While having a favourite actor is one thing, South Indian fans, especially Telugu and Tamil heroes’ fans have their fansim on a different level. Be it pouring litres of milk on their hero’s cut-out or constructing a temple for their most loved actress, everything in Tollywood and Kollywood fans is over the top. Sometimes this over-board likening to a star prompts the fans to argue or even quarrel with the fans of other heroes. In Telugu, there was a rivalry between Sr Ntr and Anr fans back in the black and white days. In the next generation, fans of Megastar Chiranjeevi and Nandamuri Balakrishna have seen fierce competition. Now, stars like Mahesh Babu, Prabhas, Pawan Kalyan, Ram Charan, Allu Arjun, and Ntr are all having their own fans who occasionally fight with one another.
Similarly, Kollywood has Thala Ajith and Thalapathy Vijay fans warring with each other for decades. But, the occasion of clashes between Kollywood fans and Telugu fans is very rare. Right now, the fans of Mahesh Babu and Thalapathy Vijay are locking horns on social media. While it’s unclear who started the comparison first, both sides are trolling each other’s, favourite hero. Mahesh fans are making fun of Vijay’s fans saying he rose to stardom only by remaking Mahesh’s superhit movies in Telugu while Vijay fans are trolling that Mahesh does not know acting and has a single expression to every emotion. Twitter is filled with comments and trolls from the fans of both sides. There are comparisons between Mahesh’s original films and Vijay’s remade films. Liking an actor is ok but this kind of toxic fanism is never good. The cine experts are suggesting that the stars should rein in their fans before this kind of war goes out of hand someday.