those of Us Who Do Post

If you are someone who posts regularly, this article is not an indictment. Social media sharing can be genuinely connective, joyful, and even therapeutic.

But the research on social media silence offers a question worth sitting with: Why are you posting?

Is it because you have something meaningful to say? Or because the silence felt uncomfortable? Is it because you want to connect? Or because you need to be seen?

One analysis put this question with rare directness: “How many of those posts were shared because someone genuinely had something meaningful to express, and how many were posted simply to avoid the discomfort of silence?”

Turkle’s elegant formulation of the problem: “We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”

The people who choose silence on social media have — consciously or not — declined that trade. They would rather have the demands of friendship than the illusion of it.

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Sources: The Economic Times, Mint, Cottonwood Psychology

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Moltbook: AI Only Social Media Platform Where Humans Aren’t Liked, Can Only Observe

President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, but that is far from the end, at least for India. After his last post about wiping out “a whole civilisation” on 7 April 2026, Trump almost shocked the world with his abrupt turn. A two-week ceasefire with Iran, just a few hours before his own deadline.

While it might seem as though the ceasefire could, maybe, end the sudden hike in oil prices, the continuous war strikes, or could lead to the opening of diplomatic routes, the two-week deadline makes it all seem like a blur.

And that’s exactly why India is on her toes.

Why the War is About More Than Just a War Between the US and Iran

At first glance, the war seemed like an escalated fight between two nations, until it seeped into every household in India. A war between the US and Iran quickly led to havoc in the fuel market, raising prices, surging shipping costs, and disrupting India’s economic register in just a few days. And this is why it starts getting complicated.

India’s energy security is at stake: The Strait of Hormuz remains a big concern for India. Earlier, Trump’s threat to Iran, saying, “Open the F**n Strait, you crazy b****s, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”, signalled how central the Strait is to the conflict, and to India. With about 50 per cent of India’s crude oil supply passing through the Strait of Hormuz, even temporary disruptions can cause India to pay the price.

Pakistan’s role in the US-Iran diplomacy: Amidst the clash between the US and Iran, Pakistan stepped up its diplomatic role. In a public appeal, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif urged both countries to pause, following which Trump announced the ceasefire.

The Foreign Minister of Iran, Abbas Araghchi, made a social media post acknowledging Pakistan with “gratitude and appreciation” for its “tireless efforts to end the war in the region.” This diplomatic intervention by Pakistan has kept India watching closely.

Asim Munir’s role: In a social media post, US President Donald Trump announced, “Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.” So, if Pakistan keeps asserting its position in global diplomacy, it might alter India’s strategic relations with the US.

Read More: Trump Has Forced Mindless Wars, Recession, Tariff Tensions, Land Grabs On The World

India-Pakistan’s ongoing issues: India and Pakistan are already in a standoff over the Indus Valley Treaty signed in 1960, and amidst this, Pakistan’s growing involvement in global issues could put India in a staggering position.

India’s stance against Pakistan: Following the Pahalgam attack, India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty was a retaliatory action against Pakistan’s terrorism. According to India, “Water and blood cannot flow together”, and therefore, it was announced that India will keep the Treaty in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably renounces its support for cross-border terrorism.

Additionally, climate change, demographic shifts, and technological advancements have created new realities on the ground. However, India fears that, with Pakistan stepping up its diplomatic involvement, this could be used to manipulate India’s stance against terrorism.

The ongoing arbitration under the treaty: With the treaty under strong scrutiny, India agreed to a ruling by a Neutral Expert. As per the statement by the Ministry of External Affairs in early January 2025, “India welcomes the decision given by the Neutral Expert under Paragraph 7 of Annexure F to the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960.

The decision upholds and vindicates India’s stand that all seven (07) questions that were referred to the Neutral Expert, in relation to the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects, are differences falling within his competence under the Treaty.” However, with Pakistan’s growing position, India remains focused on the impending decisions.

India’s silence over treaty compliance: In October 2025, several UN Special Rapporteurs raised formal questions to the Government of India about its actions related to the treaty and asked New Delhi to explain its compliance with international obligations. However, India remains silent on the question to this day, raising concerns over India’s diplomatic standing.

