“Don’t keep calm and overreact.” This probably sums up why regular wars often take place in the form of trolls on social media. When something like the name of Kareena and Saif Ali Khan’s son can be a rage on Twitter, one prefers to keep silent and never go online, rather than posting anything on social media — a platform which was supposed to make users feel liberated and a part of democracy.
Troll Training Centre (TTC) — a video posted by Vipra Dialogues, a Delhi-based digital marketing, production and filmmaking venture — recently went viral. It’s a satirical take on trollers and meme-makers on social media, showing how one needs to ignore logic, critical thinking and knowledge, and think “out of the box” for trolling people on social media platforms. “Today, social media has become such a hideous platform that even if a personal status on a person’s profile is right-wing or left-wing, their friends would thrash them with trolls and comments in sheer disagreement,” says Himanshu Shekhar, editor-in- chief, Vipra Dialogues.
Manu Kapoor is shown as the founder of TTC, a place where all the popular trolls are created. “There are a lot of talented people in India. Ten out of six people are frustrated here. And my vision of making TTC successful was to tap all these frustrated people,” says Manu referring to the people he has employed for TTC. “I know that to argue is my birthright and every argument needs a comeback and we provide them. But tell me who wins the argument? Not the one who is logical, it is the one who gets blocked first,” adds Kapur. So, according to Manu, the secret to successfully troll people comes from hiring frustrated employees. The video, according to Himanshu, was an attempt to show how this online trolling and thrashing people for expressing their views in public has shifted offline and happens to him in real life as well. “There have been times when I was in a seminar, and even before I could reach my point, people labelled me a ‘bhakt’ or a hater. And the fact that these people are able to escape so easily, gives them more liberty to be unreasonable,” says Himanshu.
The video, he says, is also inspired by veteran journalist Ravish Kumar’s show titled Saval pe saval hai, which was a theatrical presentation of how people are silenced and refused to ask questions in a democracy. “It is sad that people feel compelled to leave social media because of all these trolls,” says Himanshu.
Ironically, TTC video has not faced much trolling till now. “Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Dadlani have tweeted the video and I feel it has not been trolled because we haven’t taken any political sides in it,” explains Himanshu.
