Viral Indians : All you need to know about Omprakash Mishra

The internet has a tendency to create a storm out of a fart, and this particular one has overstayed its welcome, and lingered on longer than it should have. The popularity of Omprakash Mishra, the cringepop sensation has skyrocketed enough to make him our Viral Indian of the week!

From obscure meme pages that run on stolen, copied and borrowed memes that find meme templates in the unlikeliest of places, whether they are new Bollywood releases or seasoned ones, to popular TV shows such Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashma and Game of Thrones, Omprakash Mishra, the guy behind ‘Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya’ was embraced by the internet meme community in India.

So why has a cringeworthy out of tune rap (barely) song uploaded on YouTube in 2015 turned into a viral sensation today? Here’s every piece of information available about the Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya man.

Who is he?

Omprakash Mishra, who refers to himself as ‘Rap King’ and many other superlative adjectives, is an aspiring rapper and singer. YouTube being the public platform that it is, provided Omprakash with a stage to demonstrate his talents and they largely went unnoticed, until recently.

How did he go viral?

In the league of other cringe pop stars that have been the subject of mindnumbing public fascination in recent times such as Taher Shah of Eye To Eye, Angel fame and Dhinchak Pooja of Swag Wali Topi, Selfie Maine Le Li Aaj fame, Omprakash was discovered by accident. Rotting away in the parts of YouTube accessed only by people with unlimited internet packs, high tolerance for headaches, endless amounts of leisure and a considerable amount of hatred towards themselves, Omprakash instantly turned into meme fodder.

The crass lyrics perhaps leveraged the most interesting part of human behavior, wherein watching something over and over to ridicule it, resulting in finding yourself humming it unknowingly!

It spread. The video was shared among friends under captions of ‘Oh shit you need to watch this!’ and then there were memes, and the ones who did not understand the memes, had to look for the video in order to provide some context to the memes and not be left out as outsiders of the meme community!

He even landed himself an audition on Indian Idol due to his rising popularity.

And on a Marathi reality television show, Sangeet Samrat, on Zee Yuva.

So that, answers the question of how, Omprakash Mishra and his Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya atrocity managed to climb the social media ladder, from pages that pride themselves on being ‘Dank’, to mainstream content portals such as All India Bakchod. The ‘Sot’ memes were everywhere, applied to any possible scenario from asking the teacher’s permission to enter the classroom, to the if-it-was-in-the-real-world-people-would-throw-up-scene from Game of Thrones, where Jon Snow ends up in bed with his aunt, Danaerys Stormborn, and her three mile title.

Here are some of the Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya memes that we could find.

Oblivious to all the fame he had accumulated over a song he may have forgotten he ever created, Omprakash may found out about it after the social media scene was bursting with Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya references.

It culminated into a surprising demonstration of participation by Facebook users in Delhi, who congregated to shout ‘Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya’ at Connaught Place. That is when the song and Omprakash Mishra drew the real mainstream attention from content portals to news publications.

Copycat events were set up in cities, town, playgrounds, schools and many such places all over the country, although not everyone was in favour of hundreds of kids gathering to mouth of these explicitly vulgar lyrics. Storypick and Quint Neon were two of the most prominent publications to take a stand, calling out the lyrics to be demeaning, sexist and mysoginist.

Quint Neon’s Deeksha Sharma, who was visibly much more irked than many people, criticized the song and Omprakash Mishra in a video, urging her viewers to report the video on YouTube and have it taken down. That did happen, and things quickly spiraled out of control from memes and events, to rape threats, Page raiding and FIRs.

A major part of the Facebook and Twitter meme community went ahead to abuse, ridicule, threaten and accuse Deeksha Sharma from Quint Neon for being hypocritical and not allowing Omprakash to exercise his freedom of expression, and artistic liberty. Facebook meme pages began trolling The Quint, with events such as these and many other memes.

Whereas the opposing faction reinforced their argument by calling the rape and violence threats as an extension of the kind of lyrics used in the Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya song.

“The video, which had over 3,000,000 hits, 30,000 likes and 60,000 dislikes before it taken down by YouTube because of copyright issues.” reports The Wire.

Simultaneously, Deeksha Sharma continued to endure abuse, following which Quint Neon proceeded to take down the video featuring Deeksha. Although the publication reiterated that they continue to stand by their stance, but could not continue to put their journalist through the mental trauma and the prospect of possible physical harm.

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Omprakash Mishra himself called for all his fans and supporters to report and downrate the Quint Neon Facebook page.

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On the other hand, BuzzFeed India, HuffingtonPost, DailyO and many other publications expressed their disgust and reprimanded Omprakash’s fans and followers that harassed Deeksha. BuzzFeed proceeded to name multiple Facebook Meme groups that had actively trolled Quint Neon, and specifically Deeksha Sharma.

MemeMandir, one of the meme pages named by BuzzFeed on the very top of the list responded by saying that they do not share any affinity towards Omprakash Mishra, and all he ever was to them, was meme fodder. The admin also stated that he was against the hypocritical stance taken by Quint Neon, BuzzFeed and other publications, also specifying that they never asked their followers to abuse any Quint employees.

As the controversy continues to be fanned, meme pages continue to wage war against the establishment as they see it, against the ones who attack them and their memes, whereas publications and social media users express concern over this celebration of 'sexism, obscenity and misogyny' and the motivation to put out death and rape threats against someone on social media.

Perhaps Omprakash Mishra's fans and supporters crossed a line with threats and attacking a journalist, and a news publication house, or perhaps the crowds were never really celebrating sexism and misogyny, and thought it was just something to get together with friends and laugh over.

Maybe both the sides went too far, but rape and death threats are certainly not the way to express your opinion. Anyone indulging in such behaviour needs to be ashamed of themselves and their upbringing.

Let us know your thoughts about the Omprakash Mishra controversy in the comments, or write to us at team@socialsamosa.com