Kangana Ranaut fans were in for a surprise on August 21 as the actress announced her arrival on
Twitter. And within 10 days of her debut on the micro-blogging site, Kangana clocked 1 million followers. In an exclusive interaction with ETimes, the actress opened up about her tryst with social media, how she deals with trolls and all things Twitter. Excerpts from the interview:
Kangana, for so long you were present on social media through Rangoli’s tweets and she would speak on your behalf, you also had a team Kangana handle, what made you join Twitter? It was not that I was present through Rangoli. But she just felt enormously helpless for my absence on social media so she used to come out and defend me or respond from my side due to multiple misconceptions, rumours, attacks and there was no clarity on who I am. There was so much fake news around, so Rangoli used to tell me that am going to write this, but not on my behalf. Especially after
Manikarnika
, when the environment had become so toxic and the way people were trying to sabotage the film, it was out of frustration that she came into this thing. She was keeping me in the loop but I won't call her my representative. People started to complain because she was so upfront and cases were being filed against her which even made me a little scared for her. She's on Instagram now but not Twitter because she gets very aggressive. My team handled it only specifically for my work and talked strictly about my films. What made me join Twitter is the fact that right now, for the first time I saw a transformation in social media. It became more purpose-oriented rather than just trying to propagate yourself or your brand. It's an enormous time investment even if you nurture a relationship with millions of people. You built a certain voice in such a loud place. Most actors use it to just glorify themselves and I never felt the need to do that as I thought that my work should glorify me.
What does the 1 million mark mean to you?I just came in August. I changed the (handle) name, and since then, it has been a very encouraging and supportive trend every day. A million means more the merrier as it's a medium that you just want to expand.
You expressed concern over your number of followers dropping, can you speak on that? Twitter is not very supportive of people who support nationalism. It's very encouraging to people who promote communism and the ones who are more left-leaning. A lot of people suffer from this kind of prejudice on Twitter and have complained about it. I hope that we have our own platform where world politics won't affect or influence.
Social media can be a very toxic place, how do you plan to deal with the trolls? There are all kinds of people and at times you do feel disoriented. There is a word limit, so the way you want to express yourself, gets limited due to the medium. Many people struggle with your perspective as they come from a certain level of understanding. Everyone wants to talk about everything and most of them don't want you to talk about anything other than films. At times it can get very chaotic, can make it difficult for your own voice to be heard and at times you may feel unheard. The purpose of social media is to open up about other's perspective and value others as well. I am not an expert yet but am sure I'll crack it like everything else in my life. But right now I am just finding my way and learning to manoeuvre it.
A lot of Bollywood
actors had restricted their accounts and social media engagement in the middle of the Sushant Singh death news, what do you have to say to that ? People are aware and they want to know about the film industry and what is happening inside it. So people seek answers from those who belong to the industry. I feel it's the pressure, if they (Bollywood actors) speak about the gangs then they will be out to get them and if not, then the people are already out there to get them. I think they are in a bit of s conflict and like everything else they shall too find their peace.
Hypothetically, if you had the chance to take over one celebrity’s Twitter Account for a day who would you choose and what would you do? Honestly, I didn't have the excitement of having my own account for the longest time. In so many years, I have come on Twitter so I am really excited about my own account. Maybe, Jack (Dorsey) from Twitter so that I could hack his account and restructure the rules of Twitter and make it more interactive and India friendly.