Umran Hussain
People of Kashmir, though known for their kind heartedness and hospitality are also known for their mercurial nature when it comes to judging their own artists and stars of the valley.
In recent times, Kashmir has seen the number of authors swelling up particularly teenagers who use social media platforms to promote their books. Those teenage authors especially girls inspite of working hard to achieve the feat of penning down a book are not encouraged by the netizens in Kashmir, instead they are bombarded with a barrage of phrases and quotations, taunts and jibes.
Internet users particularly have been targeting the young authors for being “good for nothing” and call them useless, self promoted authors who copy the things from various books and pay the local publishers to get their books published.
Let alone the praise and appreciation, bags full of abuses in the comment section of such videos and blogs is irresistible and discouraging to such young authors.
One such female author in her early twenties after publishing a book of about 250 pages after featuring in an interview on our Facebook page (The Kashmir Radar) requested us to deleted the story because instead of some encouraging words, people started called her a looser for paying the publisher to publish the book with no valuable content. In addition to this Facebook users had trolled and ruthlessly abused her.
Talking about other social media influencers of the valley like Musaib Bashir, Kral Koor, Laila Qureshi, RapKid Arafat and hundreds of other influencers too face the online abuse and brutality by social media trolls of the valley who always can be seen criticizing them for one reason or the other.
Saima Shafi Aka Karl Koor whose all social media handles now stand verified for her exceptional hard work of reviving pottery in Kashmir had to Lodge an FIR against certain trolls who threatened her and abused her continuously. It was her fearlesness and valor that later motivated her to call them out and expose their unacceptable behaviour and actions.
Musaib Bashir, Kashmir’s new age comedian who spreads smiles all across the valley too is the victim of unnecessary criticism. Netizens make fun of what he does intentionally for the betterment of depressed masses in the valley.
Rapkid Arafat, a 4th class student isn’t spared either. Trolls are the first ones to comment on his RapSongs and lash out at him by dragging religion into what he does. This ten year old boy from Pulwama is winning millions of hearts by his rap songs. Some of his songs were used as fodder by some controversial self styled roasters in the valley which later had a huge impact on his performance.
Laila Qureshi, a well known Psychologist and a Mental Health Counselor working tirelessly to help hundreds of patients to come out of depression, solving domestic abuse cases and working for Drug De-ediction in the valley was recently trolled for claiming to be “representing Kashmir” in one of her interviews but on the other hand was tagged as “The Daughter of Kashmir” when in one of her videos she spoke of certain things that hit the positive strands of K-internet users.
Hypocrisy, sanctimony defines our people when it comes to disliking others likes and liking what others may dislike.
It is high time for our people to come out of the stinking cocoon’s and behave as civilized people without poking their noses into others businesse’s.