India’s West Asia ties: India’s ties with West Asia are deliberately well balanced, as nearly 40 to 50 per cent of its crude oil supplies pass through the Strait of Hormuz; this crisis, however, has put this balance to the test.

While this two-week ceasefire might seem like monetary relief, a war thousands of kilometres away is keeping India alert. In a situation like this, what is required of India is to consciously observe developments because this could be a make-or-break situation for its regional ties.

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Sources: The Business Standard, The Economic Times, The Print

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Is Trump Using The Madman Theory In The US-Israel War With Iran?

In recent years, critics, commentators, and even some political figures have drawn parallels between modern leaders like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and authoritarian figures of the past, specifically Hitler, pointing to nationalism, militarism, and the erosion of democratic norms.

Even when exaggerated, these comparisons reveal something deeper: a growing global anxiety about power, war, and unchecked leadership.

The Hitler Comparisons

According to reports by Firstpost and Times of India, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a video showing a missile that had an image of U.S. President Donald Trump as Adolf Hitler, along with the message “America will be destroyed by Trump himself”.

The authenticity of this video, though, is debatable, since no other major media house has reported on it, nor can an official source by the IRGC be found that posted such a video.

However, this is not the first time that Trump and, in relation, Israel and its PM Benjamin Netanyahu have been compared to Hitler in recent history.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a speech from December 2023, said there was “no difference” between Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler as he stepped up his attacks on the Israeli leader over the war in Gaza.

“There is no difference between the actions of Netanyahu and Hitler,” he said during a ceremony in the capital, Ankara.

Erdogan added, “He (Netanyahu) is richer than Hitler. All kind of support comes from the West and the United States.” 

The Turkish leader has lashed out repeatedly at Israel for the scale of death and destruction caused by its response to Hamas’s October 7 cross-border attack.

During a 2023 science awards ceremony, Erdogan further said, “How do you (Netanyahu) differ from Hitler? These (actions) will make us look for Hitler as well. Is there anything Netanyahu does that is less than Hitler? No.”

In 2016, memes went viral where Trump, at a rally, asked the supporters there to raise their right hand and pledge their vote to him. The images that went viral, however, were said to be eerily similar to the Nazi salute and invited another round of Trump and Hitler comparisons.

In 2023, Trump’s remark about how immigrants who come to the US were“poisoning the blood of our country” was compared to similar words said by Adolf Hitler.

Trump, during a rally in New Hampshire in December 2023, speaking about immigrants, said, “They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country.”

He added, “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

In another Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

Several reports picked up on the phrases “poisoning” and “blood” because a similar phrase was used by Hitler in his manifesto, “Mein Kampf.”

Hitler, criticising immigration and race mixing, wrote, “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”

The Biden campaign also brought this into light in a statement, writing, “Donald Trump channelled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy. Trump is not shying away from his plan to lock up millions of people into detention camps and continues to lie about that time when Joe Biden obliterated him by over 7 million votes three years ago.”

Uday Kotak’s Colonialism Remark

Economic power is now as contested as military power.

Indian banker Uday Kotak sparked debate when he criticised discussions around external control over strategic trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz, describing such thinking as a “return to colonial-era mindset.”

On April 7, 2026, the same day Trump threatened to destroy a civilisation and then announced a ceasefire, one of India’s most respected business figures offered a different kind of diagnosis: a structural economic one.

Uday Kotak, founder and non-executive director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, speaking at the FICCI Foundation Day in New Delhi, warned that the world was witnessing something it had not seen in living memory.

“We are at an important cusp of what I call the return of global colonialism.”

Kotak was specific about what had prompted this conclusion. He cited two statements made by Trump that week:

“I’m just repeating facts from the speech of Donald Trump in the White House. He made two points which clearly identified that we are in a very different world.

One, he said, whoever wins the war, keeps the spoils.

And two, if we get control of the Strait of Hormuz, we, the United States of America, will charge a rent. You are getting back to a world of true colonialism.

And it reminds me, especially on this occasion, to how the British took control of India.”

 

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The Strait of Hormuz handles a significant portion of global oil flows. Control over it has always meant influence over the global economy.

