Fear and posting in Nepal: countering spectacles of fear through everyday social media practices

ABSTRACT This article sheds light upon the cultural politics of fear in post-war Nepal by narrowing in on the Nepal banda – a recurring political spectacle in which the organizers seek to shut down Nepalese society through violent means – tracing both how it shapes and is appropriated in (offline and online) everyday life. In doing so I demonstrate how the online tactics that people employ to navigate the Nepal banda may be understood as countering its spectacle of fear. This happens primarily through the injection of everyday creativity, enjoyment, and leisure into the spectacle of fear embodied in the Nepal banda via the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda. As such, the findings indicate that in a society like Nepal where political violence has remained widespread in the post-war period, online engagement often appears as a more viable avenue to practice political dissent than offline resistance. The study furthermore demonstrates the benefits of exploring everyday tactics which are not explicitly political in their intent as countering spectacles of fear. An additional benefit of focusing on such subtle practices is that it does not run the risk of re-iterating the trauma of the original spectacle; an ethical issue raised by previous studies on the matter.


Introduction
Fear has gained prominence as an important object of inquiry in media and cultural studies as of late (e.g.Christiansen 2017;Doona 2021;McCrow-Young and Mortensen 2021;Shi 2019).This is reflective of a broader turn in the humanities and the social sciences to explore affect, with a lineage which can be traced back (at least) to Sara Ahmed's vastly influential The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Ahmed 2004).Here, Ahmed argues that emotions should be read primarily as cultural practices, which confer value on certain emotions and bodies while deferring value from others.Thus, emotions (and their correct corporeal display) can serve to create boundaries between groups, drawing clear demarcation lines between those who belong and those who do not.Speaking specifically on the emotion fear, Hill, Mortensen, and Hermes (2021) note how it is often instrumentalised by political actors, in order to push a certain political point across (798).As such, the fear of the 'other' (whoever that may be at any given time and place) is a potent emotion which can be drawn upon to boost support for, inter alia, xenophobic policies (Altikriti and Al-Mahadin 2015;Haner et al. 2019).Likewise, the fear of COVID-19 has recently been 'weaponised' by politicians in various parts of the world to 'test and restrict rights and liberties, and to sow distrust between countries, in the guise of epidemic control' (Nguyet and Striphas 2021, 225).
While it is clear from the above that fear can be instrumentalised in potentially problematic top-down manners, there is also a burgeoning research agenda in media and cultural studies on how discourses of fear are countered from below by ordinary citizens.Here, the common (wo-) man may not necessarily buy into the 'spectacles of fear' (McCrow-Young and Mortensen 2021) as they are represented by politicians, terrorists, or media outlets, but may instead stage 'counter-spectacles' (McCrow-Young and Mortensen 2021) of their own which challenge these fear-inducing discourses.This line of reasoning draws on a long tradition of social research which highlights the potential of everyday agency, participation, and creativity in destabilizing dominant discourses.Previous salient work in this vein includes Scott's notion of the 'weapons of the weak' (Scott 1985); Jenkins' participatory audiences (Jenkins 1992), and de Certeau's practices of everyday life (De Certeau 1984).In the latter, we find the notion 'tactics' which refers to the practices of everyday life which on the surface may appear mundane, but which may still hold political significance when understood vis-à-vis lager political discourses.Thus, ordinary practices like 'reading, talking, walking, dwelling, cooking' (De Certeau 1984, xvii) can be read as tactics which hold the potential to disturb dominant power structures -such as spectacles of fear -following de Certeau.Considering how pervasive and potentially destructive such spectacles of fear may be (as hinted at above), there is a pressing need to better understand how everyday practices may serve to delegitimise them.
