Monday 7 December 2009

The Chetan Bhagat Blocks (#chetanblocks) Saga Documented

On Monday 7/12/2009, sometime in the evening, the Indian author Chetan Bhagat blocked few people from his twitter account. Chetan (@chetan_bhagat) was having a debate with a journalist (@jojiphilip) on books and piracy, when he received some tweets which didn't gel with him. The result was him blocking those people from his twitter account.

This started a massive surge of tweets related and unrelated to this incident with the hashtag #chetanblocks. This is currently a trending topic on twitter and tweeple are retweeting just to see it go up -- which also hurts Chetan's reputation (I guess).

I'm not sure who coined the hashtag, but its originator might be Saad Akhtar (who writes an awesome Indian web-comic flyoufools.com) who was one of the people blocked by Mr Bhagat.

Update: As witnessed by whatthetrend.com, the hashtag was originated by @nikhilnarayanan.

Order of events for context (I have too much time, I guess):






















@notytony quips and gets blocked.














It's somewhere after the above tweet, when the hashtag (#chetanblocks) started trending.

Chetan's responses:










At this point, Chetan took a break after which he came back with a flurry of responses (which IMO should have been a blog post). I have omitted few of them, but I think I have kept enough to do justice to his position.


























I think the battle (if you may) is still on. Enough for now; tired of taking screenshots.

Update: Other related links:

Update (7/12/2009 7:36 PM): Added notytony's tweet.
Update (7/12/2009 8:18 PM): Updated with Chetan's latest responses.
Update (7/12/2009 8:35 PM): Corrected hashtag origins.

18 comments:

Unknown said...

actually the tweet that started it even more was the one from @notytony where he just retweeted with a joke and he was blocked without any rhyme or reason.

Praveen said...

the #chetanblocks was started by @nikhilnarayanan
never seen such a response to an Indian topic...though he may not care, chetan's reputation will certainly take a beating with this

The Cydonian said...

And oh, you might also want to mention somewhere that blocking does zilch to open tweets. Flyfools merely wouldn't have seen Chetan Bhagat's tweets in his timeline; nothing would have stopped him from subscribing to the tweets' RSS feed.

Rohan said...

I think this was Notytony's tweet that riled Mr. B.

http://twitter.com/notytony/status/6427756892

Rohit said...

@Rajiv, @Rohan: Updated with notytony's tweet.

sherene said...

Ah, awaiting his response to my tweets too... I don't even like his writing so no holds barred for me!

http://twitter.com/sherenejose

Unknown said...

Pretty interesting trend this... "chetan_bhagat
if u gonna do it, do it right. trend the damn #chetanblocks will ya!"

and did we do it!! :D

Nitin said...

I tried some bad paintshopping on the 3 Idiots wallpaper @ http://www.twitpic.com/sj5im

Check out @NitinSantosh for more #chetanblocks funnies

Rohan said...

Cool. Linked you in #chetanblocks funniest tweets. Cheers.

/urgu said...

@nikhilnarayanan was the originator of the #chetanblocks tag, according to this link: http://www.whatthetrend.com/trend/%23chetanblocks

Rohit said...

@Praveen, @/urgu: Corrected origins.

RAHUL K said...

haha!! this is cool!!
I just said one not so nice thing to him, and he blocked me instantly!!
have a look--
the pic and the tweet (given below the link)
http://twitpic.com/sj7cs

smr said...

http://chetanblocks.com

Anonymous said...

phew! nice work with those screenshots :P Linked you to my post at http://bit.ly/chetanblocks

SJ said...

thanks for this...was wondering what the sudden barrage was on twitter having been off it most of yesterday ;)!

Kaushik said...

What I totally fail to understand is the logic behind Chetan saying he blocked @flyyouall coz he didnt want to see his tweets in his timeline. That's called unfollowing right? Or am I missing something else here?

Coach Hemant Jain said...

I was actually wondering something and u answered it in the closing sentence !!

Unknown said...

Chetan Bhagat as a writer is a great guy. But when it comes to principled approach on matters of interest he makes compromises. That is perhaps the sole reason he lost respect of most of the people on internet who were keen to see the outcome of his fight with the establishment.

http://www.digitalpost.org/2010/01/will-real-parents-of-3-idiots-please.html