Bollywood's New PR War: Memes Trump Trailers

Bollywood is navigating a new PR landscape where viral memes and algorithmic trends now dictate public perception, eclipsing traditional marketing like film trailers. This shift means controversies emerge and solidify into public opinion within hours, driven by fan wars, anonymous accounts, and coordinated meme drops.

Recent months have seen actors such as Kartik Aaryan, Varun Dhawan, and Tara Sutaria ensnared in intense trolling cycles. Talent manager Aayush Tiwari views this not as a conspiracy but as a predictable social media trend, noting that narratives are now built in real-time rather than over extended periods.

Industry insiders reveal that negative PR campaigns can be initiated with surprisingly small budgets, sometimes just a few hundred rupees per post, to trigger wider organic waves through repetition. Cultural researcher Balram Vishwakarma describes an infrastructure of agencies and 'distribution managers' who facilitate the circulation of narratives, using bots and meme pages for surprisingly low sums.

While some negative trends might stem from organic online humor colliding with celebrity images, sustained negativity poses significant financial risks. According to Vishwakarma, it threatens actors' brand endorsements and potential work, as casting rooms become cautious and campaigns shift elsewhere. Advertisers, unlike algorithms, do not favor outrage.

Professionals like Tiwari highlight the substantial mental toll on actors, even when they suspect PR manipulation. The constant barrage of negativity, especially when it becomes national news, can be deeply damaging. Ultimately, negative PR has become a spectrum, ranging from deliberate manipulation to algorithmic behavior, forcing Bollywood into an attention system far larger than its own publicity playbook.