Fan wars and star rivalries are nothing new to the Telugu film industry. In the NTR-ANR era, they used to be offline. In the Chiranjeevi-Balakrishna era, they were hybrid. In the contemporary era, everything is documented by social media to the T.
Throughout, the mainstream media has desisted from adding fuel to fire. Even the web media, with all its carefree attitude and unprofessionalism, has never tried to aggravate fan wars. The worst the web media has done is to show favouritism towards actors belonging to particular social groups (this is bad enough).
The YouTube era has been different, though. This week, a YouTuber has made sensational allegations against a Tier-2 Tollywood hero who has allegedly shelled out lakhs and lakhs of rupees to amplify negative trolling against another Tier-2 hero. The latter has been out of form, with back to back disasters. His only pan-Indian movie became a huge disaster. As per the YouTuber, PR agencies have been hired by the in-form hero to spread negativity against the films of the other hero. Social media has gone wild after the YouTuber's allegations.
Where this is headed is anybody's guess. But one can be sure that fan wars have now started infecting the legacies of even Tier-2 heroes. People fight over superstars all the time. But in a new wave of degeneracy, the sympathizers of Tier-2 actors have started joining the party.