In this study, I aim to shed light upon the cultural politics of fear in post-war Nepal by narrowing in on the Nepal banda 1 -a recurring political spectacle in which the organizers seek to shut down Nepalese society through violent means -tracing both how it shapes and is appropriated in (offline and online) everyday life. 2 In so doing, I seek to demonstrate how the online tactics that people employ to navigate the Nepal banda may be understood as countering its spectacle of fear.This happens primarily through the injection of everyday creativity, enjoyment, and leisure into the spectacle of fear embodied in the Nepal banda via the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda.However, this is not equally true for the offline tactics observed in this study, which are commonly saturated by threat, social stigma, and physical violence, hence in a sense legitimating the fear of the Nepal banda.As such, the findings indicate that in a society like Nepal where political violence has remained widespread in the post-war period, online engagement often appears as a more viable avenue to practice political dissent than offline resistance.
Although spectacles of fear are increasingly being explored in media and cultural studies, we should bear in mind that such inquiry is unlikely to result in a generalizing account of the subject matter, and that we rather need to continuously 'address fear in specific contexts, localities and from specific roles and perspectives' (Hill, Mortensen, and Hermes 2021, 794).This is so as fear is a highly relational and situated affect, which holds different meanings and symbolic power in different socio-cultural contexts (Hill, Mortensen, and Hermes 2021).Focusing specifically on fear negotiated through social media practices in Nepal -as this article does -not only brings a novel empirical context under scrutiny, but it also speaks to the ongoing 'de-westernization and decolonizing efforts in [. . .] research on digital media' (Cruz et al. 2022).Furthermore, previous studies on countering spectacles of fear have tended to highlight acts which intentionally seek to destabilize spectacles of fear (e.g.Kraidy 2018;McCrow-Young and Mortensen 2021), thus leaving aside practices which do not intentionally target a political adversary, but which may still hold political significance, as argued consistently throughout this article.
The study is organized in the following manner.First, I present the theoretical framework of this paper, drawing on the concepts tactics (De Certeau 1984) and small acts of engagement (Picone et al. 2019).Second, I give an account of Nepalese post-war society and situate the Nepal banda in this context.Here, I also go into detail on the modus operandi and the raison d'être of the Nepal banda.Third, I discuss the methodology of the paper; highlighting how semi-structured interviews and Instagram posts with the hashtag #Nepalbanda form the backbone of my data.Fourth, in the findings section I present and analyse the empirical material of this study, guided by its theoretical framework.Fifth and finally, I conclude the article with a summary of its main findings and a discussion of what they indicate for future research on spectacles of fear in media and cultural studies.

Theorising tactics and/as small acts of engagement
De Certeau (1984)'s work on everyday practices forms the theoretical starting point of this study, as here we find the outlines of what an everyday politics may entail.In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) de Certeau relies on the concepts strategies and tactics.Strategies emanate from the structural forces that invariably shape everyday life.Here, one might think of -for example -larger financial structures as an example of a common constraint on everyday life.Such structures hold political power, are institutionalized, and seek to perpetuate said power through various strategies.Strategies are then, simply put, the ways that dominant institutions seek to perpetuate themselves via a penetration of everyday life (De Certeau 1984, xix).Despite their dominant position, structures can in turn be resisted via tactics employed in everyday life.Tactics, in this sense, are flexible, creative, and subtle practices, which may or may not come into direct contact with the dominant structures.De Certeau explicitly mentions the practices of 'reading, talking, walking, dwelling, cooking' (De Certeau 1984, xvii) as tactics which hold the potential to disturb dominant power structures.
