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Modi & Goswami ‘Have Done More Damage To Indian Media Than Anyone’: PeeingHuman Creator Ramit Verma

By DA Staff 18 February 2019 3 mins read

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In April 2015, Ramit Verma was watching the news when Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared on air, delivering a speech during a visit to Canada. It was a regular speech, but Verma sat up suddenly when he thought he heard Modi mispronounce โ€œwind energyโ€ as โ€œweed energyโ€.

Verma downloaded a clip of the speech and crafted a 16-second video, stitching it together with memes and a Bob Marley soundtrack. He then uploaded it onto his YouTube channel, titled Official PeeingHuman, which at the time had 10-20 subscribers. โ€œI posted it with a lot of expectations ki this will go viral, but it didnโ€™t,โ€ Verma said. โ€œBut then some Splitsvilla six or seven season winner picked it up from somewhere, and she posted it and then it went viral.โ€ A week later, he said, โ€œfor a couple of days it was trending on Twitter for an hour or three hours. It trended at number one on Twitter.โ€

Wait, what?

Encouraged by the response, Verma, a commerce graduate from Delhi, began creating and uploading content more regularly. Now, more than three years later, his memes and videos have spread far and wide through social media and WhatsApp groups, and have become vital parts of a comedic culture that dares to make fun of a ruling establishment that most of the countryโ€™s media treats with kid gloves (see Arnab Goswamiโ€™s interview of Modi versus his interview of Rahul Gandhi for a blatant example of this kind of bias). Verma now has more than 380,000 likes on Facebook, more than 39,700 followers on Instagram, 161,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than 20,000 followers on Twitter.

“Internet media is the only hope of any democracy in media and media upholding democracy.”

Verma was helped along the way by Kunal Kamra, with whom he shares an apartment, and who posts a lot of Vermaโ€™s content on his own pages. Verma also edits Kamraโ€™s interview show Shut Up Ya Kunal. โ€œAfter I met him and he started posting my videos on his page, it got a lot of traction,โ€ Verma said. โ€œNow on Facebook, I have more likes than him, which is a very unfair, because I got a lot of traction, a lot of visibility because of him.โ€

For a long time after he began, Vermaโ€™s family wasnโ€™t sure what he did. One day a friend who was staying at his house showed them his work. โ€œI walked in on them watching my videos, and I got really embarrassed. The video they were watching โ€œwas very sexual,โ€ Verma said. โ€œLike Amisha Patel and Bobby Deol sexual comedy scenes. It wasnโ€™t sexual but they were talking about their suhaag raat and it was a really silly scene.โ€ Because he was embarrassed, Verma never ended up explaining what he did to his family. โ€œTheyโ€™re not content watchers in general,โ€ he said. His sister is a fan of Kunal Kamra, but did not want to watch Shut Up Ya Kunal. โ€œShe said, when Kamra puts up his standup videos then tell me, Shut Up Ya Kunal toh I canโ€™t watch,โ€ he said. โ€œAnd I was like, ya but I donโ€™t work on the standup material. And she was like, โ€˜Haan but voh batana.โ€™โ€

โ€œIf someone wants to check if Iโ€™m neutral or not, or if I belong to an IT cell, then they will find multiple videos already, making fun of Rahul Gandhi, or Kejriwal.โ€

Verma had scathing words for the effect that Modi and Goswami have had on the Indian media, and for the media itself. โ€œI think theyโ€™ve together done more damage to Indian media than anyone could ever do,โ€ he said. โ€œAnd Modi toh separately has done other damage also.โ€ According to him, the two have โ€œtaken Indian media to a place where there is no comeback. Now only the internet will have to replace it. Internet media is the only hope of any democracy in media and media upholding democracy.โ€

He rejected accusations that he was soft on parties other than the BJP. โ€œIf someone wants to check if Iโ€™m neutral or not, or if I belong to an IT cell, then they will find multiple videos already, making fun of Rahul Gandhi, or Kejriwal.โ€

Occasionally, Verma hears of people using his work in arguments, or to represent their point of view. โ€œPeople tell me they showed a person with a contrary opinion some of my videos to change their opinion, mostly to the elders in their families,โ€ he said. โ€œThatโ€™s a few recent messages that I got, and I was like, fuck this is great. Like it canโ€™t get better than this.โ€

Here’s a tasting menu of PeeingHuman’s work:

On the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan

Jingostan (Dub Sharma) ft. Indian News Media

If not Modi, then who? Who? Who?

‘Who let the lap dogs out? Ft. Arnab Goswami and Ravish Kumar’

Namaste, biskut khao. Mandir wahin banega.

‘Sambit Patra – BJP Troll on National TV’

Follow PeeingHuman on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We know Rahul Gandhi already does.

Ramit Verma.

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DA Staff

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