Kotak further said, “And at this point of time, from a business and economics point of view, I see two possible scenarios coming into play at this point of time. The first is a scenario of what I call as the world post 1945. For the last 80 years, between 1945 to 2026, whenever there has been a crisis, we have seen a reversion to mean now whether that reversion happens in one day, one week, one month, three months, one year.

But every crisis is an opportunity for business, industry and finance to take the downturn as a positive. Because sooner or later, you will see reversion to mean this is the history of the world for the last 80 years.”

“So this is scenario one. Scenario two, which is a scenario of thousands of years prior to 1945, is that whenever there is a crisis, there is a structural change happening in the world. And we have seen it time and again, lands conquered, rulers changed, fight between the church and the state, the fight between continents, the fight between small countries versus large, but in general, the world prior to 1945 was extremely tribal,” added Kotak.

Kotak’s framing taps into a wider concern: that global power structures may be shifting, not away from domination, but toward new forms of it.

Read More: Iran Is Beating US Even At The Meme And Roasting Game: Here’s How

Israel Doesn’t Want The War To End

To understand why experts believe Israel has no structural incentive to stop this war, you have to begin with the strategic framework that scholars say undergirds it.

Writing in March 2026, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and a long-serving advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, laid out the thesis plainly in a co-authored piece published by Common Dreams and republished widely:

“The conflict is likely to spiral out of control because the US and Israel are dead set on hegemony in the Arab world and West Asia — one that combines Israeli territorial expansion with American-backed regime control across the region. The ultimate goal is a Greater Israel that absorbs all historic Palestine, combined with compliant Arab and Islamic governments stripped of genuine sovereignty, including on choices as to how and where they export their oil and gas.”

Sachs did not stop at diagnosis. He named the architects:

“Who would lose? Only the backers of Greater Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and Mike Huckabee, who have brought the world to the brink of destruction.”

Sachs also provided a historical map. He traced the current conflict to what he called the “Clean Break” strategy.

This was a document developed by Netanyahu and American neoconservative advisors in 1996, calling for Israel to achieve regional hegemony through wars of regime change, with the United States as implementing partner.

“As NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark revealed after 9/11, the US drew up plans a quarter century ago to overthrow governments in seven countries: ‘starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.’ We are therefore living through the culmination of a long-standing plan by Israel and the US to dominate the Arab world and West Asia, create a Greater Israel, and permanently block Palestinian statehood.”

This is not fringe commentary. Sachs is cited by Time magazine as “the world’s best known economist.” His diagnosis, that the war serves a decades-old territorial and hegemonic strategy, is now being echoed across a remarkably wide ideological spectrum.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself confirmed the continuity of objectives when asked about the ceasefire on April 8.

He said that the two-week pause was “not the end of the campaign” against Iran, but a “station on the way to achieving all of our goals.”

He listed among those goals: the destruction of Iran’s missile production capabilities, the prevention of nuclear enrichment, and continuing military operations in Lebanon and Gaza.

Within hours of the ceasefire being declared, Netanyahu declared Lebanon was not covered, and Israeli warplanes launched what Haaretz called the “biggest blow” Hezbollah had suffered since the 2024 pager operation, 100 targets struck in 10 minutes.

This was despite most reports claiming that “Lebanon and elsewhere” were all covered under the ceasefire deal.

Dania Arayssi, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, explained the logic directly to Al Jazeera: “Netanyahu wants to take advantage of the fluid situation to maximise operational achievements in Lebanon.

He must take into account that a US-Iran deal might include ceasing the war on Iranian proxies, which would greatly complicate the Israeli war effort against Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

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Sources: The Economic Times, Firstpost, Modern Diplomacy

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Is Trump Using The Madman Theory In The US-Israel War With Iran?

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” — President Donald Trump, Truth Social, April 7, 2026

It was a Tuesday morning that shook the world. On social media, the President of the United States threatened to erase an entire civilisation, 85 million people, unless Iran reopened a waterway by 8 p.m. that evening.

Oil markets convulsed. Allied capitals scrambled. And somewhere in the corridors of Tehran, officials reportedly began quietly reaching for back channels.