For de Certeau, creatively 'making do' and 'making with' a dominant structure are the hallmarks of everyday tactics (Highmore 2002, 150).These everyday tactics thus represent the small irruptions of the everyday, which poach on, disturb, and carve out a space for the expression of the singular within a homogenizing dominant structure (Highmore 2002, 167).In this manner, the mundane activities of daily life are rendered politically significant, as they constitute traces of alternative 'ways of operating' which call into question the omnipotence of the dominant structure.As such, de Certeau's account of tactics is not to be mistaken for political resistance as we commonly tend think of it; rather, tactics operate from within the dominant structure, where they produce resistances primarily in the form of appropriations and re-employments of said structure (Highmore 2002, 148).For these reasons, de Certeau's account does not lend itself smoothly to an analysis where everyday resistance is understood as being either for or against a political 'other' (Highmore 2002, 150).Moreover, it does not dovetail with ideas of political agency as founded on notions of political intent, since de Certeau's idea of everyday resistance is mainly concerned with deciphering an 'operational logic' (Highmore 2002, 156) of everyday life, rather than with clearly outlining the motivations of the 'subjects (or persons)' (De Certeau 1984, xi) who are doing the operating.
In this study I seek to marry De Certeau's concept tactics with Picone et al.'s (2019) concept small acts of engagement, which locates political agency in small practices of everyday digital engagement.Such practices may include liking, sharing, posting, and commenting on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc.The authors assert that even though individual practices such as posting on Instagram will not necessarily amount to a political statement in and of itself, when many users come together to form patterns of such posts, one may read them as indicative of political agency.Picone et al. (2019) explain that 'large numbers of affected users, combined with social momentum may lead grassroots initiatives to become ineluctable and ultimately contribute to larger public discourses' (2022).Importantly, such posting is not necessarily driven by political intent in each individual user's act of digital engagement, but when aggregated, they 'have the potential to become powerful acts of resistance' (Picone et al. 2019(Picone et al. , 2011)).This is in line with De Certeau's notion of tactics, which also bypasses individual intent while endowing everyday practices with the potential for political agency.Thus, in this study, I treat small acts of engagement as an online everyday tactic which holds the potential for political agency.

Contextualising the Nepal banda
Following a civil war which raged between 1996 and 2006, Nepal is formally at peace.The war was fought between a Maoist guerrilla and the Nepalese state.During the war some 17.000 people were killed and roughly 1.500 people 'disappeared' (The Diplomat 2018).The civil war eventually ended through a negotiated settlement between the parties, and an interim constitution was established which charted the terrain for Nepal to move towards a full-fledged democracy.As such, multi-party elections were held in 2008, which saw the former Maoist insurgents come out as the most popular political force in the country, with some 40% of the votes.Thus, their struggle for social justice and eradication of political cleavages in the country resonated with a large portion of the populace, primarily those disenfranchised by previous governments due to their ethnic and/or geographical position.Indeed, Nepal was, and remains, a highly unequal society where the bulk of political power and economic resources remain concentrated with a privileged minority (Selim 2017(Selim , 2018)).The legacy of the civil war lingers on in post-war Nepalese society: from the political uphill battle of the war victims' families who seek truth and justice for their loved ones (The Diplomat 2018); via war monuments and commemorations (Himalayan Times 2019; Lundqvist 2019), to the vastly popular Nepalese hip-hop songs detailing the excessive suffering caused by the war (Lundqvist 2021).
Although Nepal is officially at peace and has adopted a democratic system of government, its post-war phase has -above all -been characterized by political instability.As a case in point, between 2008 and 2018 there had been 10 different governments ruling the nation, as the lack of a cooperative political culture made governing precarious (The Diplomat 2021).As such, political compromises have been exceedingly rare, while political violence has been all the more common.One of the most widespread instances of political violence in post-war Nepal has been the Nepal banda: a nation-wide blockade orchestrated by political actors with the intent to express dissent through violent meanssuch as threats, bombs, and attacks (which are oftentimes spectacularly mediatized, see, e.g.Kathmandu Post 2015, 2018, 2021).Lakier (2014) defines the Nepal banda as a means by which 'those with a certain base of political and popular support could force other members of the political community and the government to recognize their "call" to close and thereby assert a political potency they did not otherwise possess' (294).Hence, the Nepal banda may be read as a political spectacle, where the performance of power is the main objective of the event: while pushing singular political issues (e.g. a hike in the price of gas, the imprisonment of party cadres, or a trade agreement with India) as the official cause of the event.Integral to this spectacle is the spread of fear throughout society which compels people to obey the disruptive logic of the Nepal banda (Lakier 2014).Importantly, the Nepal banda is not exclusively associated with a single political actor or ideology; still, it has mostly been practised by political actors on the far left of Nepalese politics.
