Jaaved Jaaferi calls daughter Alaviaa’s profession ‘timepass’, says, ‘Gandhiji is a real influencer’

Actor Jaaved Jaaferi did not hold back while voicing his thoughts on ‘influencer culture’ when he appeared on the Prime Video reality show The Tribe, which featured his daughter, Alaviaa Jaaferi. Alaviaa is an influencer with over 350k followers on Instagram, but her father mocked her profession on the show. Now, in a recent interview, Jaaved said that true influencers are people like Mahatma Gandhi, and he does not understand the appeal of social media influencers, nor does he understand what value they are adding to people’s lives.

He shared with Humans of Bombay that his comments on The Tribe were meant to be “tongue in cheek,” and said that he sees some “atrocious things” online. He admitted that he can understand someone from a small town seeking validation online. “I see some stuff like, someone from a village, who lives in a small hut, they are trying to do something. I understand where they are coming from. They need some validation. That they are getting a chance to get out of their suffocating life. I see someone dancing in a weird way but I understand where they are coming from and it’s emotional also because I know they are living a very difficult life. There is no appreciation and they are looking for some kind of validation. Everyone is not into it for the monetisation,” he said.

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Jaaved then spoke about the social impact of influencers. “But what is it actually? You turn around and your outfit changes. And then you are lip-syncing a song. You should create something original. There are people dancing, singing, doing martial arts, but all of this timepass. We are consuming so much mediocrity that we are turning mediocre. It’s actually hyponisting you and it becomes an addiction. People are just looking and consuming and it’s all nonsense. What is an influencer? An influencer is someone like Gandhi, who influences you to do certain things in your life,” he said.

He said that certain actors, like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, can influence trends, but, he insisted, “The bigger influencers are people like Mandela or Gandhiji.” He said that the ones using it for online fame and using the word in a “frivolous” sense and added, “To each his own. People trip on different things.”