From Ranveer Allahbadia to Monica Lewinsky: Life after public shaming

A fall from grace is swift and unforgiving in the digital age. But can one ever truly make a comeback after being dragged through the mud?

Hoping to douse the fire his comments on ‘India’s Got Latent’ YouTube show had sparked, a groveling Ranveer Allahbadia quickly posted an apology: “Comedy is not my forte, I had a lapse of judgement… I am sorry.”

 

But the internet rarely forgives. “You are apologising only because it will affect your podcast business,” said a person on social media. “Sorry, bro, your apology is insincere, I am unfollowing you,” wrote another.

 

Allahbadia’s comments have taken on a life of their own. Police complaints, death threats and thousands of social media comments have followed, with his apology doing little to stem the tide of rage. He has lost, by some accounts, two million subscribers, but for someone with 16 million, that might still leave room for a comeback — except with the Supreme Court stepping in to halt further shows, it won’t be easy.

 

 

Once tainted, many find there is no way back on the internet. Remember Kavya Viswanathan? The 18-year-old Harvard freshman who shot to global fame with a $500,000 book deal, only to be brought down by her own college newspaper, ‘The Harvard Crimson’, for plagiarism in ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life?’

 

There were “striking similarities” between her book and those of other authors, although there was no similarity in the plot. For months, new accusations kept emerging, until her publishers pulled the book, cancelled the deal, and Viswanathan —by all accounts a gifted writer—was sent to literary exile.

 

That was 2006. The taint never faded. Years later, when she landed a job as a lawyer, now-defunct American website Gawker wrote: “Harvard’s Most Infamous Plagiarist Is More Successful Than You.” And when tragedy struck — her parents dying in a plane crash — another headline read: “Parents of Harvard’s Chick-Lit Plagiarist Die in Plane Crash.”

 

Viswanathan managed to graduate with honours from Harvard and Georgetown University Law Center, yet a simple Google search still pulls up pages with each one of them linking her name to plagiarism. “To have your name permanently tarnished must really suck,” wrote a Reddit user. Another remarked, “I firmly believe that one mistake, just because it's on a very public stage, should not destroy someone's life.”

 

Public shaming in the age of the internet can feel like a life sentence with no parole. But while Viswanathan vanished into anonymity, others have found ways to break free — by fighting back or rewriting their own narrative.

 

Mike Daisey, an American monologist and author, did just that. His transgression? He fabricated parts of a story, claiming he had travelled to Shenzhen, China, and met factory workers who made Apple products. When the truth unravelled, his initial attempts at justifying himself only made things worse. But eventually, he apologised—first in a radio interview, then in a statement on his website and Twitter.

 

Unlike many disgraced writers, Daisey refused to fade away. Instead, he kept engaging, pushing back, defending himself against critics. As British journalist Jon Ronon says in his book, ‘So You Have Been Publicly Shamed’, his persistence wore down the outrage. Over time, the fury dissipated. Today, Daisey continues to perform and write. His digital footprint still holds traces of the scandal, but they are buried beneath mentions of his more recent work.

 

Then there’s Monica Lewinsky, who came to public attention after then US President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an affair. For nearly two decades, she stayed out of the public eye, avoiding media and scrutiny. But in 2015, she stepped back in—not as a scandal figure, but as a powerful voice against cyberbullying. Her TED Talk on the cost of public shaming went viral. She reframed her story, not by erasing the past but by owning it. Today, she hosts ‘Reclaiming’, a podcast that offers real talk on resilience, growth, and learning to live in the now, whose first show came out last week. Lewinsky’s journey is one of quiet strength—proving that even the most public fall can be reshaped into something meaningful.

 

For ordinary people, however, the burden of a public scandal is harder to shake. TV actor Ashutosh Kaushik, known for 'MTV Roadies' reality show, learned this the hard way.

 

In his 20s, a drunken Kaushik stepped out to buy more booze when he was caught by the cops and spent a night in jail. He called a journalist friend for help. The friend recorded the entire encounter and posted it online. The internet never let him forget. Before finding celebrity, he ran a dhaba in Haryana and soon everyone had seen the video of his drunken argument with cops. “No one wanted to marry their daughter to me,” he says. Every introduction, every new opportunity came with the fear that someone would Google his name. Eventually, though, at 42, he found someone willing to look past the video.

 

That’s not the end though—Google search results have not changed for him. He has tried to create positive press by volunteering at schools, giving talks to young adults about not mixing drinking and driving, drawing upon his own mistakes, but none of that has made any difference when it comes to search results.

 

Now, he is fighting a case under the Right to Be Forgotten to have the news reports about his drunken argument and subsequent arrest removed. India’s digital data protection rules provide the right to be forgotten but leave much of its implementation to future rules and regulations, which are yet to be notified, says cyber expert and advocate Prashant Mali. Without clarity on the processes, the right remains difficult to exercise effectively in India.

 

Unlike Europe, where search engines like Google are required to consider requests from individuals to remove links that infringe on their privacy—from details of divorce to affairs to a scantily clad photo—in India, one has to route it via the courts, and the process can take forever.

 

The long delay in court proceedings makes the path to a comeback even more difficult. Some manage to reinvent themselves, others push back and refuse to be erased, and some disappear, only to resurface years later, hoping time has dulled the public memory. But when every misstep is forever recorded online, the way back is a hard climb.