People have shelled out lakhs to bring me down and troll me mercilessly: Pooja

Pooja Hegde, a leading actor who has risen to prominence in a short period, made her debut in the Tamil film Mugamoodi in 2012. Shortly after, she established herself in the Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi film industries. In 2023, she appeared in Salman Khan's Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, further solidifying her position in the industry. Pooja, who has often been the subject of numerous trolls on social media, has now responded to the situation. She revealed that people are spending money to troll her, and she has even investigated and found out how it works.

In an interview with Filmfare, Pooja shared her thoughts, saying, “There was a time when I was constantly trolled on meme pages. I used to wonder why they were speaking negatively about me. It felt like they were targeting me. People are spending a lot of money just to bring someone down. After discovering this, my parents and I started paying more attention to these issues."

Pooja also stated that she takes such trolling in her stride as a form of validation. "The reason they try to bring you down is because you are above them in some way. Initially, I used to look at it as something normal. But after some time, it crossed all boundaries. I realised people are spending huge amounts of money just to troll me," she said.

In response to the trolling, Pooja instructed her team to reach out to the meme pages to understand their motives. She received a reply stating that the meme pages make money through these activities. “If you want to troll them back, you need to pay,” she was informed. Pooja found this to be quite strange. She explained, “Once I saw a comment and checked the profile, there was no display picture or posts. It turned out that they were paid bots."

Pooja Hegde’s candid response sheds light on the dark side of social media and how financial incentives are being used to fuel trolling and negativity online.