Who hates the haters now?

Online trolls used to terrify influencers. Now, hate is hardly a surprise. It's a sign of engagement, real viewers; a chance to clap back and wield power. Take a look

- Urvee Modwel

Tom Holland has haters; Julie Andrews too. There are people out there with enough time on their hands to express their dislike of Robin Williams and Chadwick Boseman, even years after they've died. Most public opinion about Arpita Khan, Salman Khan's younger sister, paints her as unworthy of her brother's adoration. Check the comments under Greta Thunberg's older posts: It's teeming with grown men spewing hate at a young woman. Pran, who played villains in films from the '60s to the '90s, was so reviled, his very name dropped out of favour among Hindu families.

He passed away in 2013, and missed the wave of anonymous trolls. Content creator Srishti Garg (@SrishtiGargg), on the other hand, faces them every day. On Instagram, some 427K users follow her lighthearted observations about the everyday life. Not all of them are nice. "I get hate about my crooked smile, how I am too cringe," she says.

Nissi Rufus, a psychologist at the Asha Neuromodulation Clinic in Hyderabad, says that high-impact, low-accountability world of the internet emboldens and amplifies even mild dislike. "It's an echo chamber," she says.

But hate itself is changing. Negativity isn't just normalised now, it's expected, processed, valued and wielded like a badge. Love still trumps hate. But hate's turning out to be a trump card of its own.

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