Two minutes of fame also brings a lot of trolling — and internet sensations try everything from Vipassana meditation to just blocking trolls to handle it
Sonam Joshi (THE TIMES OF INDIA; February 18, 2018)

This week, a little-known 18-year-old debutante actor from Kerala was catapulted into the national spotlight after her wink vent viral. Such is Priya Prakash Varrier’s fan following now that an Instagram photo she posted on Friday got her 5,000 likes in the time it takes ordinary folks to make Maggi.

Varrier isn’t the first or the last (though she is the fastest) to get her star on the internet walk of fame. Till May last year, Ratan Gadhvi was working as a security guard in Ahmedabad. A friend posted a video of him singing a number from Gujarati film ‘Wrong Side Raju’ in the warehouse he worked at, and it got retweets from Anupam Kher and Shreya Ghoshal. “I didn’t even have a smartphone or a Facebook account,” Gadhvi, 21, recalls. After a film producer came forward to support his music training, Gadhvi quit his job. He has adopted the moniker Anmol Ratan and has started his own YouTube channel. “I was always fond of singing, but couldn’t pursue it for lack of family support,” he says.

There’s another side to instafame — dealing with the equally swift judgement and criticism. Trolled endlessly for being tone deaf, Dhinchak Pooja, who broke the internet with cringe-pop hits such as Selfie Maine Le Li Aaj, has learnt to ignore negative comments. The 24-year-old has 3.5 lakh YouTube subscribers, recently appeared on Bigg Boss, and is now shooting for an MTV show. “A lot of people work hard but everyone doesn’t make it big online,” she says. “The internet opened a career path for me. I can’t predict the future but I have to follow the opportunities that life offers.”

Last May, Delhi resident Amisha Bhardwaj became an accidental internet sensation when a spontaneous video of her dancing to the song ‘Cheap Thrills’ in shorts with her bridesmaids blew up. “It was not choreographed. I was just grooving,” Bhardwaj, 26, says. She was soon flooded with Facebook friend requests and messages from strangers. “It wasn’t the dancing,” she says. “The video broke the stereotype that brides have to be shy.”

Yet, with the compliments came the trolling. “They said, ‘How could she wear such clothes on her wedding day? It is not in our sanskaar. How could she get the limelight and not the groom?’ It was also about how a bride is supposed to behave on her wedding day,” she says. Though she got offers to do more YouTube videos, ads and reality shows, Bhardwaj is happy to focus on her current job as an event manager. “My intention wasn’t to get famous. I’m just glad I could motivate some women,” she says.

For many women, virality is a double-edged sword. Last February, when Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur uploaded a photograph of herself holding a placard in response to student protests, little did she imagine that it would unleash a wave of harassment and make her the subject of prime time television debates. “I had never faced as much hate as I did in the three days that followed. I didn’t know that so much hate was possible,” Kaur writes in her new book ‘Little Acts of Freedom’.

In the days that followed, Kaur went off social media and attended a Vipassana meditation course. “Then, I was shocked at the vitriol online. Now, I don’t care. The people whose opinions I care about are my friends and family.”

A month after she was trolled, Kaur wrote a powerful blog on her identity being more than the stereotype of a ‘martyr’s daughter’. that led to the book. “I had to tell my own story in my own words,” Kaur says. “I don’t need a primetime host to tell my story for me.”

Despite her decision to speak out, Kaur admits that there is still a lingering fear that the online death and rape threats could seep into real life. “The fear doesn’t leave me,” she says. “I’ve stopped travelling alone. I keep my phone charged.” Yet the experience made her realise the power of social media. “The internet can be the greatest space if you know how to make it work in your favour. It can be the worst if you don’t know how to work around it. It depends on how you react.”