By Sharanya Gopinathan
Some stories are so bizarre I almost feel like I’m chasing a non-existent thread of logic when trying to piece together what happened. This is one of those stories, and I hope we can figure this out together.
So basically, in 2015, ‘rap king’ Omprakash Mishra released a song called Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya, which is a sexist and gross song about a boy who wants to have sex with an older woman who refuses to have sex with him. Nobody cared about him or the song at the time.
Two years later, in early September 2017, the song is rediscovered by the people of the Internet after a Facebook page called Shit Indians Say created an event where losers were meant to congregate at Connaught Place and yell Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya at a non-existent aunty. The creator of the page was surprised at just how many losers turned up for the event, and many media houses covered the event with hilarity.
Except, of course, those few journalists who understood this song and event to be the weird and misogynistic thing that it is. Several reporters did point out how the whole video and event were objectionable and disgusting.
On the 13th of September, journalists at The Quint put out a video urging its readers to report the video of the song to YouTube so the the sexist video would be taken down. This, in my opinion, was fairly unnecessary: we can’t talk about freedom of speech and expression while simultaneously pushing for content we don’t like (even if it is horrible content, like Pehredaar Piya Ki or this sexist rap video) to be removed from public platforms just because we don’t like the message.
Anyway, fans of Bol Na Aunty lost their minds upon seeing this, and launched coordinated attacks on journalists at The Quint. Several fan pages exhorted members to shout Bol Na Aunty outside The Quint’s office and to report their page in turn. More horrifyingly, a female journalist received death threats via WhatsApp, hinting at what happened to Gauri Lankesh. She also received rape threats on Facebook. The Quint has reported the matter to the police.
Isn’t it crazy? People are willing to resort to death and rape threats to journalists because they criticised a song that exhorts you to sexually harass imaginary aunties. What a wonderful time to be alive.