By Aishwarya Prakash
Aishwarya Lekshmi, one of South India’s most celebrated actors, recently quit social media; she had over three million followers. Her exit made headlines, yet the subtext is easy to miss. In an age where a massive online following is arguably the greatest currency, why would a star walk away from the fame she so meticulously built?
Platforms that once offered candid glimpses into a celebrity’s personality have become carefully managed stages. Even before AI and deepfakes, it was hard to tell the real from the curated. Only a handful still offer spontaneity: Amitabh Bachchan posts freely, while Shah Rukh Khan shares rare, controlled candour during his Ask Me Anything sessions. While stalwarts can afford these luxuries, most have PR teams scripting every move, leaving little room for authenticity. As Lekshmi noted in her farewell message, social media was meant to work for celebrities, but somewhere along the way, they began working for it.
Living under this gaze is exhausting. Like Lekshmi, many stars step back or reboot their online presence. Selena Gomez, one of Instagram’s most-followed women, has quit the platform multiple times, citing its toll on her mental health. Tellingly, most who withdraw are women, judged not just for their work but also for appearances, personal choices, and life milestones like marriage and pregnancy.
This pressure to constantly perform for the feed leads to a bigger question: What happens when stars refuse to conform?
Can celebrities really be blamed for their obsessively curated online persona? Hardly. Audiences are just as complicit, demanding not moral accountability but conformity, often only to the loudest voices. And the punishment is swift and merciless: Trolling, violent threats, misogynistic abuse, and mass unfollows that can tank careers overnight. One slip up, one unpopular choice, and the mob is ready to ship you off to the neverland of the “cancelled”.
Take Tripti Dimri. Once the darling of the niche art-film crowd for Qala and Bulbbul, she was branded a “sell-out” for daring to act in mainstream masala films, particularly the much-criticised Animal. Just as quickly, she was welcomed back after signing Dhadak 2, a film the internet deemed “important”.
This surveillance doesn’t stop at work. Samantha’s divorce turned into national entertainment; her personal life was dissected in excruciating detail. The judgement is rarely about right or wrong; it is about women failing to play the roles audiences script for them.
With millions at stake, can we really be surprised that celebrities curate every breath they take? We say we want them to be “real”, but the moment they are, we punish them for it. If we can’t allow them to err, experiment, or disagree, can we honestly claim to want authenticity?
Unlike traditional media, online spaces have no editorial checks. Anyone can post anything, often anonymously, with little accountability. This can feel liberating, but it also means losing control over narratives for those being discussed. Entire YouTube channels are dedicated to dissecting every snippet of dialogue, every celebrity photo. A few casual remarks by Alia Bhatt, for example, were taken out of context and circulated widely, framing her as trapped in a toxic relationship and leaving her no control over her story. Deepika Padukone faced relentless commentary about her pregnancy based on a few pictures, with trolls claiming she didn’t “look pregnant enough”, forcing her to publicly address and defend a private experience.
Scrutiny is relentless, yet stepping away does not guarantee relief. Lekshmi wrote that by quitting social media she “takes the risk of being forgotten”. Yet the greater risk may be being “misremembered”. Quitting does not make the platforms let go. With paparazzi tracking every move and anonymous Reddit threads claiming to reveal deep secrets, an online persona is one of the few spaces where a celebrity retains even a sliver of control. By willingly surrendering even this, Lekshmi has signalled just how exhausting constant engagement must have been.
In an age when only the loudest voices online are heard, control over our own story is never guaranteed.
Online platforms are often called “fourth spaces”: Realms beyond work, home, or leisure where people can shape their identities and interact on their terms. In theory, these spaces are liberating, letting users experiment with ideas and connect with communities that share their interests.
But that freedom is conditional. Judgement and scrutiny are transplanted online, often amplified. Unpopular choices or moments of vulnerability are dissected and memed with very real consequences. Even in these “free” spaces, women face gendered risks. For all their promise, these spaces continue to mirror and even magnify the inequalities of the world outside.
The writer is research scholar, Centre For Development Studies
