Sunny Leone is now a household name in India, thanks to ‘Bigg Boss’. And do I need say what that is? ‘No’ would be the answer if I ran an online poll on the issue.
It’s been nearly two weeks since Sunny Leone aka Karen Malhotra – an Indo-Canadian porn star, actress, businesswoman and model – entered the ‘Bigg Boss 5’ house. While the inmates of the country’s most popular reality TV show still don’t know (or are they pretending? Or as contestant Shonali said I have seen you somewhere!) who she is (Sunny has introduced herself as a Hollywood actress), the rest of India has read her history, geography, biology et al.
Probably that is the reason why the porn star has set the Web (Internet) on fire. She is trending on Google, and entertainment websites (and news ones too) are splashing news about every move of hers - the pole dance, whether she has revealed her status or not, what she eats, what she says etc etc.
To those of us in news business (especially
online), she has become a hot property. No matter if you have stories on breakthrough in blast cases, fears about an imminent dam collapse, Parliament logjam over FDI in retail which politicians say will drive general stores in your neighbourhood out of business, what’s surely clicking is Sunny Leone (or for that matter a song named ‘Kolaveri Di’, which too has become a rage in the country, and of course Salman Khan).
What is it that the news story on Sunny Leone tells readers about and one on bomb blasts probe breakthrough does not? To me, nothing!
Does this highlight most people on the Internet are looking for titillation and similar stuff. Is that why porn sites are more popular than anything else on the Web? Is the ‘web of sex’ more powerful than anything else online? Ask those who always search on Google ‘safe search off’ mode!
Or is it that the Internet, at least in India, is still the best ‘private’ medium to satisfy your sexual instincts.
If we go by rough estimates (no latest official data is available), at least 40% of Internet is porn. And this year .XXX domains went up for sale.
With adult TV banned in India, sale of pornographic magazines illegal, and no safe ‘sex districts’, online porn has emerged as one sure shot way to find whatever you want to see. And Sunny Leone’s ‘Bigg Boss’ avatar that paved her way into the mainstream has brought ‘porn stars’ to the headlines.
It’s the world of eye candies and no one is complaining.
(The views expressed by the author are personal)