Twitter's Ugly Trolls

<div>When you talk about Twitter today, you see one side of the picture. The side that’s given ordinary citizens a voice, the part that has made customer truly the king, the we-won’t-take-this-lying-down aspect that has governments worried. It’s on Twitter that outrage became a verb, allowing anyone to speak their mind.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Or did it? While governments, CEOs of companies large and small and customer service departments may have adapted to the idea of netizens having the right to express their opinions, the “trolls” haven’t.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Express a religious view one way or the other and you’ll attract a spate of accusatory comments, practically abusing you for daring to have a view at all. You’re either for us or deserve to be dead, seems to be the message.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 200px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/mala-bhargava-mdm.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 200px; margin: 1px; float: right;"></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Mala Bhargava</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>As someone who watched social media take root from the very beginning and had great hopes for how it would transform society for the better, I find it unsettling that it has also exposed, belly up, &nbsp;the ugly side of society. And this has been amply demonstrated in the recent case of the &nbsp;SelfieWithDaughter campaign taken up by none other than the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It will take much more than a Twitter hashtag and people posting photos with their daughters to even put a dent in the gender inequality that seems to have become apparent afresh in the country, but the campaign would have at least done no harm. It’s a message, a small gesture of support. But it’s the Prime Minister’s own professed followers who negated the gesture.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>If you missed it, look for Kavita Krishnan on Twitter and her timeline. You’ll soon encounter vicious verbal attacks on her, calling for her to be gangraped, suggesting she was ‘retarded’ and should not have been allowed to be born, and other shockingly disturbing comments. Actor Alok Nath lost his cool and was first off the mark to abuse Ms Krishnan. The attack gathered enough momentum to have become a trending topic rather quickly and it stayed there for at least a day.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Kavita Krishnan’s crime? She believed the SelfieWihDaughter campaign to be rather hollow and she made a reference to the expose the PM’s alleged stalking of a young woman, popularly referred to as Sahebgate or Snoopgate. Ms Krishnan did not refer to something that was not known. She wasn’t polite, not at all. Yet, the attack on her was out of proportion prompt, intense, and widespread. There was a similar attack on actress Shruti Seth who suggested the Prime Minister leave aside selfies and try some reform.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Ironically, the trolling attacks come from those who purport to be supporters of the Prime Minister and the BJP. In one fell swoop, their attack had the effect of derailing the Twitter campaign as the abuse began to assume a greater traction than the selfie surge. It’s dying down now, but not without leaving any Twitter user with a bad taste and the distinct feeling that social media isn’t that wonderful after all.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It’s obvious that users of social networking are as quick to unleash malintent as they are to participate in positive change. In the end, the trolls who tried to defend the Prime Minister and the SelfieWithDaughter campaign only laid out before us just how widespread the intolerance for women and their opinions is in India, cutting across all social levels.</div><div>&nbsp;</div>