Then, at 6:32 p.m., ninety minutes before the deadline, Trump pivoted. A two-week ceasefire was announced, brokered through Pakistan. Iran agreed to “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.” The world exhaled.

Was this the most reckless presidential performance in modern history? Or was it, chillingly, exactly what Trump planned all along?

A Theory Born in the Cold War

Trump’s behaviour during this whole time is being attributed to the ‘Madman Theory’ by Al Gillespie, an international expert and professor at the Waikato University.

Gillespie, while speaking with Radio New Zealand (RNZ), spoke about it, commenting, “The Madman Theory involves behaving in an irrational, erratic manner, and threatening to go to extreme lengths to end a war. The idea is that you don’t know whether the person will or won’t do it, and the opposition will be scared into making a deal.”

He further added, “In the case of autocratic regimes like Iran, they often don’t fear such threats. Iran feels emboldened by Mr Trump’s increasingly extreme rhetoric… I think they almost want it right now.”

Gillespie also said that, “Such actions would technically amount to war crimes, but he believed there was a deeper strategy at play. The idea is that you don’t know whether the person will or won’t do it, and the opposition will be scared into making a deal.”

To understand this theory better, we must first travel back to the late 1960s, to a conversation between Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman.

“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob,” Nixon reportedly told Haldeman during the 1968 presidential campaign.

“I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed with communism. We can’t restrain him when he is angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

The theory had roots even deeper in academic strategy.

As per reports, it was first formally articulated by Cold War strategists Thomas Schelling and Daniel Ellsberg in their book The Strategy of Conflict, the foundational idea being that a leader can gain leverage by appearing irrational, volatile, and even dangerous.

The logic: if your opponent believes you are capable of doing anything, including the unthinkable, they may back down to avoid triggering catastrophe.

Fast-forward 58 years. Nixon’s analogue might now read: I want the Iranians to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.

Trump’s Iran Playbook: Shifting Deadlines, Maximalist Threats

The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran began on February 28, 2026, when Washington and Tel Aviv launched a sweeping campaign targeting Iran’s military leadership, nuclear infrastructure, and strategic assets.

Iran retaliated with missile and drone strikes across the region, and crucially, closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply flows — triggering a global energy shock.

What followed was a masterclass in, or a catastrophic example of, coercive diplomacy, depending on whom you ask.

Trump’s original deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait was March 23. It passed. Another deadline followed, and another. Each time, Trump alternated between praising diplomatic progress and threatening to “destroy Iran’s infrastructure.”

As Newsweek reported, the pattern became familiar: “shifting ultimatums, maximalist threats, intermittent appeals to diplomacy and deliberate ambiguity about escalation.”

On Easter Sunday, Trump raised the temperature to a level that even his supporters found alarming. In a profanity-laced Truth Social post, he wrote: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!”

Then came April 7’s apocalyptic threat — and the extraordinary reversal that followed.

On April 7, Trump, on his Truth Social page, posted, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

This is, as Newsweek described it, “a modern version of the Cold War-era ‘madman theory,’ the idea that adversaries concede when they believe a leader may act beyond conventional limits.”

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When Does the Madman Become Simply Mad?

There has been criticism raised by experts, academics and even Trump’s own base regarding this theory and its usefulness, though.

Glenn Altschuler, Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University, rejected the idea that Trump’s behaviour is part of a calculated strategic design.

Altschuler said, “Trump really is a person who lives in the moment, who reacts to what he perceives as the opportunities or threats involved in the moment. That’s why you get a lot of inconsistencies.”

For Altschuler, what looks like strategic irrationality may simply be irrationality.

Andrew Latham, Professor of International Relations at Macalester College and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, has argued that the Madman Theory is structurally unsuited to the modern world.

Writing in The Conversation, Latham identified three reasons why the strategy has even less potential to work today than it did during the Cold War:

• Information flows more freely: adversaries can now assess threats with far greater precision than Nixon’s opponents could.
• The U.S. faces a less stable adversary: the Soviet Union, for all its belligerence, was a rational actor constrained by institutional logic. Iran’s decision-making calculus is far less predictable.
• Trump has not established an otherwise orderly American system: Nixon’s madman pose worked partly because it was exceptional against a backdrop of institutional stability. Trump’s chaos is the baseline, not the exception.

