Twitter tittle-tattle

Twitter has made it easy for fans to follow and communicate with their favourite stars. But what if the same followers go to the extent of making unflattering comments and spreading hostile rumours about them? In some cases, Twitter even killed and humiliated the stars!

Probably the most famous ‘trend’ was Alok Nath, the grand patriarch of Bollywood. A tweet that said “Our nation only learnt about heart attacks because of Alok Nath,” was how it all began, and slowly, overnight, he was trending all over the nation. “When you type Alok nath on Google search, "I'm feeling Lucky" changes to "I'm feeling Sanskari" :-P,”was another tweet. Interestingly, when Alok Nath heard of the trend, he went ahead and released a rap video making fun of the whole incident.

Then was actor Neil Nitin Mukesh who seemed amused with tweets like – “Neil Nitin Mukesh can do but SRK or Salman can't. Group discussion with himself.” Another one was “Ekta Kapoor started that "Nahi...nahi...nahi" in her daily soaps after she met Neil Nitin Mukesh.”–wrote on the site, “Seriously laughing that I am trending...some rather interesting ones out there.”

Then the recent was a spin on Yami Gautam, who is the brand ambassador of ‘Fair & Lovely’. With tweets like, “America's White House is a tribute to Yami Gautam”, “Doctors are recommending kids to stare at Yami Gautam pics to prevent vitamin D deficiency in them. #YamiGautam”, “Swiss Bank has Black Money. Other banks have Yami Gautam Money.”and 'Humans have two types of blood cells: 1) Red Blood cells 2) Yami Gautam blood cells', she became an instant trend on Twitter. People used her name as a synonym for words like ‘bulb’, ‘bright’, ‘snow’, ‘fair’ and anything white.

Yes. All that was funny. Very funny, in fact! However, like the fact that everything has a good and bad side to it, this fad for following ‘trends’ is proving to be a total menace as Twitterati aren’t hesitating to write unflattering and abusive words for the celebs!

While celebrities understand that being part of the industry constantly puts them under the spotlight, one can’t stop wondering whether they deserve all this. The desire to be part of a trend and sometimes the ‘minutes of fame’ that could hover over you due to starting a trend is one reason why many are doing so.

A recent example is the death of veteran actress Nanda. While there were thousands of people paying their tributes to her, there was some parallel news that started to circulate among the ‘Tweeple’.

Legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar was startled to hear that she was dead, and no points for guessing where the news came from! "Namaskar. Meri tabiyat ke baare mein afwaayein phail rahi hai. Par aap sab ka pyar aur duaaien hain ke meri tabiyat bilkul thik hai (There are rumours regarding my health. But thanks to your wishes, I am fine," she clarified. Director Madhur Bhandarkar also confirmed the same and tweeted, “Just spoke to @mangeshkarlata. Lata Didi is hale and hearty. So please stop spreading baseless rumors."

While the news was slowly being put to rest, the next day came as a rude shock again when the news of the death of another veteran actress Asha Parekh started to spread like wildfire again. While the news caught up with other well-known faces like journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and former cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar too, and they even tweeted their condolences. But when they realized that the news was untrue, Rajdeep tweeted:"Deep apologies; now told my info on Ms Parekh passing away is wrong. Picked it up from a tweet. Apologies to all and esp to her". Sanjay Manjrekar also apologised on his account and wrote "Sincerest apology to Ms Parekh..won't trust one news source anymore...imp lesson learnt".

We knew Twitter helps celebrities get some mileage, but who knew it could kill and humiliate them too?