Discord sowed by Discord: Kathmandu or Do Not – The Choice is Ours, For Now

I watched with interest the developments in Nepal last week. The events there really seem to focus many of the trends and tensions enrapturing the world right now into a

singularity: the impact of social media on social cohesion, technology’s effect on the contentment of citizens, the widening generational gap, and the economic pressures on youth as inequality becomes more evident. These tension points in Nepal will sound familiar to UK and US readers, I’m sure.

Like much of the world in 2025, the flames of discontent in Nepal had been growing for some time. A young population wasn’t seeing the opportunities they expected, with frustrations exacerbated by social media reminding people daily how much better everyone else seemed to have it; or so it would have you believe. I am oversimplifying the deeper issues at play, but the root causes are telling.

It was through this lens that Prime Minister Oli’s government ordered foreign social media platforms to register locally or face being banned. It echoed issues faced globally: the clash between a desire for free speech (a phrase rarely defined but widely invoked, often without context) and the need for cohesion in societies that can’t reduce major civic discourse to 20-second soundbites.

The companies did not comply, and on September 5th the state pulled the plug on 26 platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Reddit. The response was immediate and definitive: before the week ended, the Nepalese Government had been overthrown.

To condense that down into a quite shocking concept—one that should be talked about more around the world—the government of Nepal was overthrown because it tried to shut down social media. Very Skynet (yes, that reference dates me). And whilst it might be easy for some to dismiss this as the actions of a fragile ‘third world’ democracy, I am certain it would be repeated in any ‘developed’ country. In fact, it is the fear of such a reaction that has left the TikTok debate in the US to drift into silence, and why people are being arrested in the UK for social posts deemed unacceptable by police. I’ve long suspected that democracy couldn’t survive the internet; my fear has now come to pass in the most direct of ways.

The moment the ban was announced, protests surged across Kathmandu and beyond. At first it was anger at being disconnected, but as so often happens, the straw broke the camel’s back. Decades of frustration—corruption, nepotism, inequality—boiled to the surface. In scenes both symbolic and tragic, parliament was attacked, homes of politicians were burned, and ministers were beaten in the streets. Long-time watchers of Nepal will see echoes of the ending of the monarchy there in 1990.

There were riots in the streets, the kind that have bubbled up the world over recently. All for reasons described in different terms and nuances, but sharing the same root: modern society struggling in echo chambers where citizens are diminished at the expense of mega-companies running what essentially amount to Division-for-Profit programs. And, as so often, the more that control was attempted, the more momentum accelerated in the opposite direction.

We are seeing globally the impact of social media on society: culture wars across Europe and the US, division as a business. Is a government that seeks to eliminate that threat doing good or harm? It is hard to tell, and only the arc of time will reveal the answer.

This feels familiar, but are these really the issues everyone thinks they are, or just deckchairs on the Titanic? Symptoms of a global change, misconstrued as causes célèbre in different guises around the world. Again, Nepal is instructive. What happened there was not conjured from thin air—it reflects pressures building everywhere. Nepal is a young country, with around 50% of the population under 25. Many are better educated than their parents, digitally fluent, but with few jobs and stagnant wages, all inflamed by social media telling them how good others have it.

And again, this ties directly to protests in the UK and the divisions in the US. It is no longer a ‘them over there’ problem; it is the canary in the coal mine for all of us.

The fact is, nobody seems to be doing particularly well these past few years, and yet social media echo chambers convince millions that everyone outside their silo is happy, healthy, and wealthy and having a lovely time. Clearly, this can’t be true.

“If you want to make a man happy, add not to his riches but take away from his desires.” — Epicurus.

In this ancient truth lies much of today’s discontent. With social media, everyone is far more aware of what they lack than what they have. Even in Western countries, where basic needs are met many times over, there is still a continual desire to find grievance—imagining things were better in the past or are today for someone else—rather than celebrating love, community, health, or just the smell of freshly cut grass or rain on concrete.

Unlike past generations, these young Nepalis have grown up with a window to the world in their pocket. They scroll global culture, measure their own lives against others’, and see the gap. That gap—between what is and what could be—is where unhappiness lies, but also revolution.

Through this lens, the social media ban took on a much larger significance than it really had the right to—again, a familiar theme that could easily play out anywhere in the world. It became a clash of young and old, of knowing what is possible but seeing no route to get there. The protests gained a symbolic, almost ritual weight.

