During his life, many fans of the legendary Mohammad Ali would have sought a few seconds of fame with the help of boxing legend who died at the age of 74 on Saturday.
But, little did anyone know that Ali would make a celebrity out of an otherwise unknown individual in India.
Ali’s death left the people around the world shocked and the condolence messages began to pour in thick and fast. Within minutes ‘Mohammad Ali’ had become the top Twitter trend worldwide and more than two millions tweets had been posted about his death.
Different people chose to highlight different aspects of the ‘greatest ever champion’s’ life.
But, soon the dominating theme of conversation among the Indian Twitter users turned from Mohammad Ali to a girl called Anadita Ptael.
No, she had no connection with the legend. Her claim to fame on Saturday was a tweet describing Ali as a footballing legend.
Patel wrote, “RIP Mohammad Ali. The greatest footballer of all time better than Maradona, Messi and Ronaldo.”
This opened the floodgate on Twitter with users cracking jokes on Patel with some even trolling her for her innocuous mistake.
Faced with incessant attack, the user was forced to delete her account. But before she deactivated her account, she posted an apology saying, “Sorry peeps. My bad. Confused him with Pele. I only follow cricket and Kohli is better than Tendulkar.”
Such was the power of her one silly tweet that Anadita Patel remained a top trend even hours after Mohammad Ali had fallen off the list of top trends on Twitter.
Some Anadita Patel is enjoying her 5 mins of fame. Courtesy #Ali the footballer. :))
— Yashwant Deshmukh ?? (@YRDeshmukh) June 4, 2016
Rate of population increase in India < rate of account creation of Anadita Patel pic.twitter.com/TaW8CNB4wp
— Deepak (@twisted__tales) June 4, 2016
https://twitter.com/BakuBakiya/status/739077354413117441
I am very sure Anadita Patel is a fan of Kejriwal.
She is welcome to #Kerala too – a bright political career awaits her.— Sabarimala keeps South India 'Hindu' (@PartyVillage017) June 4, 2016
Ok! A girl mistook Muhammad Ali to be Pele. But what's the need to make it a big issue and embarrass her publicly? #Anadita_Patel jst chill.
— Ria (@_ria931_) June 4, 2016
When you try to be become too witty on twitter you become anadita patel
— RANVEER (@ranveerpol6161) June 4, 2016
U know the power of trolling when #MuhammadAli disappears from the trends list but Anadita Patel remains!
— Rasheed Kappan (@kappansky) June 4, 2016
One silly tweet and trending world wide! Hats off Anadita Patel! This proves even without intelligence and hard work u can b famous!
— rupsa. (@zehnaseeb_) June 4, 2016
Jokes are fine but hate people who starts saying "She should die, kill her", I mean Anadita Patel didn't do anything bad its just ignorance
— Sand-d Singh (@Sand_In_Deed) June 4, 2016
https://twitter.com/Desi_tamancha/status/739088633374728196
2.3K+ RTs to a fake account of the great Anadita Patel.. Hadd hai BC https://t.co/9IJag4QDgp
— KRUTIK ? (@ScrewedTik) June 4, 2016