Extraordinary lives of tweleb-eratis

Celebrities with a fan following from the city aren’t restricted to actors anymore. There’s a new line of celebrities who are winning hearts and minds with their wit, humour and catchy phrases all within 140 characters. Known as ‘twelebs’, a term for Twitter Celebs, these people are regular people with day jobs and very much among the crowd. 

With their many thousand follower counts, they have informed and entertained people over the years. Their tweets make it regularly on most people’s timeline, retweeted by their dedicated and large fan followings, and help shape public opinion on the Internet. “The public acknowledgement can get a little hilarious at times. 

For instance, I had been an ardent fan of Sanjay Subramanian and at one of his concerts, I tried to introduce myself as the one follower he had followed back. He was unable to recognise me until I mentioned my twitter-handle!” opines 27-year-old Nikhil Jois, a city-based entrepreneur with a follower count of almost 5,000. 

City-based Sandhya Ramesh has a whopping follower count of over 15,000 followers. Known for her witty remarks and unique science fact tweets daily, she also happens to be an astro-geo scientist. She has worked as a consultant for TeamIndus, India’s first private mission to the moon under the Google Lunar XPRIZE. When asked when or how does she manage to find the time to tweet and if she tweets at work, Sandhya says, “Yes, sometimes I take little breaks from work to check my Twitter. I would say it’s therapeutic, but the prerequisites to be considered factual and legit has turned extremely negative over the years. So sometimes I counter myself and stay away from twitter on purpose!”

Having a large number of followers does come in handy when looking to find people to work with or even create a database of talented people. Yet, these people are often different from their online personas in real life. “Behind the masquerade of a twitter handle and a profile picture, you’re a lot more guarded. The lack of identity gives you a certain kind of confidence,” claims Suvendu Das, whose account gives out practically no information about his identity. From jokes to memes, his 23,000 follower count gives the classic millennial vibe, when in reality he is an accountant and a very new parent too. 

They aren’t the Bollywood bombs or sports stars. They are common, everyday folk who have no claim to fan followings other than their quick wit. Behind all the jokes and thought provocations that stream from these nameless, faceless entities, they are regular people with regular jobs. “We go to office like normal folk, no matter how unreal our tweets might seem,” quips Pallavi.