Social Media Stars making it big in the Lockdown

Srushti Kulkarni 7th September, 2020

The rising stars—Danish Sait and Dolly Singh (Source: Edex live and the celeb Bio)

Many social media influencers like Danish Sait and Dolly Singh evolved during the pandemic by connecting to a wider audience through their comical representation of the relatable lockdown situations, according to LiveMint. Whereas, several artists created content to raise funds for the nation.

In the summer of 2020 when a majority of the population faced economic distress, a few talented faces of the social media reached heights by bringing joy and laughter to the masses. They utilised the lockdown period to help, educate and entertain people through their videos which were inspired by different communities and walks of life. Danish Sait became the voice of lockdown through his Quarantine Series on YouTube about Viral Lockdown Conversations. He released a video in about half an hour after Prime Minister Modi’s speech on the 12th May which fetched 4,95,000 views on Twitter.

In his video, Danish played the character of a Bengaluru boy, who expressed his difficulties in understanding a few Hindi words used by the Prime Minister. Omar Abdullah, the former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir also shared Sait’s video. He mentioned in his post that Danish Sait’s witty videos are the only reason why he is looking forward to the PM’s address.

Danish garnered the nation’s attention himself when the characters from his long-running radio show Supari on Fever 104 FM, visually came alive in his videos. Sait, to symbolise the ‘Jugaad’ during the lockdown, used a number of household objects such as a paintbrush, rum bottle, tissue box, and more—which ironically turned out to be iconic in the eyes of his audience.

Dolly Singh, on the other hand, mirrored the daily routine of people doing the everyday chores in a way that was never presented before. Her followers tremendously increased in the lockdown period. Around 20,000 followers, every week got added to Dolly’s social account when she changed the ideas of content, making it relevant to the current situation.

The regional accent and the chuckle of some characters, such as the domestic help or the next-door aunty, won the hearts of her audience. Her videos portrayed people that almost every Indian deal with. She also added English subtitles to her videos to reach a greater number of audiences. Lockdown brought several new challenges to her such as editing her own videos. Also, with every increasing follower, a troll slid into her comment section.

Well known influencers like Bhuvan Bam, Carry Minati, Jordindian, Mostly Insane, and Zakir Khan were among several other influencers who participated in the live streaming of ‘One Nation at Home’ presented by YouTube with an agenda to raise funds for PM care. They created hilarious content to keep the bored audience of India entertained during the 12 hours of live stream.

(Sources: The Hindu, Live Mint, First Post, The Hindustan Times)

Edited by Swikruti Kar