What trolling Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma for taking on a litterer reveals
Cleanliness is next to godliness, but only when there are no cameras and social media involved, for social media is a strange place to be!
Recently, cricketer Virat Kohli posted a video on social media, in which actor and his wife Anushka Sharma was seen pulling up a person for littering. By all means, a just mission. Also, Anushka Sharma is part of the Centre’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, so she was only practising what she preaches. But the moment the video went online, both Anushka and Virat were trolled, for everything from putting up a show of “fake bravery”, "misusing" their celebrity-hood, having "no respect for others’ privacy", etc, which snowballed into a Twitter war, producing more digital garbage.
Virat Kohli had posted the video, lashing out at people who travel in “luxury cars” and do not think twice before littering. To trolls, it came across as a "desperate attempt to seek attention", though it is highly questionable whether either Virat or Anushka are in actual need of any more attention.
That the celebrity duo can’t accomplish a "noble task without the presence of a camera" became a butt of banter, while many raised the question whether Virat should have blurred the face of the offender.
The situation took an ugly turn after both the offender and his mother launched a vitriolic attack on Virat and Anushka on social media.
Identifying himself as Arhhan Singh, the person underplayed the episode and owned up to the mistake of “carelessly” littering the road with a “square millimetre” of plastic. Here, the size of the plastic is apparently supposed to measure his offence, if any.
“The garbage that mistakenly went out of the window of my luxury car was way less than the garbage that came out from your mouth... from your luxury car’s window,” he wrote in his Instagram post.
Also, a woman named Gitanjali Elizabeth identified herself as Arhaan’s mother, and took to Instagram to tear into Virat Anushka’s "fake bravery". “As a mother, I would like to state that you have not only shamed my son @arhaansing on social media by not blurring his face, but youve also exposed him to unwanted hostility.... and danger from fanatics for such a small thing that you claim he has done but have no proof of anyways ?” She wrote.
Both of them managed to garner considerable support on social media, which betrayed the fact that not many identify the act of throwing a plastic bag outside a moving car as an offence. This can be dismissed as an involuntary mistake, it seems, but shaming the offenders on social media seems to be a greater offence.
As far as rights to privacy are concerned, it is true that the video did not blur the face of the offender. But he can hardly be seen, apart from a glimpse. Until the offender himself came forward and disclosed his identity on social media, he was an unknown face.
But he decided to take the issue one notch higher. He risked his privacy and disclosed his identity only to defend his action. If posting the video on social media was for publicity, defending the action can’t have a different motive either.
As revealed in the video, the offender did not show half the resistance and aggression he later dsiplayed on social media when Anushka actually pulled him up. Either he was ashamed, or he was surprised seeing Anushka.
Many people pointed to the fact that had a commoner pulled anyone up for littering, it would have led to a chaos on spot; two parties fighting with each other. This speculation leads to another debate, as the video might not have created a stir had a commoner put it up.
This brings us to the fact that we are not at all concerned about the message. It is the celebrity status that we are either blind to, or at odds with.
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