Tejasvi Surya, Arvind Kejriwal, Smriti Irani learned Twitter karma can be such a glitch

Twitteratis dig out people’s old embarrassing tweets. To escape humiliation, many delete the offending post, but forget that screenshots live forever.

File photo of BJP leader Tejasvi Surya | @Tejasvi_Surya/ Twitter

BJP MP Tejasvi Surya just joined the list of Hollywood celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Kevin Hart James Gunn, countless athletes and many more famous personas. They have all been hit with a boomerang from their past – a homophobic comment, a post using bullying language, a racist rant. They have all been punished by Twitter karma. And Twitter karma has long been BJP IT Cell’s monopoly game. Well, what goes around, comes around too.

Surya is the latest target of Twitterati’s knack for digital digging – and for good reason. In 2015, the Karnataka MP had said, “95 % of Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years! Every mother has produced kids as an act of sex and not love.” He deleted the tweet but as you must’ve guessed – the world of screenshots is vast and inescapable. In the last three days, Surya has faced a visceral social media backlash from Gulf countries and calls for his arrest. A UAE royal princess even responded saying the statement wouldn’t go “unnoticed”.

You might call this karma or just desserts considering how quick Surya has been at making inflammatory statements about “Mughal rule” returning to India and the like.

The call-out culture

It’s become a bit of a familiar ritual now. The call-out culture digs out their old embarrassing tweets. They endure online humiliation for a few days and end up issuing a heartfelt apology. The offending post is deleted. But screenshots live forever. Surya has been silent so far but given his frequent trysts with controversy and bigotry, I wouldn’t bank on a public apology.

The whole debacle points to one fact: if you’re in the public eye, you’d best spring clean your digital footprint. Else, don’t be surprised when Twitter unearths something unsavoury from your virtual closet of skeletons. The internet never forgets and karma can be such a glitch – in PR strategy.

What goes around, comes around

It’s not always an offensive tweet. Sometimes, Twitter karma works in other ways too. You tweet to expose a person’s hypocrisy or make them the butt of a joke in another time. But later when the context changes, you may find yourself in the same situation.

Take Union Minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani’s tweet from 2010 about onions. It read: “Income Tax department is keeping a watch on all high-value transactions… don’t buy onions :-).” This was reportedly an attempt to troll the then Congress government. But when onion prices surged in late 2019, the nine-year-old tweet resurfaced and the internet was in splits. Some were less amused, and in fact asked her why she wasn’t vocal about the troubles of the common man anymore.

Sometimes, silence is enough to awaken the Twitter karma kraken. In February 2020, Reddit India recalled one of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s old tweet with the caption: “Dear Mr. Chief Minister, the internet doesn’t forget.” Below was Kejriwal’s 2013 tweet where he called Delhi CM Sheila Dixit “helpless” for saying she couldn’t control rape culture in Delhi as the police were not under her control. When the mufflerman used the same excuse to defend his inability to intervene in the recent Delhi riots, Reddit was quick to call him out.

Karma spares none

Another facet of Twitter karma is that it spares nobody, not even heads of IT cells. In January this year, users dug out a cringey tweet of BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya’s from 2012 in which he asked whether watching porn was illegal. The “just asking” at the end in his tweet was a nice amateur touch. However, unlike most people, Malviya has not deleted the tweet.

Is watching porn illegal ? Just asking.

— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) February 7, 2012

 

But, Malviya did delete the numerous tweets about “very hot girls” in which he weirdly sounded like a bot. Indian YouTuber and activist Dhruv Rathee shared screenshots of the old tweets which spread like wildfire through Twitter.

Some old tweets of BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya

? pic.twitter.com/Y60P4BczX5

— Dhruv Rathee ?? (@dhruv_rathee) January 19, 2020

 

You can think of Twitter karma as virtual paparazzi, catching you at your worst. Or you can look at it as the price of free speech but really, should there not be a price of sharing your every waking thought with the whole world, especially when it’s so obviously been made out of anger or ignorance or schadenfreude?

Views are personal.