While the Nepal banda -which has historic parallels to South Asian protest movements -existed in Nepal prior to the civil war, it gained prevalence (and intensity) during this turbulent political period, and it has remained equally, if not more, common in the post-war phase. 3This is evidenced by the name of one of the most popular Nepalese Facebook pages: Routine of Nepal Banda, which currently (February 2022) has over 3 million followers on the social media platform.The Facebook page started out as a site where citizens could share information about the Nepal banda with one another in order to avoid daily disturbances, threats, or violence on those occasions.In the words of the page administrators: 'our effort is to inform about holiday, banda (not to promote) by which no one will face inconvenience that day and also post information, quotes, meme etc' (Routine of Nepal Banda n.d..).Likewise, on other social media platforms like Instagram, the Nepal banda is a hot topic of debate.As of February 2022, the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda has over 800 posts which address the event from various angles, as we shall see in the findings section below.Indeed, while research on social media practices in Nepal is still in its infancy, previous studies have indicated that Instagram is a popular platform which is not only used for fun and games but also, inter alia, for citizento-citizen mobilization in the face of disaster (Arora 2022, 8) and for the expression of identity politics (Koirala 2020).

Methods
The primary empirical material for this study was gathered during 3 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Nepal in the spring of 2018.A shorter, more focussed, follow-up study was subsequently carried out in the autumn of 2019.In total, 34 semi-structures interviews were conducted with interlocutors in Baglung Bazar in mid-western Nepal; a city of some 30.000inhabitants with a vibrant marketplace and many local government fixtures.There, the interviews centred on interlocutors' narratives about how they navigate the disruption and fear caused by the Nepal banda.In addition to the interviews, informal conversations and observation during several Nepal bandas are methods which have informed this study -not only in Baglung Bazaar but also in other parts of the country, including Pokhara, Beni Bazaar, and Kathmandu (where other sub-studies within the bounds of this research project were carried out).On top of the ethnographic fieldwork in different parts of Nepal, I have also scoured the online sphere for relevant data on the Nepal banda.Here, I followed the hashtag #nepalbanda on Instagram, which at the time of writing (February 2022) includes 821 posts.I began by going through these posts manually and sorting them thematically.In the data I observed (among other things) myriad posts which addressed the Nepal banda in seemingly apolitical ways. 4In trying to make sense of this somewhat puzzling observation I consulted theory, including (but not limited to) De Certeau (1984) and Picone et al (2019), which offered me ways of reading this posting pattern as everyday tactics embodied in small acts of engagement.Thus, the analysis proceeded first through the identification of a puzzling observation in the Instagram data, and then through an in-depth engagement with a wide range of theories in order to understand this empirical anomaly.

Findings
In this section I present and analyse the empirical material of this study.Here, I illustrate the different kinds of everyday practices which occurred during the Nepal banda by visiting three main themes: Following the Nepal banda; Resisting the Nepal banda: and Online engagement with the Nepal banda.The two former themes draw their empirical material from fieldwork in Baglung Bazar and elsewhere in Nepal, whereas the data of the third theme comes from the hashtag #Nepalbanda on Instagram.

