Chinmayi gets embroiled in ugly ‘fan war’

 

It all started with actor R. Madhavan posting an endearing picture of him with his father and son, captioned “Thala Avinyavattam 3 generation. Gods Grace” with reference to the traditional Brahmin ritual. Taking offense (!) to this harmless post, a fan of Ajith, completely misunderstanding the relevance, responded, “Don’t use Thala for anything you like, it’s one and only for Thala Ajith sir. Warn yourself and correct it.”

 

The offended ‘fan’ clearly didn’t understand the context of the statement which bore absolutely no connection to Ajith’s popular nickname, and sure enough, the silly comment soon

became a meme that went viral— which Chinmayi presumably found amusing, and decided to share.

 

 

But what happened next was another stunning example of how nasty Twitter can get over the most illogical issues, as the singer found herself suddenly in the middle of a ‘fan war’ for apparently insulting actor Ajith’s legacy! 

From death/acid attack threats and misogynistic/ explicit abuses, Chinmayi’s Twitter feed was spammed by so-called ‘hardcore fans’ standing up for their favourite actor — who threatened the singer to delete the post and apologise, or face the consequences. 

 

But far from being nervous, Chinmayi managed to hack down her attackers with choice replies. In a deeply evocative Facebook post on her page, she reacts to the incident — “One of the biggest maladies of social media today is the ‘fan war’. If you are perceived to be for/against an actor you must be prepared for an onslaught, one way or the other. There are a lot of people waiting to take offence on behalf of their favourite stars (most often male) and go on a spree of abuse in an attempt to get even.”It must be mentioned that many celebrities nowadays make it a point to address this topic. 

 

Chinmayi adds, “I was at an event where a life coach said ‘Be inspired but don’t worship’. Take this for an example — I shared a Whatsapp forward (harmless in my opinion). It was one of those memes and I shared it in jest. There were other (Mr.) Ajith fans who laughed along and forgot about it. But a greater number sprung up to abuse. I choose one example, a doctor; a married man with a daughter, who would be happy to call another woman a slut just because his feelings were hurt due to a perceived insult to his favourite star.”

 

But she’s quick to clarify that she doesn’t feel victimised because this has happened time and again — “All it takes is for someone like me to tweet ‘I loved the trailer of Kaththi’ and out came the trolls to abuse. I am not sure if men are abused like women are on social media on similar incidents.” Many fellow actors came forward to support her by tweeting their absolute shock at the episode, most notably husband Rahul Ravindran and close friend Samantha Ruth Prabhu.