Bollywood Tells Us Where to Draw the Line

While Bollywood stars often take the effort to interact with their fans on Twitter, at times, things do go out of hand. Recently, film-maker Karan Johar reacted strongly when someone on Twitter pointed fingers at his sexual orientation. Similarly, a few weeks ago, Salman Khan had warned his followers that he would quit the platform if they didn’t stop trolling his “friends” Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan. Such incidents often make one wonder, what is too much when it comes to social media commentary?

Going by the reactions of several stars like Abhishek Bachchan, Sonakshi Sinha and Salman Khan, most actors prefer limiting their interaction to courtesy responses and generic updates. Provocation, especially personal in nature, clearly, doesn’t go down with well with them. For instance, Kamaal R Khan (KRK) had once tweeted, “Pls RT this if you think that @deepikapadukone has biggest b**t in Bollywood (sic).” He also mentioned Katrina Kaif in a similar tweet. This offended Sonakshi Sinha, who reacted with a post that said, “@kamaalrkhan is a woman disrespecting waste of space and deserves to be hung upside down and given 4 tight slaps. (sic)”

KRK justifies his tweets by saying that if he offends celebrities then they should not follow him. “This only means that they value my comments,” he says, adding that Sonakshi only reacted to him to create “drama”.

Actor Ajaz Khan, who recently rubbed Rishi Kapoor the wrong way on Twitter, feels that it’s time celebrities developed a sense of humour. “People who made you what you are today, have the right to joke about you, and it should not offend you,” he says.

However, some celebs think otherwise. Ayushmann Khurrana, says, “There are times when there are no opinions on the site, but just trolls. They thrive on celeb bashing. It takes a lot to speak from the heart, and then there will be those who will ensure that the true words don’t exist... the only way further is mutual respect,” says the actor.