In this episode of The Sanskaari Girls Podcast, Ria Chopra—writer and cultural commentator—joins Vandita Morarka to explore digital identity, feminism, and selfhood in the Gen Z age.
Together, they discuss how young people navigate fragmented online selves across platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp, and the particular pressures of code-switching within South Asian cultural contexts. The conversation reflects on writing about the internet from within it, the rise of digital feminism and influencer culture, and the tension between accessibility, authenticity, and rigour.
They also examine the “exhaustion economy” of constant visibility and productivity, before turning to questions of class, audience, and geography in South Asian digital spaces. The episode closes by imagining futures for Gen Z feminism—and what it might take to sustain meaningful, joyful engagement online.
Read more about her work here and buy Ria's book Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India’s Gen Z NOW!.
🎙️ The Sanskaari Girls Podcast is a podcast by the Sanskaari Girls Book Club (SGBC), a South Asian feminist reading community fostering critical engagement with literature, amplifying marginal voices, and building reflective, politically conscious conversations.
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—CHAPTERS
00:00 The Evolution of Digital Identity07:34 Curation of self across platforms10:04 Conformity in digital spaces11:59 The Robbers Cave Experiment15:05 The other side of online norms15:54 Social conditioning of women16:47 Role of age in curating online behaviour18:43 The Absence of safe spaces for learning21:07 Reflections on mistakes and personal growth23:03 The Interplay of online and offline selves27:13 A case for empathy29:01 Navigating professional and personal identities30:49 What made Ria who she is35:53 Rejecting capitalistic niche-ification38:16 Challenges of writing on the everchanging Internet44:01 The best medium to represent the internet....is the internet47:25 Feminism in the digital age56:48 The role of brands in feminist discourse01:02:05 The crisis of trust in institutions01:05:03 Finding joy in digital exhaustion01:10:34 Survival sans monetisation01:15:21 Empathy and sympathy in feminism01:18:20 Ria's reccs01:26:21 Outro