Following the Nepal banda
When walking the streets of Baglung Bazar on the days of the Nepal banda you are filled with a distinct sense that the city has suddenly been deserted.There is hardly any commercial or social activity, and the silence in the otherwise bustling marketplace is eerie.People (for the most part) stay indoors and wait for the organizers to announce that the banda is over.Thus, it is not surprising that the most common way that the interlocutors of this study tactically navigated the Nepal banda in Baglung Bazar was to follow it.This meant abiding by the rules dictated by the organizers and refraining from any outside activity during the days of nationwide blockades.During interviews, this was often lamented for being costly and for disrupting commerce in problematic ways, yet many interlocutors saw no viable alternatives to staying at home on these days.As explained by a middle-aged restaurant owner in Baglung Bazar 'of course, the banda creates a lot of problems for us [. ..] it creates a lot of problem for small business owners like myself, because at that time we need to close our businesses, so there is no earning on those days' (Interview 3 May 2018).Certainly, the prospect of not earning any money on the days of Nepal banda was commonly conceived as a frustrating notion, as verbalized by a young photographer and business owner in central Baglung Bazar 'everything is getting more expensive [. ..]I am compelled to close my shop tomorrow because of the banda [. ..]But I need to run the shop continuously in order to pay for everything!I cannot do that now' (Interview 3 May 2018).Sometimes this would incur significant financial losses as illustrated by the statement of a female shop owner in central Baglung Bazar 'one time at the day of Nepal banda, a customer said to me that he was planning to purchase around Rs. 20.000 worth of clothes, but my shop was closed' (Interview 30 September 2019).Bearing in mind that the average income in Nepal is around Rs. 30.000 per month, this single day of Nepal banda cost the interlocutor two-thirds of an entire month's salary. 5 When probed about what would happen if he would keep his restaurant open on the days of the Nepal banda, the aforementioned middle-aged restaurant owner stated the following: Sometimes the banda organisers are closing down only some sectors, like transport or education: on those days we can keep our restaurant open.But if it is a Nepal banda, then we are obliged to close our shop as well [. ..] at that time it is not good to open the shop, because the banda organisers come to my shop and they create a lot of problems, they misbehave towards me, they threaten or hit me, and at that time it is better to close the shop.(Interview 3 May 2018) Thus, even though losing money on the days of the Nepal banda was seen as problematic for these interlocutors, the feelings of fear and insecurity took the upper hand, thus compelling them to follow the rules of the Nepal banda.Indeed, the notion of fear and insecurity was highly prevalent among the interviews in Baglung Bazar, and it appears to be the single most common reason for why interlocutors follow the banda.Some interlocutors even referred to the banda as 'mental torture' (Interview 3 May 2018), while others elaborated further on how fear impacts everyday life on such days: 'we have fear to go outside at the day of banda because there may be a bomb explosion.It is not easy to go [to] hospital.I won't be happy to send my children to school on the day of banda (Interview 1 October 2019).However, the fact that many interlocutors decided to follow the rules of the Nepal banda should not be mistaken for political support for the organizers or their tactics.Rather, most interlocutors of this study expressed unfavourable opinions of the Nepal banda.As put by a jeep operator in the city, 'it is very good if there is no banda.We follow the banda but it doesn't mean that we support [it].We [just] don't want to take any risks' (Interview 1 October 2019).

Resisting the Nepal banda
While refraining from any outside activity was by far the most common mode of navigating the Nepal banda in Baglung Bazar, a few interlocutors did in fact resist this imperative.Doing so not only involved fear of violent reprisals from the banda organizers as mentioned above, but it also often came with a distinct sense of social stigma.One interlocutor put it as such: 'if I open the shop during the Nepal banda, then I will have a bad social image, and the banda organisers will focus on me, and they may threaten me in order to persuade me to close the shop' (Interview 3 May 2018).Another interlocutora mobile phone repairman with a small shop in central Baglung Bazar -illustrated this crux in the following manner: 'it is a risky job to open shop firstly because there is chance it is destroyed: attacks, and threats.Society also watches you with another eye.They may say: "Oh!You opened the shop!"' (Interview 1 October 2019).The notion of 'another eye' here refers to the disciplinary power inherent in the social setting, suggesting that you would be castigated by your neighbours if you would keep your business open during the Nepal banda.Thus, running your business during the days of these blockades would risk putting your social standing in jeopardy, as you would potentially invite danger into your neighbourhood.
