Snapchat "poor country" controversy

Some
truth we should acknowledge before saying anything else.

Snapchat is one of the most heavily used social media, just like WhatsApp and Facebook (which are both juggled by Mark Zuckerberg). It's just an image massaging and multimedia mobile application.

I'm not shock to see that how many Indians went apeshit on Snapchat's "poor country" remark. But one thing what really worth laughs is how people are reacting (over-reacting) just on rumours. Thanks to the social media and other “news” platforms people really don't get bore that often, after all they're having best matinee gossips for news! Please don't get me wrong. I'm just saying it with all regards to logic and reasoning.

So, let's see when and where this fiasco happened

This incident happened a couple of days ago, when talks started flying across the Indian subcontinent that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel made this extremely infuriating statement, "This app is only for rich people. I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain."

That's all was needed, really, we Indians are so ignorant about our "real" problems such as poverty, male to female sex ratio, poor education system, et cetera. And yes, our nationalism level suddenly turned up to Super Saiyan level as soon as we hear (probably eavesdrop) some firangi, in this case our beloved Evan Spiegel speaking shit about our country.

There were several hateful and abusive messages, tweets all across the Facebook, twitter, etc. There were also numerous trending topics on twitter for our so called, “educated" and "intellectual" people, such as #BoycottSnapchat. This hashtag was trending throughout the weekend.

 

To my amazement, there were even numerous memes and trolls, like for one instance where net worth of Evan Spiegel and Mukesh Ambani were compared to be $4.6 billion and $30.8 billion and then asked who's poorer? Us or You?

Among all this illogical hatred, I saw two real sensible sarcastic logical memes on Instagram which is worth appreciating.

Plus there was also this Snapchat of Tanmay Bhat, from AIB (All India Bakchod) who went to preach that there's nothing wrong addressing our country as a poor country as ours is a poor country. According to WHO, 1 out of 5 people in India lives in extreme poverty! 

And outcomes were pretty disastrous for Snapchat as it got a lot of 1 star ratings and negative reviews on both the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. People not only began to uninstall Snapchat but it's repercussion were that thousands of people did uninstall the Snapdeal (an Indian e-commerce company based in New Delhi, India) which is exactly blowing things out of proportions.

See for yourself

Well, no offence to Snapdeal, but they must have been pretty habituated of tolerating this idiocy as in 2015 also people did call for a boycott against the Online Marketplace and Snapdeal did received hostility on social media just their brand ambassador happened to be Aamir Khan

Snap Inc. has come on record to dismiss these allegations as false. "This is ridiculous. Obviously, Snapchat is for everyone! It's available worldwide to download for free," said the Snap Inc. statement. It has also alleged that there was an ex-employee who worked with Snapchat for only three weeks, and that these allegations were nothing but the criticisms of a frustrated ex-employee.

Wait, did I just said something about a disgruntled ex-employee? So, let's have a detail look on this matter for once and all. Everyone deserves a chance to explain things, right?

A detailed article by Variety magazine showed that the alleged statement

 This app is only for rich people. I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.

comes from a lawsuit filed two years ago (in 2015) by Anthony Pompliano, a former employee at Snapchat, who is suing the company for some reasons. According to whom it was intervened by CEO Evan Spiegel when asked in a meeting that why Snapchat was performing so poorly in foreign markets.

Still, remember guys all of this is just merely an allegation. Don't do anything stupid and there is still no confirmation that whether Spiegel did make that statement or not?

One more thing is that we often fall for the fake news. And our media, hate to say this, but nowadays all they are trying to do is sell news for TRP's. Our media don't even bother checking twice the authenticity of the news before turning it into a news headline or even worse, a debate which will start as unbiased but eventually it will turn out to be a political debate. An Indian news channel, on their website made this a “Shocking Revelation” by writing.

A shocking revelation by a former employee of Snapchat has put the company's CEO in talk.In a lawsuit filed in LA District Court, Anthony Pompliano who was a former employee with Snapchat has alleged that the Snapchat CEO Even Speigel, had called India 'a poor country'.And allegedly said that his company had no intentions of expanding its base in poor countries like India as the app is only for rich people.The statement has sparked a row in India where a lot of miffed users have uninstalled the app and are urging others to do the same.

 But yeah, because this ‘statement’ has the name INDIA on it, people will get angry for it, and some will receive massive hatred just because either they sound similar or even if they are slightly related to this ‘statement’. Yeah Snapdeal is not the only one dealing wasteful hatred but also Ms Miranda Kerr, an Australian model and also the fiancé of Even Speigel.

 Yes, this is the controversy that refuses to die itself down because we are not letting it to do so. This issue has gained so much spotlight over the internet that the Ms Kerr also finds herself caught up in this fire. Up to the point of trolling its fine but she is getting hate comments and posts on her various social media profiles to the point where some comments got abusive as well.

Here, some of the rage full comments on her social media accounts:

However, some of the most abominable ones are on her recent Instagram posts:

A person who goes by the username _ishiti wrote

Your love is a bloody dog! Now he'll get to know what we Indians can do ! And what are you doing here!!? Instagram doesn't belong to you bugger off

a person who goes by the username shaik747 commented

Your partner is such a jerk scumbag racist..... Atleast (sic) teach him something

Don’t get me wrong here I am not putting up a bad image of Indians. There were also people defending her,

 I don't understand why people are targeting her. Her fiance 'allegedly' made a comment, not her. Harassing her isn't going to solve anything,

Leave her alone idiots," writes one person on Instagram. "Stop degrading the value of our country with such stupidity.

 Some also even did apologized to her on behalf of the whole Country via social media too.

In the end, all I'm trying to say is please stop irating. The only outcomes were that Snapchat had a huge loss due to this shit. Our own Indian e-commerce site Snapdeal has to face it aftereffect as people confused it with the Snapchat. To my disgust people didn't stop there, they even went harassing and cyber-bullying Miranda Kerr, a australian model who is engaged to Evan Spiegel. And all we prove was nothing but we showed the world how intolerant can we really be!.