This week, the biggest tea party on Indian Instagram was spawned by a Varun Dhawan song.
It started with a video of a young man, Shaurya Mishra, dancing for his girlfriend to the song ‘Palat’ in a movie theatre during a rerun of Dhawan’s Main Tera Hero (2014), of all films. As declarations of love go, this was a big one — arms stretched, down-on-the-knees variety — in front of a young woman. Many on Instagram went “awwww”.“God I see what you are doing with other people,” read the yellow text on the first reel from the scene, posted by @panktipvtt. She wanted a boyfriend like Mishra, too.
A sea of videos soon flooded Instagram, each from a different angle and a different part of what looked like an elaborate dance routine. The women in the comments had found a real hero, a true green flag. Mishra had raised the bar for their potential partners. For the men, the boy needed lessons in masculinity: some posted elaborate workout tips, while other enlightened individuals stuck to slurs used against gay men.And then the teapot opened.After Mishra’s videos went viral, an anonymous account, @audacityofmen_, began posting reels of Instagram DMs and Hinge screenshots, offering them as proof that the young man had been sending less-than-innocent — at times, relentless — texts to other women until at least a few weeks ago. It opened the floodgates to other videos, where Mishra was seen serenading various young women with his dance moves. “Never trust men” was the chorus in the comments. The perfect boyfriend everyone was gushing about just had a standard routine, and he was using that on many women. He went from Main Tera Hero to Kalank in a matter of hours. In the Viral Spiral of Instagram’s callout culture, ‘fame’ comes with the counterweight of downfall. Most microcelebs get at least a week in the sun. Unluckily for Mishra, his downfall came within days of the first taste of virality. The content creator, who now has a brand manager, posted two videos on Monday responding to the backlash.“That moment, it’s kind of our first date,” Mishra said in a video, clarifying that he wasn’t technically cheating. He’s just a man of grand gestures (and mediocre dance moves).In his videos, Mishra consistently referred to @audacityofmen_ as “didi”, and said all was well with his new girlfriend. She knows about all the girls, “all 10, 20, 50 of them,” he added.In the second reel, he addressed the anonymous @audacityofmen_, presumably a woman he had been texting on Hinge or Instagram. “When I was texting you, you weren’t replying. Now I have fame, you want to expose me,” he said in another reel. Don’t be surprised if you find him on Splitsvilla next season — provided his management wings this right. That’s how 15-minutes-of-fame works in the social media era. You need to keep refreshing the window if you want to remain relevant. A tale from Indian academia