As Latham wrote pointedly, “The madman pose only works if it is exceptional.”

Julie Norman, professor of politics at University College London, echoes this sentiment, saying, “It is very hard to know what’s coming from day to day… but because this unpredictability is consistent, it can actually become expected. Once expected, it loses force.”

Cody Smith, a lecturer on negotiation and conflict resolution at Columbia University, spoke with Reuters about the madman theory regarding this conflict.

The co-founder of CNCM, a negotiation advisory and training services company, speaking about just the strategy itself, said, “In general, you want to have the ​other side to some degree think that you are sane.

You want ⁠them to think that you’re a rational actor because then they can influence you and you can influence them, and there’s a way to work together effectively. That is, I think quite critical, and especially in a long run negotiation.

You have to build up trust. If you’re acting like a madman, there’s no consistency there, and so you’re not going to accomplish the goal that you’re seeking to accomplish.”

In relation to Trump and whether this approach has worked for him, Cody Smith said, “The madman approach, I don’t know how much he’s actually deployed it consistently, right? So at some points, he will use truthful hyperbole. He will use bombast to ​perhaps browbeat an opponent into submission. Sometimes that may ⁠have worked in the past, sometimes it maybe has not.”

Iran’s Counter-Strategy: Playing the Long Game

One of the most underreported dimensions of this conflict is the sophistication of Iran’s response.

On the surface, Tehran appeared to defy Trump at every turn. Deadlines passed. Iran did not fold.

The asymmetry is real. Authoritarian systems can absorb prolonged uncertainty more easily than polarised democracies.

Gillespie also commented about the use of this concept against a country like Iran, saying, “In the case of either religious regimes or autocratic regimes, they often don’t have that fear. And then there’s the concern that they don’t actually believe the person making the threat.”

While Americans watched their gas prices climb and their portfolios rattle, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council was able to frame the eventual ceasefire as a victory, noting that the agreement included “the general framework” of Iran’s 10-point proposal, covering sanctions, nuclear enrichment rights, U.S. troop withdrawals, and reparations.

Both sides, it seems, claimed to have won.

The Verdict: Genius, Luck, or Something Darker?

On the surface, the Madman Theory appears to have delivered, at least for now. Iran signed a ceasefire. The Strait is reopening. Trump can claim a win.

But the deeper question lingers.

The question being whether what we witnessed was not a strategy at all, but a dangerous combination of impulsivity and institutional collapse.

Were these the actions of a president whose rhetoric outran his strategy, rescued at the last moment by an intermediary, while the world held its breath and prayed he wouldn’t actually push the button?

History will be the ultimate judge. Nixon used the Madman Theory and still lost Vietnam. The question for April 2026 is whether a two-week ceasefire is the beginning of a lasting peace, or merely a pause in a war that is just getting started.

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Sources: Reuters, Mint, The Washington Post

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The UN With Millions In Funding Had One Job But It Has Failed With Deafening Silence

Unlike FOMO, which was mostly about parties and travel, FOBO is about your livelihood.

Now, almost everyone at this point knows FOMO, which is Fear Of Missing Out. The Sunday-night dread when everyone else’s Instagram looks better than your actual life. The anxiety of watching opportunities pass you by. Gen Z basically grew up with it as a second language.

But 2026 has a new acronym that’s hitting harder, spreading faster, and landing squarely in every office, every cubicle, and every freshly printed degree. Meet FOBO, Fear of Becoming Obsolete.

What Exactly Is FOBO?

FOBO isn’t your typical job insecurity. It’s not the fear of getting fired. It’s something quieter, more insidious: the creeping dread that even if you keep your job, you might become irrelevant.

The term has only recently started to permeate the workplace, especially after the 2026 ETS Human Progress Report found that 58% of workers experience FOBO around the globe.

This means that the skills you spent years building, the degree you went into debt for, the career you carefully mapped out, could be made redundant not by a bad boss, but by a machine that never sleeps, never asks for a raise, and just got 15% better than last quarter.

