'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' trailer
Not all stars have the good mood or patience to deal with abuses hurled at them in cyber space, a medium that provides anonymity. Shah Rukh Khan had not long ago briefly gotten off Twitter because he couldn’t handle the filthy comments that were flooding his page. When avenues such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs hit the net for the first time, most celebrities were thrilled. These media gave them a scope to directly reach out to fans without going through the press that, they felt, often distorted quotes. The flip side started showing soon, though. Global celebrities have been tackling the menace of faceless attackers on the net for quite a while, where miscreants create havoc using fake names and i-ds. Bollywood is waking up to the menace only now.
Shahrukh takes on Shahrukh
The world of internet has certainly not been kind to Bollywood celebrities, and the biggest names have fallen prey to malicious post, dirty messages, and distasteful pictures. “The net provides freedom of abusive expression. Normally, no one has the right to get abusive towards a celebrity unless he or she is proven guilty in a particular context.
In India, people in general are disrespectful but they don’t have the guts to express their ire openly.The net lets them vent such emotions against powerful names and acquire a sense of superiority,” said image consultant and noted ad-filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar. Indeed, cyberspace’s dirty graffiti almost reminds you of the days when people used walls of public toilets to make objectionable comments about filmstars. Naturally, several stars have been open about airing disgust. Shah Rukh apart, self-confessed net junkie Priyanka Chopra takes personal care to block all personal and abusive comments.Amitabh Bachchan lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of Mumbai police not long ago against an abuser.
“Celebrities often approach me for help though more often than not they prefer not to report such instances because they feel that would give credence to the abuser. Such offences can be booked Section 66A of the IT regulation Act. On its own, the law is toothless because it is a bailable offence. An offender gets bail if he or she chooses to erase the objectionable post,” said Pavan Duggal, cyber law expert and Supreme Court advocate.
We look at some recent cases and how the stars deal with the menace.
Hrithik Roshan
THE LOWDOWN: After Hrithik posted an interview on his Twitter page, an anonymous follower wrote: “Ek aadha emotion apni acting mein bhi laa dumbass (sic)!” Like most big stars, Facebook is flooded with exclusive pages that are tagged ‘I hate Hrithik Roshan’ and ‘I hate Hrithik Roshan and his films’, formed by people who dislike the actor. These sites overflow filthy abuses and tastelessly morphed pictures of the star.
THE REACTION: To his Twitter slur, Hrithik politely replied. “Am trying. Will try harder…love.” He has mostly ignored the ‘I Hate’ cyber clubs. “It hurts, but that doesn’t mean that you should hurt people back. One needs to think logically to solve this problem,” Hrithik said.
Shah Rukh Khan
THE LOWDOWN: Being the number one star of the biggest film industry in the world has its pitfalls, as SRK often realises. He seems to be the Bollywood star who invites maximum hatred in cyber space. There are numerous pages on Facebook, websites and blogs specifically dedicated to SRK bashing. ‘I hate Shahrukh Khan’ page on Facebook has 1,805 followers and netizens with fake names such as Salman Khan and Ranbir regularly post cuss-loaded messages.The scene is no different on Twitter. SRK recently crossed the million mark on the microblogging site — his page iamsrk has 1,018,220 followers and counting — but not all his followers are fans.
THE REACTION: Upset with the excessive abuses, SRK called it quits on Twitter a few months ago. Reportedly, his adolescent son Aryan happened to read some of the abusive tweets and that upset the actor.
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