Twitterstorms are rarely as significant as they seem

When I joined Twitter in 2009, I did so to follow a girl in my school. Since I scarcely knew her in real life, or even talked to her, I thought that Twitter would do the trick. Turns out that she was not active here. But I stayed put, fell in love with the platform, and watched it grow. Twitter is my online home. It is where I have met quite a lot of wonderful people and some cool friends. But Twitter is not just a personal interconnection device. For many, it is at the heart of a massive propaganda and narrative building exercise, and vicious politics. We saw an example of the toxic power that users of this platform wield just recently.

#BoycottTanishq has trended multiple times on Twitter ever since the brand’s ‘Ekatvam” advertisement that featured an interfaith union. Soon, the online trolling campaign against Tanishq turned into the targeted harassment of its employees, some of it aimed at Muslims among them.

Tanishq finally pulled the commercial down, “keeping in mind the hurt sentiments and well-being of our employees, partners and store staff”. But whose sentiments got hurt here? How many of them were there?