Even though the local police were active during the Nepal banda in Baglung Bazar, their presence was often felt by interlocutors to be insufficient in protecting people from potential reprisals from the banda enforcers.As put forth by a restaurant owner in Baglung Bazar 'the police will try to fulfil their duties during the Nepal banda, but they are not available everywhere, so they cannot protect everyone' (Interview 3 May 2018).Moreover, should you keep your business open during the Nepal banda and it would get damaged, insurance companies will not take responsibility for any financial losses, as the banda is conceived of as a force majeure of sorts.A jeep operator in the city explained it as such 'Government and insurance companies are not liable for compensation [during the Nepal banda].The process is long and rigid for compensation.There are less chances of getting compensation.We don't want to take any risk, so we stop our services, honestly' (Interview 30 September 2019).
The few interlocutors who kept their businesses open during the days of the Nepal banda reported having suffered violent reprisals from the banda organizers.For example, a local baker experienced the following during one of the bandas 'twice, when I was delivering baked goods to the market I got news of a sudden banda.The banda group requested that I stop my work but I refused because I had stock of baked goods left.They threatened me and so I stopped' (Interview 30 September 2019).Another interlocutor, a professional jeep driver, recounted how his vehicle was almost completely destroyed by the banda organizers who seized upon him as he was in the middle of transporting customers during a Nepal banda.The driver tried reasoning with the organizers, but to no avail: 'I requested the banda announcer group not to do anything to me and my van.They destroyed my jeep a lot.It's a bitter experience of the banda' (Interview 1 October 2019).Generally, resisting the banda offline in Baglung Bazar was fraught with insecurity and social stigma, and most interlocutors stressed that it was not something you would do unless you really needed to for financial reasons.

Online engagement with the Nepal banda
If resisting the Nepal banda in Baglung Bazar was an exceedingly rare and precarious practice, online engagement turned out to be a different story altogether.By following the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda several interesting examples of such everyday engagements were found.First, I encountered a vast number of user-generated memes which address the banda and its associated fear and disruption in often humorous ways.As an illustrative example, in the Instagram data there was a remix of the famous 'Drake Hotline Bling' meme (see Figure 1) which spoke to the Nepal banda.The basic premise of this meme is that in one photo we see Drake gesturing in disapproval of something, while in another photo we see him nodding in approval of something else.Here, the disapproval is directed at the Nepal banda -visualized as an entirely empty street in a Nepalese city, while Drake nods in approval of a green cabbage.This will appear as nonsensical to anyone unfamiliar with Nepali language, where green cabbage is called 'bandaa gopi'.In essence, then, the meme not only expresses disapproval of the Nepal banda but also introduces an element of absurdity and (word-) play into the discussion on the event.In doing so, it challenges the 'illusory unity' (Kraidy 2018, 52) of the event's threat rhetoric, thus rendering its spectacle of fear somewhat laughable.
