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Business Insider IndiaAjith Kumar starrer Viswasam is the most influential moment on Twitter for India in 2019Business Insider India
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The largest election in the world and India’s most watched sporting event were left in the dust by a Tamil movie. Ajith’s Viswasam was the top ‘most influential moment’ of 2019 on Twitter.
This is however only one of the many achievements for this commercial potboiler. It survived competition from Rajnikanth’s Petta which released at the same time, and was also well accepted by the audience.
Something about the animated and colourful don role played by Ajith in Viswasam that made it a mega blockbuster. It hit the ₹100 crore mark within the first two weeks, crossing ₹200 crore by the time it was pulled from theatres.
But fans of Ajith and the movie were not just happy watching the movie. They went on to banter about it all over social media. And that pivoted Viswasam to top of Twitter’s charts.
The 48-year old actor is not on social media but his fan clubs have multiple accoounts and some of them even have 500,000 users.
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The Lok Sabha Election 2019, with 879 million eligible voters, was the second most influential moment in India. The Cricket World Cup, despite its popularity, came in third.
(Note: We had earlier reported Ajith's fan clud accounts as his. The error is regretted.)
Ajith may be a superstar now but he was considered an ‘outsider’ when he initially joined the Tamil film industry.
His first hit was Aasai in 1995, five years after he made his acting debut.
Ajith has acted in over 50 films in his entire career establishing himself with successes like Ullsam, Vaali, and Amarkalam.
It was AR Murugadoss’ Dheena while gave Ajith the nickname ‘Thala’ and turned him into a mass hero.
He’s also known for his philanthropic activities. He’s popular because he refuses to advertise his efforts. Not directly, anyway.
Another key factor of Ajith’s popularity are his varied interests. The actor look two years off from acting to become a professional race car driver and is known to dabble in photography.
Ajith’s popularity was further bolstered by his rivalry against leading Kollywood actor, Vijay — a feud that’s been going on for nearly two decades.
The rivalry between the two took root when Vijay called one the bad guys in Geethai, Thala. Ajith remained quiet and Vijay issued a clarification.
But tensions continued to grow between the two with Ajith’s diss-tack in Attahasam calling out Vijay. Vijay retaliated by mocking Ajith in one of Sachin’s songs.
(Source: Screenshot of Ajith from Attahasam)
Even though actors haven’t publicly acknowledged the feud of late, their fans continue to fight on the actors’ behalf — including viral death hoaxes on social media.
Bucking the trend that most Tollywood actors follow, Ajith currently has no plans to join politics — directly or indirectly — even though he expressed interest in 2010.