Trolls On The Internet: Cambridge Dictionary defines “trolling” as “the act of leaving an insulting message on the internet in order to annoy someone”. It has travelled from obscure discussion boards to forums, comment sections, X, Instagram and eventually every possible corner of the phones we carry. Trolling has slowly become the most common language of online behaviour, and somewhere along the way, celebrities became its favourite bait.
Trollers leave nothing out: the face, bodies, clothes, marriage, pregnancy, ageing, divorce, airport look, red-carpet looks, random expressions or even random walks. A five-second video, a photograph taken from the wrong angle, a background sound in an Instagram story: anything can become the catch of the trolls, and the latest example is Katrina Kaif.
Trolls On The Internet: Even Postpartum Bodies Apparently Need to Pass an Internet Test
Katrina Kaif recently made a public appearance with Vicky Kaushal at the Ambani family’s Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations, months after giving birth to their son in November 2025. Katrina soon became the hot topic of discussion online; not for her work but for her “appearance”.
Her appearance triggered comments about her postpartum body, with people comparing her present appearance to her older images. Some fans tried to push back against the comments, pointing out the very obvious fact that bodies do change with pregnancy and age.
The strange part is not that people noticed she looked different: of course she does. Human beings change; she did too. The strange part is the expectation that she should not! There is apparently a version of celebrityhood in which a woman can give birth, recover, age, gain weight, lose weight, have bad days, and still somehow remain responsible for looking like the version of herself the public first decided that they liked her, and when she does not, the internet holds an invisible meeting. It is as if she signed some contract to check society’s checklist of “beautiful”; nobody knew about even she did not.
Katrina Kaif is not the first woman to be sitting in this examination hall without having consented. She is simply the latest reminder that celebrity culture has somehow confused visibility with ownership.
Before Katrina, There Was Already An Entire Internet Trained to Pick People
The evolution of trolling is fascinating in the most brutal sense because the internet did not “invent” the cruelty: it industrialised it.
Early trolls were looking for reactions; modern trolls can find a person’s photograph, crop it, screenshot it, caption it or even turn it into a meme, or even make a Reel about it and collectively discuss it before the person had even realised what happened.
The early-2000s “Star Wars Kid” episode showed how quickly ordinary footage could become a major global online trolling point. A teenager’s video mimicking a Star Wars character was circulated without his consent in 2003, transforming an ordinary moment, transforming an ordinary moment into a massive internet phenomenon.
Then came the era of viral celebrities. One of the fine examples is Rebecca Black’s “Friday”, which became an absolute explosion of online mockery. The criticisms of the song escalated into an enormous wave of online mockery and abuse; the internet had discovered by then that you could turn a person into a punchline without ever having to meet them, which is toxic in every sense. Social media added a layer by reducing the distance.
The “Chintu From Chandigarh” Moment
In 2023, after Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was trolled for her Paris Fashion Week appearance, Richa Chadha, in an interview, spoke about the absurdity of giving so much importance to anonymous online criticism.
Her answer became memorable for one particular phrase: “Chintu Chandigarh mei baith ke”. Chadha essentially questioned why a celebrity should allow the opinion of a random person online to determine how she feels about herself.
The language itself was colourful and not necessarily the part of her response that needs to be adopted wholesale. The catch is the underlying point which was why exactly does every celebrity have to answer every stranger?
The question that bothers deep is: why have we collectively decided that celebrities owe us perfection simply because we consume their work?
Richa Chadha’s “Chintu” was less interesting as a literal person and more as an idea: the anonymous spectator who has somehow appointed themselves to the jury panel. The jury is constantly judging, and celebrity is always on trial.
Nushrratt Bharuccha Trolls
Nushrratt Bharuccha’s recent trolling episode is a strange example as it depicts how quickly misinformation can manufacture a scandal.
In June 2026, a video from Bharuccha’s Instagram Story, posted during Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL win celebrations, began circulating with misleading claims about sounds heard in the background. She deleted the original clip, but screen recordings continued to circulate. The actor later had to clarify that the sound was actually a puppy crying in the background while she watched the match at a friend’s home.
What began as a happy moment of celebration became something she had to “explain,” and that is another evolution of trolling.
Earlier, trolls created bait, but now the internet creates bait for them: a clip is taken out of context, a caption changes the meaning, rumours supply misinformation, and thousands of people react to the version of the story they were shown.
The Trolls Decide Women’s Bodies Are Public Comment Section
Celebrity trolling has a particular obsession with women: Deepika Padukone faced trolls for being seemingly fit when she carried her elder daughter, and now Katrina Kaif faces it for having a postpartum body.
Sonakshi Sinha was trolled for her body; Ananya Pandey is constantly trolled for her accent; even Aaradhya Bachchan has been a target of trolls since she was a little child for her appearance.
The list keeps growing because the internet does not actually run out of things to judge people about; if one category disappears, another one is created. The strange thing is that we call all of it “celebrity culture” as if “culture” only requires participation from one side.
What Does Perfect Even Mean?
Criticism of one’s work is one thing, but there is a very wide and obvious gap between disliking a performance and dissecting a person’s look; between reviewing a film and reviewing someone’s face.
The latest example seems to be Varun Dhawan, who has been highly trolled for his crooked smile, with an ocean of memes on the same.
We have somehow blurred the line because “celebrities are visible”, but “visibility is not consent”. Being famous does not erase someone’s humanity, and being criticised publicly does not mean they have agreed to be publicly judged.
Perhaps we have forgotten that they are human beings too: celebrities are allowed to be awkward, fumble, look tired, lose and gain weight, have bad photographs, to age, have different opinions, and just be humans.
We Should Evolve Perhaps
The journey from Usenet bait to Instagram pile-ons tells us that the technology is faster, the audience bigger, and the reactions louder, but the instinct is the same.
However, the stakes are bigger now. A troll no longer needs to find a newcomer; they can pick already established big names and, with random usernames, start the trolling game. The internet has perhaps trained us to believe that celebrities are always available for consumption, which makes us forget the most obvious and boring truth: they are human beings too, and perhaps that is worth remembering before we type.
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