The Internet’s Favorite Hobby? Tearing Down Women

The internet loves women until it doesn’t. It loves them when they’re digestible, smiling,and charming on cue. It loves them until they speak in ways that are too real, too loud, too vivid. And then, it punishes them. Not with silence, but with noise, deafening, violent, precise. Apoorva Mukhija became the target not because she was wrong, but because she existed too fully in a world that demands women to dim themselves for survival. But this isn’t just about being a woman. It about being human in an era where humanity is traded for algorithms, where cruelty is content and dignity is disposable.

She was never trying to be a symbol. Her content wasn’t radical. It was sincere, laced with humour, honest about the chaos of youth and the soft ache of growing up. Her words touched the bruises people don't discuss like awkward boys, complicated crushes, the disorientation of being twenty and visible. And that visibility, that raw transparency, is what became the invitation for strangers to project all their darkness onto her.

In her video “Till I Say It Is”, she isn’t angry in the way the internet expects anger to be. She isn’t performative, she isn’t pleading. She’s calm. There’s a kind of storm that lives behind her eyes, but it doesn’t scream. It stays composed, collected, and quiet in a way that makes you listen harder. “You don’t get to tell me what makes me feel unsafe,” she says. “You don’t get to decide when it ends. Till I say it is.” There’s nothing louder than a truth spoken without apology. And in those few minutes, she becomes something so many people forget still exists online as a real person. Not a meme. Not an idea. Not an avatar. Just a girl who loved words, who made videos

to connect, who trusted the internet too much.

What happened to her is not new. Nor is it rare. But that doesn’t make it any less horrifying. A sea of strangers made sport of threatening her, dissecting her body, mocking her grief. There were comments not just filled with cruelty, but choreography about rape fantasies written with punctuation, rhythm, and intention. As if they were composing a play. As if she was a character, and her suffering their plot twist. What is terrifying is not just that it happened. It’s how many people watched and stayed still. There’s a sickness in this passivity, a kind of collective shrug that says this is what happens when you're online. But why should cruelty be inevitable? Why should empathy be optional? What are we teaching a generation that grows up watching women be shattered and then blamed for the breaking.

This isn’t only about misogyny. It’s about the erosion of human decency, the corrosion of care. The problem isn’t just that people hate women. It’s that people forget women are people. The screen becomes a veil. And on the other side of it, they forget that the voice they mock is one that trembles, that the girl they threaten cries. That pain does not become less real when it’s digital. That abuse does not hurt less just because it was typed.

Simone Weil once wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Then what does it mean that we now give our attention to violence, mockery, to chaos? That we reward degradation with views and silence with scorn? Apoorva’s videos were also about attention, but the kind that made people feel less alone. That kind that remembered love exists in jokes and intimacy in little things. She paid attention to what people were too scared to name. And the world returned it with rage.

Strangely, this moment is not about Apoorva at all. It’s about us. About who we’ve become. About the way, cruelty travels faster than compassion. About how easy it is to forget our own capacity for destruction when we’re behind a username. It’s easy to forget that there is blood under the skin of every influencer. That fame doesn’t erase fragility. That no one is built to be adored and destroyed at the same time.

And yet, Apoorva refused to disappear. She did not delete her voice. She spoke. And in doing so, she asked the world to reckon with, not just what was done to her, but with what it means to let something like this happen and move on.

She is not just a content creator. She is a girl who reads, who dreams, who laughs too loud at things that don’t make sense to anyone else. She is someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, someone who once sat in her room and decided to share a part of her world. She’s a human being. There’s a gentleness to her that people don’t talk about enough. A warmth that lives even in her satire. Her humour is never cruel. It never punches down. It’s the kind of humour that knows heartbreak and uses laughter as a bridge. And it’s important to say this. Because in a world that wants to reduce her to just the scandal, we must remember her softness too.

And maybe that’s what hurts most. That someone who gave the world so much softness was met with so much force. There’s a quiet philosophy here, hidden beneath the noise. That the internet is not just technology, it's a reflection. A mirror that shows us who we are when no one is watching. And what we do to the Apoorvas of the world is not just a crime. It is a confession. Of our failure to protect what is beautiful. Of our addiction to ruin. Of our indifference to kindness. We live in an age where truth has to fight for space. Where realness is suspicious, where empathy is outdated. And yet, in her stillness, in her refusal to be broken, Apoorva offered us a moment of clarity. A chance to look at ourselves and ask what have we become. And is this who we want to be?

This wasn’t just harassment. It was a public unraveling. And every person who let it happen, who watched it like a reel, who laughed and moved on also played a part in it. There is no neutral position in cruelty. To stay silent is to be on the side of harm. To watch without intervening is to let the wound bleed longer.

Apoorva’s story is not a headline. It is a warning. That we cannot afford to normalize violence and call it culture. That we must stop confusing attention with affection and views with validation. And above all, we must remember that every person we reduce to a name on a screen carries an entire life behind it.

She reminded us that we still have choices. That we can choose to protect instead of punish. To uplift instead of destroy. That we can choose humanity, even when the world forgets it.

“Till I say it is,” she said.

Let's hope the world is listening.

---