KATHMANDU: Nepal's Gen Z uprising last Sept did not begin with a speech or a scandal. It began with screenshots. Images of politicians' children posing beside designer shopping hauls, on luxury holidays, stopping traffic with lavish weddings. Those pictures travelled rapidly across social media platforms, becoming symbols in a widening argument about privilege in a country where youth unemployment stood above 20% and nearly 30 lakh citizens worked abroad. What had once been curated displays of wealth became fuel for public anger.
Six months later, as campaigning fell silent ahead of Thursday's vote, many of the social media accounts once linked to that backlash have gone quiet. During last year's protests, "#nepokids" was among the most widely used hashtags appended to screenshots as they ricocheted across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Profiles that once documented luxury and proximity to power are now locked or pared back. Search for them and you find little.
