The Artist Formerly Known As Profile picture
this isn't even my final form

Nov 21, 2019, 59 tweets

"Why would so many women lie about one person?"

In the next few tweets, I will tackle all the malicious insinuations and abject falsehoods put forth on me either by @AGirlOfHerWords or the media frenzy that followed. Stay tuned.

And before I begin, I would like to put out a public service announcement to anyone who approached Mahima Kukreja with false or malicious information about me. If you did this, please apologize or at least explain yourself publicly as to why you did what you did.

Okay, I'll start.

You guys remember this screenshot? It was posted by this guy called @sanilgosavi, got a tonne of retweets and basically showed how deplorable and unrelenting a creep I was. So convincing that when I first saw it, I believed it myself. Not gonna lie.

This was a tricky one to dismiss because it was definitely my writing. Definitely the words I use to sext. Except it's a long string of unreplied words with someone saying that they're uncomfortable at the end. A lot of (remaining) close friends distanced from me when they saw it

But when I looked into it further it was clear as day. One half of the conversation was missing. What sorcery was this??!

Turns out Instagram DMs have a fun feature where you can delete your side of the convo making the other person look like a complete psycho creep.

Her saying 'won't be comfortable' was a reply to me asking her to talk in the video I was asking her to send. It was NOT a comment on my seemingly relentless barge of words.

I tried to look for her and this conversation on Instagram. But couldn't find it. I had been blocked.

After the events of 4th October 2018, a lot of people had blocked me. Either out of disgust or to convey a collective solidarity for the women who I allegedly harassed. I assumed she too must've been feeling the same and did what she did.

So I did some snooping around my saved screenshots and realized that this person's handle was 'Chanzpapi' on Instagram and also that the contents of the screenshot preceded an explicit photo from her. Following which I tracked her on Facebook and confronted her.

So what I gathered was that @chanya_jaitly shared a doctored picture of our conversation during #metoo with her ex-boyfriend who shared the screenshot without her consent when my name was trending last year thanks to @AGirlOfHerWords' valiant efforts.

Can't debate the authenticity of her explanation but I'll let her have the benefit of the doubt. @chanya_jaitly further agreed to put up a public apology. So everyone reading this: DO NOT ADMONISH/BELITTLE/HARASS HER. She made a mistake. She is owning up to it. Let. Her. Be.

This was the first of many. There are several more coming. AND DO NOT BE AWFUL TO THE PEOPLE I NAME. DO NOT DO TO THEM WHAT YOU DID TO ME. Okay thanks.

This is the screenshot of the apology that @chanya_jaitly put up. She had to protect her tweets. Guys, PLEASE let her be. She did not intend any harm. It's possible that she was caught in the vitriol of the movement but so were most of you. So lay off. Thank you.

Remember this tweet by @AGirlOfHerWords? Read the screenshots and the insinuation that she put forth. Also notice the kind of language used so you know what narrative she was going for.

Now the thing about anonymous accounts is that, well, they're anonymous. It's hard to scope out who they are or whether they're even real people. In the event that this is a real person, I have a fairly good idea who this is.

No lie is ever a 100% lie. Every lie is based on a modicum of truth. I used this tiny bit to trace who it was based on the interactions I've had with this person. In this case, the clues were 'messaged me on WhatsApp/Bangalore'. The only person who fit the bill? @kanikakaul22

As evidenced by these screenshots of our last conversation on Snapchat dated 30th May 2017, we were on pretty amicable terms and despite her claims to the contrary had not been 'blocked' by Kanika Kaul here. The cute conversation ends with the then Ms. Kaul giving me her number.

"Pata nahi number kahan se mila"

"Yahaan se."

And what unpardonable thing did I do with @kanikakaul22's WhatsApp number? This.

The last message is after the events of October 2018.

Continuing with the kind of language @AGirlOfHerWords was using - she was deliberately trying to make @kanikakaul22 look like she was much younger than I was. Because that would fit the powerful predator narrative far better, no?

And how young was @kanikakaul22?

She turned 27 last year and is a straight up married woman.

So she's a sum total of ONE year younger than me. Don't be fooled by the 22 in her handle.

Also to make it fair and unbiased, I would implore @kanikakaul22 to come out and tell her side. The objective is not to shut people up but to open a dialogue. If I'm wrong about anything, correct me. And if I'm not, validate me.

.@kanikakaul22's reply. (1/2)

@kanikakaul22's reply. (2/2)

Hate to be that guy but now I have to disprove @kanikakaul22's inaccurate explanation of @kanikakaul22's inaccurate anonymous allegations against me to @AGirlOfHerWords. I understand the need to double down and reassert what you initially claimed. It's a good tactic but sorry.

For one, I wasn't part of any online video in a non-peripheral role well into 2016. So I get that Kanika is trying to establish some sort of power imbalance of her being a 'fan' of my videos where in fact my only claim to virality then was my Twitter account.

Then she claims she was harassed by me asking for TOPLESS PICS. It's this kind of proto-pedo-uncle narrative that cemented @AGirlOfHerWords' legitimacy. In the original anonymous account universe, she blocked me then and there. In this version, the account was 'verbally shared'.

Buddy because of you, I lost a whole year and was left to fend for myself. At least have the decency of making it sound plausible. YOU MESSAGED ME. On my birthday. Do you do this with your harassers pretty often? And what was that Bitmoji? I pretended to get it but I still don't.

