Shah Rukh went on to describe how a bunch of faceless, nameless morons who had opened fake and misleading handles on the micro-blogging site would go on showering expletives on him and his family.
Two years ago, I had a heart-to-heart chat with Shah Rukh Khan in Singapore.
I was part of the media contingent that was there to cover an award function and as usual, Shah Rukh was the star performer.
Unlike other bosses, my editor knew that I had a tough week looking for exclusives and she had indulgently said that the interviews of the top stars attending the event would suffice for the editorial agenda.
“Just send me the interviews and then you can relax,” she had said.
It basically meant that I only needed to speak to Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan.
After going through a horrible week that assignment looked easy and I was quite happy.
Shah Rukh arrived on the day of his performance and said he will need just an hour to sync in with the background dancers and the stage management team.
The rest of the time, he declared, will be devoted to us – me and a journalist-friend from another reputed English newspaper. We decided to speak to him at his exclusive but cramped green room, backstage.
The day was going like clockwork as Shah Rukh finished his practice well in time and settled down with us, incessantly puffing on his trademark Classic cigarettes which come in red packets.
Just before he joined us, I was checking his Twitter account and found that he hadn’t tweeted for a long time. That made me curious. I had started wondering whether he had stopped using his newly gifted Iphone or had shifted back to his old love, a black and silver Blackberry Bold.
‘Twitter broke my heart’
Those were the exact words he used to describe his experiences when I asked him why he had stopped tweeting. Frankly, I was not expecting such an answer.
Shah Rukh then went on to describe how a bunch of faceless, nameless morons who had opened fake and misleading handles on the micro-blogging site would go on showering expletives on him and his family.
The worst part? They would do it just for the kick of it and there wouldn’t be any apparent reason for that action.
Some would just wake up, post a few gaalis in Hindi or in absolutely wrong English and then go back to sleep again. The gaalis would mostly contain words that referred to a man’s or a woman’s genitals.
I never heard a similar complaint from Salman Khan. I then went back to check with Aamir because he too was on Twitter and didn’t seem to tweet much. I was told Aamir too was upset with those faceless people on Twitter.
Salman wasn’t complaining probably because he had practically never clicked on “@”. He was just happy tweeting.
After a few more meetings with the other stars attending the event, I realised that the problem was generic and much bigger than I had imagined.
Most of the stars were reeling under the negativity that these ‘twit fans’ were spreading.
The reports of stars getting abused on social media were not new but the monstrosity of the problem sunk in when I actually spoke to a lot of them in person.
Every star was capable of giving these ‘twits’ a fitting reply and trust me, they perhaps knew more sinister Hindi gaalis. The problem was: They couldn’t do it because they were public figures on social media.
A few actors showed me some of those abusive tweets and I was ashamed of the fact that I breathe the same air as those people posting those tweets.
Who are these people?
I did a small survey of people who have opened those so-called funny and fake accounts on twitter and frequently post explicit jokes. When they are not doing that, these ‘jokers’ go on a star-abusing spree. Read more>>
*Disclaimer
We have not paid Soumyadipta Banerjee for this article and that we have picked this article from his blog at www.bollywoodjournalist.com.
