YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia has been facing flak over his controversial comments on an episode of fellow creator Samay Raina’s comedy show, Indias Got Latent. While the controversy has dealt a blow to Allahabad’s audience base, Samay seems to have emerged as a winner.
An analysis of their YouTube and Instagram accounts shows something contrasting: despite police FIRs, summons to them, and widespread criticism, fans of Allahbadia and Raina appear to continue to shower their love.
In an episode uploaded on Sunday, February 9, Allahbadia – the host of The Ranveer Show podcast – asked a question to a participant that included “parents” and “sex” among other obscene references.
A clip of the video went viral on social media the next day.
To understand the behaviour of their online fans, India Today’s Open-source Intelligence team (OSINT) has analysed follower and subscriber data of their YouTube and Instagram accounts as well hashtags on X – both in support and in opposition.
ALLAHBADIA SLIDES
Allahbadia operates two separate accounts on YouTube and Instagram by the names BeerBiceps and Ranveer Allahbadia. As per analytics tool Social Blade, BeerBiceps lost 90,000 subscribers and the channel named ‘RanveerAllahbadia’ lost around 1 lakh subscribers on YouTube in three days between February 10 and February 12.
Data suggests BeerBiceps channel lost 2.1 crore views on February 10 while ‘RanveerAllahbadia’ saw a reduction of over 12.2 crore video views on February 11 and February 12, suggesting that some videos might have been deleted from both channels amid growing outrage over obscene content online.
The analysis shows that on Instagram, BeerBiceps lost 42,800 followers on February 10 and February 11 while RanveerAllahbadia lost 35,700 followers in three days starting February 10.
SAMAY SHINES
On the other hand, the controversy seems to have worked for comedian Samay Raina, who deleted all videos of ‘India Got Latent’ from his channel on February 12, resulting in a loss of an estimated 43.3 crore views on his YouTube channel ‘SamayRainaOfficial’.
But his accounts on YouTube and Instagram have continued to grow despite the outrage and police action. His YouTube channel added about 80,000 subscribers on February 10, another 30,000 and 20,000 on the next two consecutive days. His channels gained 10,000-20,000 per day this month before the row erupted.
On Instagram, Raina gained more than 89,000 followers in three days beginning February 10. By 2 pm on February 13, he had added a whopping 1.34 lakh followers, as per Social Blade data.
ONLINE PROTESTS
Indian social media has been boiling ever since the release of the controversial episode of ‘India Got Latent’ with users expressing their anguish on X (formerly Twitter).
Hashtags like #banindiasgotlatent, #BanBeerbiceps, #BycottBeerBicepsGuy, #StopVulgarCulture, #UnsubscribeRanveerAllahbadia, #unsubscribesamayraina, #ReportRanveerAllahbadia, and #ReportSamayRaina have been widely used by online users to express their anguish against Allahbadia and Raina.
Nearly 20,000 tweets explicitly opposing the YouTubers have been posted on X in four days.
A small number of users came to the defence of Allahbadia and Raina, and their right to free speech with hashtags like #supportsamayraina, #standwithsamayraina, #isupportsamayraina, #justiceforsamayraina, #WESUPPORTSAMAYRAINA, #wesupportsamay, #getbacklatent, #ComedyIsNotACrime, and #LetComediansSpeak. Nearly 850 posts were published with these hashtags on X.
However, more than 7 lakh tweets have been posted with neutral hashtags like #indiasgotlatent, #samayraina, #beerbiceps, #ranveerallahbadia, #RanveerAllahbadiaControversy, #ApoorvaMakhija, and #samayrainadarkcomedy. These posts have generated over 87 lakh reposts, likes, and replies.