Bollywood on silent mode

While social networking sites have increasingly become a rich source of information for everyone, they also have a flipside. News spreads like wild fire on them, making it easily accessible to every person who holds an account on the website. Increasingly, celebrities and B-Towners have also taken to Twitter and Facebook to interact with their fans or clarify issues.

Not too long ago, there were instances when publicists of actors would post twisted statements or news to gain some extra mileage. This led to a couple of actors pulling off from Facebook.

Though thse sites have become very convenient for them to talk to their fans on an one-on-one basis, it also means having to deal with a lot of nasty fans, who sometimes post offensive stuff on their pages.

This is all a part and parcel of being on the micro-blogging sites but what is surprising, is the fact that most celebs, when  embroiled in a controversy, go into hibernation. Especially, more so with their Twitter accounts.

Celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and a couple of others have over a million followers who keep track of their tweets each day. But of late, it has been seen that the first place celebrities take a break from in case of a controversy or trouble is the social networking sites.

Actor Imran Khan was the first to go off the website. When Salman  made some unwarranted remarks and received a lot of flak for it, he took a short break from the website. He posted that he would be off the site for a while and  returned to it only recently.

Now he makes sure he does not post anything that could hurt people’s sentiments. Shah Rukh Khan has been off micro-blogging sites for a while now. The actor, who has been courting controversies of late, is apparently fed up of the brickbats coming his way and has decided to stay away from social networking sites for a while. Priyanka too, who was in the news recently for all the wrong reasons, posted that she wanted to take a sabbatical from the website. She even took off to LA, from where she would only post stuff about her music recording sessions. She completely stopped responding to personal queries from her fans and kept her interaction with them strictly professional.