"There was nothing for me to gain from this."
This is also another part I vehemently disagree with. Putting out a supposedly scandalous story about me in October 2018 would automatically make you a part of an exclusive in-group. Which is also important to this story.

An exclusive in-group of ex-Buzzfeed writers, expats and artists. People with 'online-cred' basically. For the past year or so, this privileged cabal of cool has been regurgitating Mahima and Kanika's baseless words in private and public circles. Even furthering my decimation.

Check their handles and old tweets. Their support of Mahima has been fanatical at best and vociferous at worst. Countless tweets where they call me predatory and creepy, continuing the good work of their lord and savior @AGirlOfHerWords.

Also, I'm not suggesting some secret bad faith conspiracy. I bet most of the members of this group don't even know what is what and they will believe the dominant narrative, which till this point was guided by @AGirlOfHerWords whose words were deemed sacrosanct after Oct 2018.

Reiterating. Do not harass anyone mentioned by me here. Perhaps they were naive and were afraid of going against the narrative, or felt guilty about consenting in retrospect. They might have also felt like they were contributing to the greater good. We'll never know.

Quick announcement before I call out the next person.

I categorically deny sending unsolicited dick pics to anyone ever. Solicited dick pics, however, yes.

Okay, moving on.

Another one of @AGirlOfHerWords uncouth attacks on me that raked up a lot of RTs. I wish I could retaliate in the same language but I've seen a thesaurus. Feat. @Ms_ESCAPIST

Now @Ms_ESCAPIST is a garden variety fake accuser that Kukreja signal-boosted to achieve her awful hollow goal.

@Ms_ESCAPIST accused me of DMing her in the middle of the night asking for nudes and also said that I had a cameo in a Bollywood movie. Both, again, categorically and undeniably untrue. The second part can be verified by the good folks at @IMDb - m.imdb.com/name/nm8379180/

But how do I prove that I didn't DM her in the middle of the night asking for nudes? How does anyone prove that they *didn't* do something? You ask the other side.
So @Ms_ESCAPIST, if I did indeed ask you something objectionable on Twitter DMs, would you care to show it?

And if you say that it was conveniently deleted or something, you can always go back and retrieve it from Gmail, can't you?

If everything else fails, you can always go ask @RonanFarrow to investigate. Hell, I'll do it. Hi @RonanFarrow please investigate me.

This last one really made me wonder. Is there some sort of a self-gaslighting (or whatever the apt psychological term is) mechanism at play here?

Okay, onwards.

Hearing murmurs that this account will be reported to prevent me from posting anymore. Take all the screenshots and information needed.

A lot of people are pointing out that since I apologized already, I admitted to every awful thing that I was accused of. It wasn't a real admission. I did it because I felt like I had no choice. I had no lawyers, no PR team to guide me. That's why I deleted it later.

Quick reminder that this was the kind of incendiary language used by @AGirlOfHerWords.

Some honourable mentions before I begin for today. A lot of stray screenshots were floated around during October 2018. Some were deemed as obviously fake by most. Like this piece of art.

Now before you say what harm could these do? Know that not everyone is really perceptive about Photoshop or what doctored evidence can look like. The human mind is a tricky place. Stray, triggering images like this even if untrue can create false memories for the public at large.

Even people you've known. Take for instance, this acquaintance of mine from school. She's internet savvy and a published psychologist. Even she fell for it and wrote this when everyone in the world thought of me as the next Charles Sobhraj. Not her fault at all of course.

Before I proceed...

Thread about @4ngery and the damages she tried to inflict on my life in the past year through targeted lies and malevolent intent.

One more classic zinger by @AGirlOfHerWords before we move on. See how she is leading the mob. And again, see the triggering language used.

How surprising that the same people who led the mob against me are now vehemently backing those who lied about me last year. How hard is it to go 'Sorry, we messed up'?

Thread about @Agratha, an unsolicited picture sender herself, telling the world anonymously, that I did the very thing that she herself got her jollies from. Categorically deny sending her anything untoward unsolicited.

When @AGirlOfHerWords realized that her own claims had no meat and could be disputed, she started floating the dangerous narrative that I was some sort of pedophile predator. Something that was lapped up by the media readily without scrutiny or confirmation.

The real act in contention was three lines of text sent in 2014. The first two of which was my number being sent from my account with some non-sequiturs and the last was me messaging please don't call this number. That was the entirety of it. I was 23 at the time.

I was very proud of my account (then @satanbhagat) and my friends knew I was very guarded about it. The fact that I was in a relationship then made this number sending to random accounts 'joke' a little more sinister than it was perhaps intended to be.

When @adt_txt messaged me replying to the DMs, I immediately realised what was happening and told her to ignore them and never call on my number. That was it.

Cut to 2018. @AGirlOfHerWords put out her wonderfully slanderous narrative of me being a larger-than-life predator. It was a trending topic and anyone who had any information on me would be connected to a larger pattern by Mahima, who at this point, was on her own power trip.

The language used by her was chosen carefully to mould her messed-up narrative about me. A narrative that she perhaps borrowed from a story that broke out earlier in Feb 2018 about a poet and his alleged encounters with underage girls. But this is speculation, not an insinuation.

Either way, some sort of posthumous sanity prevailed and @adt_txt wrote her apology about the whole incident and the monstrousity it eventually spiralled into.

Here are the screengrabs of the apology. 1/2

2/2

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling