One of the prominent over-the-top streaming platforms, Eros Now, faced major backlash after it posted exceedinlgy sexualised posts on its Twitter handle.
The posts in reference to the ongoing Navratri festival did not go down with netizens who trolled Eros Now back and forth. Among the posts, one said, “Be naughty, sweet toh mithai bhi hai” followed by “#Navratri”. The other post showed a photo of actor Katrina Kaif alongside the text, “Do you want to put the ‘ratri’ in my Navratri?”
By the time Eros Now took down the posts, they had already started making rounds on the social media. The netizens asked Eros Now to refrain from relating vulgar content to the pious festival of Navratri. Since morning, #BoycottErosNow trended at number two on Twitter.
“Why have you posted these double-meaning vulgar banners for the auspicious festive season?” a user wrote on Twitter.
“BoycottErosNow. @ErosNow is intentionally sexualising Hindu festivals and traditions while maintaining a totally different approach for non Hindu festivals. I wonder will they sexualise Eid and Ramzan?!” another user mentioned.
Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut also criticised Eros Now for their posts and compared streaming platforms to porn hubs. She underlined that in the world full of OTT platforms, it has become important to protect our theatres.
“We must preserve cinema as a community viewing theatre experience,its more difficult to enthrall large section of audience than sexualise content for personal viewing, digitisation of art faces this major crisis, all streaming platforms are nothing but a porn hub. SHAME @ErosNow,” she wrote.
She wrote: “And it’s not streaming platforms fault when you wear headphones and watch content in your personal space all you need is instant gratification, it’s important to watch the movies with entire family, children, neighbors basically it must be a community experience.”
“Community viewing enhances our awareness when we know someone is watching what we watching we want to be who we want them to think we are, we make conscious choices, censorship of what we feed our brains n emotions is very important and censor can be our own conscience as well.”
Following the backlash, Eros Now issued an apology on their official Twitter account on Thursday.
They issued a statement which reads: “To all those concerned, we at Eros love and respect our cultures equally. It is not and it has never been our intention to hurt anyone’s emotions. We have deleted the concerned posts and we apologise for having offended anybody’s sentiments. Thanking you, Team Eros Now.”
