Does the term ‘troll’ ring a bell in your mind? Really amazing way to learn about a lot of things in a short time and smile a bit once in a while, right? Yeah, this is the expression of lazy geniuses. Meaning, a meme maker tells you a whole long story short in a very little space occupied. Do you agree on this?
In order to know the story behind the art of meme making or trolling as you could say, Glocal Khabar met a few guys who have been doing this for a while now. These guys are from the famous troll page, Mr. Troll Bahadur. This Mr. Troll Bahadur is not a single guy though, there are three people working on it since its inception and there are four more people working to make the page as interesting as possible. Nabin Dahal, Ujjwal Ranjitkar and Bhawisya Dhakal who are in their late teens are the founders. The founders are all admins at the page and now there are three more people working as editors for the page.
The initiation
The idea for making trolls and operating a Facebook page to release them came to them as the trend was just introduced into the Facebook fraternity a few years ago and they sensed it was destined to grow in the future. For how they came together as a team, it was the social network itself. As Ujjwal puts it, it was him and Bhawisya who met through a Facebook group and shared the passion for trolls and decided to create a troll page. Then he shared the idea with Nabin who was one of his classmates passionate to make people smile and he readily agreed to start the page. Thus, they team up and named the page Mr. Troll Bahadur. They chose this name as the admins were all male individuals, they were posting memes and trolls and Bahadur to rejoice the fact that Nepali are known for the bravery usually called ‘Bahadur’.
The Journey
About what they planned to troll through their page, Nabin says they had only wanted to make the jokes shorter and interesting in the beginning. The page can have a large audience and we can spread smiles to an unlimited audience rather than the restricted audience through individual timelines. As they matured, they learnt to troll various aspects of society. These days, they have grown into a page that trolls various dark aspects of society and secretly working to change the perspective of the people. Trolls are easier for people to understand as they encompass texts and pictures rather than the textual jokes that used to cover a lot of space and need time to go through them.
“The biggest achievement we have received so far is when people recognize us for our work and appreciate what we have been doing.” Says Bhawisya. Making memes and posting them through the page as a passion, these guys are happy with what they have achieved. There are compliments from people who like their work and also the people who provide suggestion for improving their work. “The more smiles we spread, the happier we become”, says Ujjwal.
There are various challenges for troll pages in Nepal. One of them being the audience themselves. To explain how, they recall moments when their inbox would be flooded with messages from angry followers who were offended by their posts regarding the subjects they feel close to. They have also received angry messages from people following posts regarding most recent trends.
Challenges
They had received a lot of messages from annoyed followers who didn’t like them trolling the K-Pop fans in the country. “People have a tendency to get offended with simplest of sarcasm in our posts and when they send us threats inbox instead of criticism, it’s a little demotivating but we also receive a lot of compliments and suggestions to improve. That is actually what motivates us to keep our work going though.” Said bhawisya, who is the youngest of the three founding admins.
Apart from that, the troll fraternity still considers them as rookies and they feel being left out of the mainstream in terms of benefits from advertising campaigns the sector has been doing recently. “We sometimes get approached individually by the production teams from upcoming movies but they disappear when we ask for payments. We have already had two instances when we did promotion for them with the similar results, actually”, shares Ujjwal who is less vocal among the admins.
Future Plans
Further into the future, they have plans to make the page better in terms of contents plus reach and maybe get decent offers from trustworthy people and make revenue from the page as well. All the admins and editors are working voluntarily driven by their passion for spreading smiles. “We also hope to be the agents of social change through our platform by mocking the ill practices related to various harmful and unnecessary practices related to various cultures and practices in the society” adds Bhawisya.
Message to Youths
About their message to the youths, they request everyone to take the social media responsibly and be calm about the posts that are sarcastic. “Sarcasm isn’t about getting people offended, we make memes to make people laugh at the taboos and realize they are worthless and shouldn’t be followed.” Says Nabin. They also believe the people behind pages that post trolls and memes should also come together and make a platform to share the knowledge and the benefits from the fraternity. Apart from that, they ask the audience to follow their page and give them feedback on their works and have the fun. “We believe we can make the society a better one through our collective effort as individuals.” Echoed the young trollers.
By: Avaya Devkota
#skills2grow4life
