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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

The pleasure of watching an Instagram downfall and cancel culture

You can dismiss the bottomless teapot as a symptom of the meme economy. Everything is content, and everyone wants their share of the pie. But it comes from a (slightly) deeper place.

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........

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