The Prime Minister resigned quickly, parliament dissolved, and—again not unlike in 1990—a figure from outside the political sphere was put forward. Sushila Karki, a former Chief Justice and vocal critic of Nepal’s political elites, became interim Prime Minister. The first woman to hold the role, with elections set for March.

The most remarkable element, though, wasn’t the fire in the streets but the way the replacement rose to the top. It wasn’t backroom negotiating with policymakers or oligarchic families—it was votes on a Discord server.

Through chaotic but decisive polls, thousands of young people debated, organized, and declared their preference for leadership. This would have been unthinkable ten years ago; in fact, it is still hard to fathom today. I think this will be seen as the first of many such occasions in the coming years, illustrating in equal measure the promise and the peril of latent digital democracy.

“This could never happen here,” I hear you scream. From London or Washington, Nepal looks messy, unstable, and ‘other.’ But is it really so different? In the UK, faith in parliament is scraping historic lows. In the US, politics is consumed by tribal identity, with algorithms as kingmakers. Both systems still function procedurally, but they are certainly not working. The difference is one of tempo. Nepal erupted suddenly, violently, and forced change. The West, with more rigid structures, is doing so more slowly, cynically, with credibility corroding drip by drip. Which is worse? It’s hard to say—whether the violent birth pangs of renewal are healthier than the slow suffocation of apathy.

The way that this very analogue problem was solved—temporarily at least, quieting the streets—by a very Web3 solution is quite stunning. This Discord revolution is in some ways a DAO made flesh: a community, furious with gatekeepers, taking decisions into its own hands using digital tools. Decentralised democracy, perhaps.

The vote wasn’t binding, but it carried a cultural force that ended riots, death, and social upheaval. That alone means it cannot be dismissed. This is the Web3 paradox: decentralized systems can generate authority without state sanction, yet remain fragile—open to manipulation, dependent on infrastructure still ultimately controlled by centralised powers.

And perhaps this is the meta story. For centuries, power has been centralized—chieftains, monarchies, then parliaments and presidents. Legitimacy flowed downward. What Nepal shows us is that legitimacy can flow upwards too, through digital tribes and their new chieftains, to extend the analogy.

The state can still wield police and law, but today culture moves faster than institutions. In the West, culture is already outpacing politics. Americans are more loyal to their subreddit than their senator; young Britons are more inspired by a viral TikTok than a parliamentary debate. Nepal feels familiar to these Western tropes—just made more visible in a dramatic way.

What does this mean for democracy? Honestly, I have no idea. Does it suggest an incoming hybrid age: parliaments on one side, networks on the other? Formal institutions retain the power of law, but credibility is increasingly brokered in digital spaces.

We are seeing the risks in the chaos, disinformation, and factionalism across Europe and the US. The problem everywhere is the interface between the old and the new. In the West, we focus on the problems this causes. Nepal, in contrast, stumbled into solution-seeking. Not clinging to hollowed institutions while authority migrates elsewhere, it showed that legitimacy may no longer be guaranteed by tradition.

These are the energies pulling at the edges of society globally: the collision between youthful populations in the emerging world—the mirror image of aging populations in the West—between digital culture that drives ultra-tribalism and feeds unhappiness for profit, and institutions that are simply not adapting fast enough.

This is the first revolution fought and won not over ancient land rights but over digital space—and it was won in digital space, by a Discord vote. A revolution won on a server, not in a town square.

This may be a watershed moment, drowned out—ironically—by the social din in the West, driven by the same societal winds. Cynicism is at peak levels, institutions stagnate, people are unhappy and have nowhere to turn. A disenfranchised individual in the UK ends up on a far-right march—not becasue they agree with the politics necessarily, but because they don’t know how else to voice their quite legimiate concerns about the challenges the country faces and as a result the draw of social media draws ordinary concernred citizens into a polemic battle.

Was Kathmandu ahead of the curve, or just an accidental bump in the road? I’m not sure. What is clear is that change is coming fast. And if Western-style democracy fails to reinvent itself, others will reinvent it in real time. The Discord revolution is either a warning or a promise of what lies ahead if the world keeps heading down the same path. Time will tell us which.

My writing on this website forms a small part of my wider journey — a lifelong fascination with understanding and exploring how culture, technology, and consciousness shape the world we live in, and a search for evidence that far more connects us than separates us.

Through my work at Tintra Group and The Tintra Foundation, incredible teams are turning that exploration into practice — reimagining finance and development for a multipolar world.