The price of the prejudiced fan

Success brings popularity, undoubtedly. But today, social media plays a huge role in helping stars connect directly with their die-hard fans. However, as is the case with all media, anti-social elements always threaten the sanctity of this medium. There have been many recent incidents that bring to light how actresses are soft targets to be preyed upon by some anti-social fans. Such behaviour can sometimes even lead to serious consequences. The recent victims of such unsocial incidents were Sangeetha Bhat, Sruthi Hariharan and Nithya Ram. A worrying aspect of fame, online harassment by fans has created unpleasantness for all these actresses. Bengaluru Chronicle reports on how the pretty ladies of Sandalwood took matter into their own hands to unmask the real culprits.

Actress Sangeetha Bhat, who celebrated her birthday on Tuesday, has had a great year with the success of Eradane Sala and now awaits the release of Dayavittu Gamanisi and her next venture with director KM Chaitanya, has not let the online harassment dampen her spirit. She even managed to expose the person, and the culprit vanished.

She recently posted a message on her social networking site expressing concern over being stalked by someone who was posting messages, “I kept getting messages from an account asking me to send photos of me in a bikini.  I blocked it, reported it to Instagram. However, the same happened on my Facebook account too. I wonder how some girl can message another girl like this. I don’t know if the profile is real or fake but someone should take action. This is not how actors should be treated. We are human beings too.”
The actress then posted a message as a warning to her other Facebook users, but did not file a complaint with the cyber police.

Sruthi Hariharan was also a victim of such pranks and a complaint was filed with the cyber police after her image was morphed and posted on various social sites. She stated that her image and that of the other actors was morphed, and posted on various websites. According to the police who investigating the matter, someone had opened Facebook accounts in the name of the actress and had published indecent pictures after morphing her image.

Nithya Ram, another actress, Rachitha Ram’s elder sister faced a different kind of threat — a person who called himself her fan posted obscene photos. “A person with the profile name Gautham dared to send me obscene images and calls himself my FAN. I let everyone know that I wouldn’t encourage such activities. This is to let him know that he cannot get away with such lewd behaviour. I have some lovely people messaging me every day, and I feel happy at the love and support my fans bestow upon me. I hope people like him learn their lesson and get more responsible and understand that we are celebrities, and above all women, and we want to live with dignity. I hope people like these get more responsible in life,” Nithya wrote on her FB account. While she dared the person not to repeat the act, she chose to give him another chance as well.