Daily Times

Bollywood actor-turned-writer Twinkle Khanna and wife of Akshay Kumar, has often been trolled on social media for her bold statements. She never minces her words while voicing opinions on social media and often pays the price for it too. Twinkle, however, has said social media trolls are like cockroaches and labelled people who take them seriously as ‘foolish’.

“They come along and they do that to everybody and people who take trolls seriously, I’d rather say they are foolish. Trolls are like cockroaches, once in a while, you spray hit on them and get them out of the way and you go on,” she said during a panel discussion ‘Social Media Trolling on Social Platforms that was organised for forthcoming OSM Awards.

“I do look at criticism and examine it carefully as sometimes it is valid and it always tells me about the world around me,” said Twinkla Khana.

Eminent personalities, including Twinkle Khanna, Gul Panag, Jose Cavaco, Malini Agarwal and Tanmay Bhat hosted the OSM Outlook Social Media Awards Jury Panel discussion.

People from film and media industries, digital platform, culinary, fashion, politics, sports, among others, have been nominated under various categories.

Gul Panag has also been targeted several times on social media. Her political allegiance and strong viewpoint have attracted many threats. Talking about online trolls and dealing with them, Gul said, “The moment you take a position, you set yourself up for an attack; either from people, who disagree with you or people who just don’t like the fact that you have taken a position because traditionally women, especially those who belong to film industry, are not entitled to have an opinion. A woman having an opinion was discouraged outside and within the industry, but it is changing now.”

Celebrities, including Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Varun Dhawan, Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Diljit Dosanjh, Karan Johar, among others have been nominated in 2018 edition of the awards.

The award ceremony would commence on April 20.

Published in Daily Times, April 11^th 2018.