The ETS Human Progress Report, based on responses from 32,000 people across 18 countries, found that 61% of respondents were concerned that new technologies, changing skill requirements, and other factors could disrupt their current jobs, while 63% of Gen Z workers are believed to be experiencing anxiety over becoming obsolete. They are also ranking the highest among all the age groups surveyed.

In a survey of over 1,000 US adults conducted by AI résumé builder Resume Now, 63% of workers say AI will make the workplace feel less human. Skill demands in AI-exposed roles are also shifting 66% faster than they were just one year ago.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI labs, has claimed AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar positions within five years. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman has echoed similar warnings.

The ETS Human Progress Report also seems to support this: according to workers who participated in it, around 32% of their tasks already involve AI, and that figure is expected to rise to 52% in the next two years.

Read More: After 30k Interviews, CEO Tells Which Kind Of Employees Are Successful And Happy

FOBO Is Already In Your Office: Even If Your Office Doesn’t Know It Yet

Here’s the twist that makes FOBO particularly cruel: even as AI reshapes what’s possible, most companies are wildly behind on adopting it.

According to Goldman Sachs economists Sarah Dong and Joseph Briggs, citing Census Bureau data reported by Fortune, fewer than 19% of US establishments had adopted AI as of March 2026. Goldman projects that number will barely crawl to 22.3% over the next six months.

Meanwhile, only about one-third of workers say their employer is providing adequate AI training or reskilling, down nearly 10 percentage points from 2024, according to workforce non-profit JFF. Most employees are being left to manage FOBO entirely alone.

But the companies that are using AI are pulling ahead at a speed that’s hard to overstate.

Enterprise workers using AI tools are recapturing 40 to 60 minutes per day, with 75% saying they can now complete tasks they previously couldn’t do at all, per OpenAI enterprise data from December 2025.

Goldman’s economists found academic studies show a 23% average productivity uplift from AI adoption; company-level data puts it closer to 33%.

Do the maths on that across a team of 50 people. That’s 33 to 50 extra hours of work recovered every single day. The companies embracing FOBO and doing something about it are quietly lapping the ones that aren’t.

The People FOBO Hits the Hardest

Joe Depa, Global Chief Innovation Officer at EY, one of the world’s largest professional services firms, watches this play out every day from the inside.

Depa, speaking with Fortune, said, “When I look at the breakdown,” and how “two of my junior levels, high adoption, right out of the gate. And then when you get to the more senior levels, that’s where the adoption starts to drop off.”

He describes a deeply worrying cohort: experienced, skilled professionals who are simply refusing to engage with AI tools.

Depa added, “We’ve got some software engineers that are 10x, 20x more productive than last year using AI, they’re just killing it.”

But alongside them, there are workers “that used to be really, really strong software developers that are somewhat resistant to using AI… they’ve gone from being top of their class to now bottom of the peer group. And those are the ones I worry about the most.”

According to the 2026 ETS Human Progress Report, 60% of respondents felt pressured to adopt AI tools, and 65% said they mostly used them to stay in the race.

The fear of becoming obsolete, left untreated, accelerates the very outcome workers dread. FOBO becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So What Do You Actually Do About FOBO?

MIT researchers offer the most rational reframe: FOBO is pointing in the right direction, but probably panicking about the wrong timeline.

AI’s march through the workforce is more like a rising tide than a sudden tidal wave: serious, accelerating, but visible enough to navigate.

“Workers are likely to have some visibility into these changes,” the MIT team wrote, “rather than facing discontinuous jumps in AI-driven automation.”

The workers thriving right now aren’t the ones pretending AI doesn’t exist. They’re not the ones insisting their experience makes them untouchable. They’re the ones who picked up the tool, learned to use it, and turned it into a 10x multiplier.

In 2026, the biggest career risk isn’t AI itself. It’s the decision to wait and see.

Image Credits: Google Images

Sources: Fortune, The New Indian Express, India Today

Find the blogger: @chirali_08

This post is tagged under: FOBO, FOBO meaning, FOBO workplace, employee, workplace, workplace trend, AI, artificial intelligence, ai in workplace, workforces, ai era, fear of becoming obsolete

Disclaimer: We do not own any rights or copyrights to the images used; these images have been sourced from Google. If you require credits or wish to request removal, please contact us via email.

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