The 'Drake Hotline Bling' meme (and many others like it) represents expressions of online engagements with the Nepal banda which are humorous, yet openly criticize the event.Indeed, the mix of humour and political commentary is a distinct hallmark of the meme, as argued by Shifman (2013, 51-53) and others (Mortensen andNeumayer 2021, 2368).In other cases, the #Nepalbanda hashtag was not used to directly criticize the event or its organizers, but rather, to make visible alternative ways of conducting everyday life under the Nepal banda: ways which do not align well with the spectacle of fear that it aspires to create.Here, everyday creativity, enjoyment, and leisure are foregrounded in myriad Instagram posts.As an illustrative example, one post (see Figure 2) displays the photo of a home-made cake, accompanied by the caption 'When it is Nepal banda but your heart and stomach is open for food' and a vast number of hashtags such as #foodlovers, #khaja (meaning 'food' in Nepali), but also -importantly -the hashtag #nepalbanda.As argued by Bonilla and Rosa: 'hashtags performatively frame what . . .comments are "really about", thereby enabling users to indicate a meaning that might not be otherwise apparent' (Bonilla and Rosa 2015, 5).Mixing the hashtag #Nepalbanda in with more 'innocent' hashtags like #foodlover and #khaja is an interesting practice, as it, on the one hand, frames the post as related to contentious Nepalese politics, while, on the other hand, hides its activism in the supposedly apolitical minutiae of everyday life.As such, this practice may enable users to experience a sense of relative safety while posting content related to the politically contentious Nepal banda: arguably made possible in part by the extra 'padding' of the other hashtags.This argument resonates with a growing body of literature on online safety measures, which highlights how users tactically navigate various digital environments to maximize their safety and/or anonymity (e.g.Agosto and Abbas 2017; Albury and Byron 2016; Moore-Gilbert and Abdul-Nabi 2021).In the relative safety and anonymity of the online sphere, one can furthermore (at least partially) avoid being watched with 'another eye' by one's neighbours, thus somewhat escaping the social stigma which is associated with offline banda resistance in Baglung Bazar as discussed above.
Since we do not know the political motivations of the individual user whose post is represented in Figure 2, it may also be the case that this post is not intended to make a political point, but that it is merely there to showcase the cooking accomplishments made on the day of the Nepal banda.Even if this is the case, I argue, the post still holds political significance, as it demonstrates that the fear of the banda and its 'call to close' (Lakier 2014, 52) down Nepal does not stop people from enjoying meaningful everyday practices such as baking a cake, and more broadly speaking: it does not stop people from being active.Here, it is important to remember the connection between fear and passivity, as previous research on the former suggests that one of the most common reactions to a threat is to put the subject in a state of inertia (e.g.Hatzimoysis 2014).This notion is also represented in common parlance, e.g. in the expression to be 'frozen with fear'.
Myriad similar posts like that represented in Figure 2 are found in the Instagram data as people showcase their daily creativity, enjoyment, and leisure through the hashtag #Nepalbanda.These posts range from showing how good the roads are for jogging during the Nepal banda when there is no traffic (see Figure 3); via spending the day drawing (see Figure 4); to celebrating how the Nepal banda offers an opportunity for rest amidst beautiful scenery (see Figure 5).What these individual users all have in common is their instance that the Nepal banda has not rendered them frozen with fear, but that they have rather found meaningful activity in the midst of it.Showcasing this through the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda spreads the message on social media that the Nepal banda is not in fact the all-encompassing spectacle of fear that it sets out to be.This common posting pattern becomes all the more significant when analysed in juxtaposition to the deserted streets of Baglung Bazar on the days of the Nepal banda as discussed above where everyday activity was made invisible as people mostly stayed at home due to fear.Arguably, this apparent inactivity contributes to strengthening the spectacle of fear as staged by the banda organizers, whereas the showcasing of a sprawling everyday activity on Instagram contributes to countering the banda's spectacle of fear.Interestingly -and in line with De Certeau (1984) -this is not achieved primarily by  users posting content which speaks against the politics of the banda or its organizers, but by way of appropriating the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda, filling it with everyday activity, including creativity, enjoyment, and leisure.As such, we may understand this posting pattern as 'small acts of engagement' (Picone et al. 2019) which, 'on an aggregate level, have the potential to become powerful acts of resistance' (2010).Thus, even though these posts are not in themselves apparent acts of political resistance vis-à-vis the Nepal banda, when taken together, they form a larger posting pattern which can be read as such.

