Saw a really bad movie that made you cringe and want to vent out on Twitter? Be careful, cause if you’re a woman you can get attacked by over 30,000 people calling you sexist sh*t for having an opinion.
Dhanya Rajendran, a journalist and editor-in-chief of The News Minute, went through the same when she criticised Shah Rukh Khan’s latest film, Jab Harry Met Sejal (JHMS) by calling it worse than Tamil superstar Vijay’s film Sura.
JHMS, which has been unanimously decried by critics and the public, reminded Rajendran of Vijay’s Sura from seven years ago.
Vijay’s fans began mudslinging at the journalist and calling her names. They dug up her old tweets to claim that she has always “attacked” Vijay. Even though she said Vijay’s film was the better one, but ah, trolls.
The journalist has since deleted the tweet as she did not want to engage with trolls, but they were not the variety to relent.
What followed is utter imbecility.
Obviously, a woman voicing her opinion must be shown her place by internet strangers by making up scenarios of her personal and sexual life. Obviously.
The trolls didn’t even stop there as they began trending the hashtag #PubliticyBeepDhanya in a planned manner.
On Tuesday, she lodged a police complaint in Chennai. In her complaint, she said that apart from the sexually abusive messages, some fans even threatened to “pay her a visit”.
As per the complaint, the abusive trolling began on Friday soon after her tweet on the movie. “The tweet was an opinion without being rude or abusive. Immediately, what followed was a spate of abusive, personal, sexual, threatening tweets,” read the complaint.
By Sunday evening the trolling had become organised slander and sexually abusive by people claiming to be actor Vijay’s fans. A twitter handle – @kettavanmemes – started a malicious online campaign against the journalist, by creating a hashtag #PublicityBeepDhanya.
“This was followed by a series of abusive tweets, targeting me, my husband, my colleagues and friends… Some of these members also misused my profile picture and morphed my pictures in an inappropriate manner,” read the Dhanya’s complaint.
Some of the Twitter users, who were behind this online harassment involving over 60,000 tweets, have been identified by her, in her complaint . “Some persons claiming to be Vijay fans also threatened to visit my office and "see me". And some of them have threatened to attack me with stones and physically harm me,” read her account of the events.
Her complaint also named four twitter handles – @ram8059, @kattimaran , @kettavanmemes and @just_ramji_off – who instigated the organised sexual harassment campaign against her.
As the trolling reached its peak, some people started a hashtag to support Rajendran.
Rajendran to The Quint about non-stop trolling
The trolling lasted for three days and is going on. Almost every abuse in Tamil was used, but almost all of those abuses were sexually colored. I have been called thevediya (prostitute), punda (p***y), motta punda (shaved p***y) and many other things. I have been asked to upload my nude videos and whether I am giving blowjobs to those supporting me. Men who stood up for me were called ‘Mangina’, women have been trolled too.
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