Often, what is masked as supporting someone on the internet is meant to demean another person in reality. It does not come from a place of care but a place of spite, a troll’s sanctuary. When Sobhita Dhulipala and Naga Chaitanya shared their engagement pictures, it did not go down well with people online, and that was expected.
You see, the internet hardly moves on. The thing with celebrities in the limelight is that their personal lives are always documented, often without their consent. They are denied the agency of moving on in life because each time they try to do so, people on the internet will have a feast day digging into their past and passing their hot takes. Their opinions then become a reflection of our society’s ugly realities.
Naga Chaitanya was previously married to Samantha Prabhu. The two parted their ways in 2021. Cut to three years later, Chaitanya got engaged to Sobhita Dhulipala. Where the concerned parties may have moved on, the internet naturally hasn’t. Their new target is Sobhita now. To the online world, she is a home wrecker, Chaitanya lost a gem, and Samatha’s life still revolves around her ex-husband.
But you know what? As sad as it is, seeing Sobhita get all this hate is unsurprising honestly. It was expected. Hating women for no reason is very instinctive in our society, and often, this hate is also internalised, which is worse. It’s also ironic how some think they are supporting Samantha by hating Sobhita. This is common when women are involved. Love for one comes at the cost of degrading another.
If you think about it, Sobhita is being trolled for marrying the man she loves because people think she ruined his previous marriage. Crazy, right? Even if, hypothetically, that were the case, even if the two were involved when Chaitanya was married to Samantha, why has the accountability of this rumoured infidelity been pinned on Sobhita alone rather than the person who was actually in that marriage? If a woman is unfaithful in a relationship, her character is questioned. If a man is unfaithful, the character of the woman he was involved with is questioned. In both scenarios, the burden of running a relationship and ruining a relationship falls upon a woman, at least that’s how the popular sentiment goes. But why so?
Perhaps because we love crafting narratives that pit women against each other. We don’t believe in women solidarity, we never have. We can’t leave women alone and respect their choices. There’s always the ingrained belief system that their choices are evil. Calculated. Vindictive. It manifests in stories like this one, a person who was not involved in the marriage bears the brunt of hate because the person who was involved in one moved on. As if people don’t move on. As if we don’t have a past. As if we can’t love someone with a past.
Besides, it’s not like those who are so perturbed by this union actually care for Samantha. They’re dragging her into this. When you’re a fan of someone, you wish them well, you want them to thrive personally and professionally, and that sentiment is understandable. It comes from a place of affection. So when they want to move on in life, you give them space for it. But when you want to take up unsolicited battles on their behalf, it’s obsession. That’s how fan wars exist, by the way. Two celebrities, if not amicable, may share a cordial relationship with each other, but their fans are aggressively fighting online for them because they’re obsessed with that celebrity.
In this case, people who claim to support Samantha by insulting Sobhita are not really supporting anyone. While the world may have conjectures on why Samantha’s marriage with Chaitanya ended, their separation was a mutual decision. Years later, she did not ask to be involved in this new relationship.
So, when you’re insulting Sobhita by bringing Samantha, you’re being disrespectful to both women, their life’s journeys, and their choices. You’re not celebrating one but dismissing both by repeating the same old thing society has done for women over and over again, centring their lives around a man.