Conclusion
In this article I have sought to shed light upon the cultural politics of fear in postwar Nepal by narrowing in on the Nepal banda -a recurring political spectacle in which the organizers seek to shut down Nepalese society through violent meanstracing both how it shapes and is appropriated in (offline and online) everyday life.Overall, I have argued that the online tactics that people employ to navigate the Nepal banda may be understood as countering its spectacle of fear through small acts of engagement (Picone et al. 2019).This happens primarily through the injection of everyday creativity, enjoyment, and leisure into the spectacle of fear embodied in the Nepal banda via the Instagram hashtag #Nepalbanda.However, this is not equally true for the offline tactics observed in this study, which are commonly saturated by threat, social stigma, and physical violence, hence in a sense legitimating the fear of the Nepal banda.As such, the findings indicate that in a society like Nepal where political violence has remained widespread in the post-war period, online engagement often appears as a more viable avenue to practice political dissent than offline resistance.This is the case as online engagement allows for relative anonymity and a safe distance to the political violence embodied in the Nepal banda.Here, the creative mixing of hashtags on Instagram -including the practice of 'hashtag padding' discussed above -arguably adds an additional layer of distance and safety for the poster (cf.Albury and Byron 2016; Agosto and Abbas 2017; Moore-Gilbert and Abdul-Nabi 2021), which may be especially important in a volatile post-war society like Nepal.
The findings of this study speak to the burgeoning research agenda in media and cultural studies on fear in general, and on countering spectacles of fear in particular.The study contributes to this literature by demonstrating the benefits of exploring everyday tactics which are not explicitly political in their intent as countering spectacles of fear.Following De Certeau (1984) and Picone et al (2019) I argue that such irruptions of the everyday may hold political significance even though their intentions may not be explicitly political.An additional benefit of focusing on such subtle online practices is that it does not run the risk of re-iterating the trauma of the original spectacle; an ethical issue raised by McCrow-Young and Mortensen (2021) in their study on counter-spectacles of fear in remixed Islamic State (I.S.) imagery.Here, they noted how such remixing, which remained faithful to the original imagery, could potentially re-traumatize the audience and contribute to strengthening the spectacle of fear of I.S.In this study, I have highlighted alternative ways of countering spectacles of fear: ways which do not include the original violent images of the Nepal banda, but instead showcase cookies, jogging, Drake, and beautiful scenery.Thus, the risk of recreating the original trauma is significantly less palpable.
In future studies it would be interesting to take some of this article's findings even further.For example, the Instagram posts in the #Nepalbanda hashtag could be subject to an in-depth visual analysis, which unpacks their rich visual grammar and probes it for political messages.Furthermore, one might approach the Instagram posts in the #Nepalbanda hashtag from the point of view of alternative discourses centred around empathy, solidarity, and hope.This would complement the present study -which has primarily focused on a kind of 'anti-politics' as expressed through user posts on Instagram -with a constructive dimension.Potentially, such an approach could result in more actionable findings, drawing impetus from how Nepalese citizens use social media to make public life more sustainable in the face of political violence.

Notes
1. 'Banda' literally translates as 'shut down'.'Banda' may also be written as 'bandh', however, in this article I consistently use the term 'banda'.The primary reason for this is that the #Nepalbanda hashtag is the preferred way to address these event on Instagram and other social media platforms.2. In this article I use the terminology online and offline to designate activities that take place primarily on the internet or primarily in real life (IRL) -while also being aware that such a delineation is increasingly problematic in today's hyperconnected world.Still, for the sake of analytical clarity, I adopt these terms in this study.3. Having said that, the Nepal banda has gradually become less common since 2021.While it is still too early to tell if this development will hold or not, there are some indications that it might.4. The analysis narrows in on this puzzling observation in the Instagram data.Thus, it makes no claim to cover the totality of ways in which users engaged with the #Nepalbanda hashtag.
5. 20.000 Nepalese rupees amount to roughly 160 US dollars.While this may not seem like a significant financial loss to some, in the context of Nepal -one of Asia's poorest countriesit certainly is.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. 'When it is Nepal banda but your heart and stomach is open for food'.Source: Instagram #Nepalbanda