Trolling my bhog

Depending on the tone of the comments, we either engage the commenter or delete all remarks that are outright abusive

It is difficult these days to scroll through one’s social media feed and not be arrested by the bird’s eye view of a highly stylised, brilliantly produced meal being prepared at 400x speed. Residing mostly in Instagram accounts and YouTube and Facebook video, a stream of highly saturated food-related content doesn’t explicitly appear a socio-political commentary. It is only when you venture into the thriving, but mostly invisible, sub-genre of sustainable living (which by definition includes sustainable eating) tutorials on the internet that questions of where food comes from and what we put in our bodies come to the fore. 

Before we go any further, I’d like to preface this by saying that I am one of the creators of the moderate-sized cooking channel on YouTube called Bong Eats, which recently attracted some attention because of an egg roll recipe video we posted in the run-up to Durga Puja. My co-creator Saptarshi Chakraborty and I participate in the aforementioned online culinary culture, which involves sharing well-produced videos of everyday Bengali cooking. As far as possible, we like our channel to reflect our own philosophy regarding food and eating — pride for Calcutta’s varied cuisines, the importance of having well-tested, easily replicable regional recipes, seasonal eating and minimal wastage. So while our hilsa videos are celebratory in that they acknowledge and play to the Bengali love for the fish, we also stress the importance of not letting our obsessive greed get in the way of eating it to extinction. 

More recently, in the spirit of the upcoming festivities in Bengal, we uploaded a fairly basic egg roll recipe that soon became target of some hate against Bengalis in general. Receiving harsh critique is part of doing anything at all on the internet. So we didn’t make much of it when a few commenters pointed out how Bengalis could not be true worshippers of Durga because they ate non-vegetarian food during the nine days of austerity — comments that gradually devolved into accusations of how Bengali lack of self-control when it came to food had led to their parasitic tendencies and hence the poor economic condition of the state. 

At one point, Bengali non-vegetarianism was equated with cannibalism too! Saptarshi wrote a personal blog on the subject, unpacking the events of the comment thread and tying such rhetoric to the growing imposition of mainstream, north Indian, Hindu culture on all aspects of our lives, including the food and media we consume. In a bizarre turn of events, this blog post went viral and the eating of the egg roll became (just as getting a haircut from a renowned chain salon had a few weeks ago) the ultimate precautionary act of standing up to the attempted saffronisation of Bengal’s iconic carnival.

Like I said before, contending with online commenters is an occupational hazard of working on the internet. As web communities have grown bigger, more elaborate and diverse, there have been attempts from community managers to make the experience pleasant and safe for all, while at the same time allowing for free and healthy discussion of ideas. “Don’t read the comments section” is no longer a refrain community managers are willing to hide behind to allow hate to flow unchecked. And food channels most definitely do not, by any stretch of the imagination, bear the worst brunt of online hate. Channels discussing LGBTQ+ or mental health issues are by far subject to YouTube’s cruelest trolls. 

In his article, “How Trolls are Ruining the Internet,” Joel Stein writes: “Now, if you need help improving your upload speeds the web is eager to help... but if you tell it you’re struggling with depression it will try to goad you into killing yourself”. This may seem like a gross generalisation of the toxic nature of online comments, but there is some truth in it that community managers seem to — and should — recognise. As a rule, it is largely accepted that one’s audience shouldn’t have to deal with any name-calling or abuse that the creator themselves wouldn’t have taken lying down. Although that has opened up some interesting questions about when community managers should intervene (if at all), and what differentiates censorship from effective curation of online responses. 

We have been trying to navigate the perilous waters of online community management over the past 10 months that we’ve been running Bong Eats. Our egg roll video is not the first to receive hateful comments. An ongoing discussion on our khichuri video is about the various kinds of non-vegetarian bhog (offerings) to the deity, with the staunchest and angriest opponents countering such practices in the name of Hinduism and purity. “Well-meaning” individuals often comment on our haleem or shami kabab video to caution us against making (or other commenters against requesting) more beef recipes because they might potentially hurt Hindu sentiments. Depending on the tone of these comments, we either engage the commenter or delete all remarks that are outright abusive either towards us or other members of the community. Now more than ever it is imperative that online creators look out for themselves and their community beyond their original content, and treat discussions surrounding them as an extension of the goals of their creations.

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