Almost all of this is English absorbed into Hindi grammar via करना — like करना, share करना, follow करना, subscribe करना. The one genuinely Hindi word in common use is तस्वीर for a photo, though फ़ोटो is equally common. Nobody attempts Hindi translations for platform features, and trying to would be baffling.

शायरी dominates Indian captioning culture. A photograph is captioned with two lines of Urdu-flavoured verse about life, memory or longing, and entire accounts exist to supply them. This is why words like ज़िंदगी and सफ़र appear far more often online than in speech — they belong to the poetic register rather than the conversational one.

For a learner this is useful vocabulary to recognise rather than produce. Reading captions teaches you the poetic layer of Hindi painlessly, but using शायरी vocabulary in conversation sounds theatrical.

क्या बात है! is the standard appreciative comment and works for almost any post. जबरदस्त means powerful or fantastic and is used constantly online. Note that Indian comment sections are effusive by Western standards — brief praise can read as lukewarm, and repetition of compliments is normal rather than excessive.

हार्दिक means heartfelt and appears almost exclusively in written wishes rather than speech. Birthday and festival posts on Indian social media tend towards the formal and elaborate, which is the opposite of the terse Western convention, so a one-word ‘HBD’ reads as genuinely offhand.

Indian internet Hindi has produced its own vocabulary that has since entered speech. जुगाड़ for an improvised fix, टाइमपास for something trivially entertaining, and फ़ेक न्यूज़ all circulate widely. YouTube in particular is enormous in Hindi, with comment sections that function as genuine communities.

Two things surprise foreigners. Public posts attract comments from complete strangers offering advice, congratulations or criticism, and this is normal rather than intrusive. And religious content circulates freely on personal accounts in a way that would be unusual in Western feeds, without any implication that the poster is unusually devout.

Regional language content is growing faster than English content across every Indian platform, so Hindi social media is expanding rather than being displaced.

तस्वीर has a cluster at the front — let the s and v blend rather than separating them. ज़िंदगी opens with a nukta z and carries a nasal. सफ़र takes a nukta f. यादें is nasalised at the end. And जबरदस्त is four beats with a cluster near the end, commonly said fast enough that it sounds like three.

• Using शायरी vocabulary in conversation, where it sounds theatrical.
• Writing terse Western-style birthday wishes, which read as offhand.
• Attempting Hindi translations of platform terms nobody uses.
• Reading effusive comments as insincere rather than culturally normal.
• Treating advice from strangers in comments as intrusion.

1. Write a Hindi caption for a photograph you have taken.
2. Leave three appreciative comments on Hindi posts.
3. Write a full birthday message rather than a short one.
4. Find five शायरी captions and note the recurring vocabulary.
5. Convert five English social media verbs into Hindi with करना.