Her baby bump is fake’ and ‘Pregnant women don’t walk like that, is she even pregnant?’ — these are among the many hard-hearted comments that were posted on social media after actor Deepika Padukone stepped out to vote on May 20. Social media is breeding ground for trolling vis-à-vis celebs. While Sonakshi Sinha quit X in 2020 and wrote on Insta: “I’ve cut the direct source of insult and abuse in my life”, Aamir Khan, too, deleted all his personal social media accounts in 2021 to avoid all the negativity. With buzz around the comments for mum-to-be Padukone, we wonder if social media has gone overboard, again.

Actor Alia Bhatt liked a journalist’s Insta post that was addressed to the trolls: “... you have no right to comment on any aspect of her life”. Actor Aahana S Kumra, who endorsed the post in the comment, was trolled for standing up for herself recently, when a fan kept his hand around her waist while getting clicked with her.

Adah Sharma faced threats for her films The Kerala Story (2023) and Bastar: The Naxal Story. She says, “Once you are a ‘celeb’, your personal life is open to one and all. The whole world becomes your family and is free to give their opinion.”

Actor Divyanka Tripathi Dahiya was trolled when she posted a video of her practising martial arts. The trolls said she should have a baby instead. She says, “When I’m subjected to trolling, I try to ignore them. But at times, I do speak up. I even filed a complaint in cyber cell once. I feel it’s important to raise a voice so they know that the fight is not going to be that easy.”

Producer Pritish Nandy feels celebs are targets: “When you create an army of trolls who work for political purposes, they post nasty things in their free time.”

On being trolled, actor Zareen Khan says, “People frustrated with their realities find social media as a medium of venting out their frustration, and celebs are easy targets. I have stopped reading such comments.”

Talking about Padukone, Kumra says, “It’s her body! Why are people commenting on it? She didn’t want attention when she stepped out to exercise her constitutional right. When I had raised my voice, I was trolled. People said: ‘Yeh kaun hoti hai bolne wali?’ It’s my body! I didn’t want someone touching me.”