We all love fictional characters. We can identify with their struggles in a story , we can identify the character traits that they have. At one point it becomes a parasocial relationship with something that doesn't exist- either it's a stroke of somebody's pen or some actor playing the role of someone.
Social media has started a new trend of people acting as a fictional character who people can follow , relate to ,and make fun of as if they really exist. This phenomenon has been as old as the internet and in the Bangladesh social media sphere it started with people writing anonymous blogs under a pseudonym and eventually making full on characters with their own stories from the first point of view.
Especially in our generation where online mediums are our main consumption, these characters on social media just are another extension of our love for characters that we consume manifested in a new format.
One of the oldest to this on Facebook was Kamruzzaman Kamruzzaman aka Switzerland Probashi. Him playing a character that people could read to , relate to and have fun showed a new type of interaction in the social media sphere. Over time, new such profiles propped up though not with the level of sophistication in writing that is seen in Switzerland Probashi's posts. A lot of them went towards a more direct satire route with some being caricatures of tropes people hate in real life. Like Tanvir Sultan MBA being a caricature of the business major who always posts about grindset and how to make yourself better on LinkedIn and Facebook or Sadia Chowdhury PhD being the caricature of the ever entitled STEM major( we have met someone like that in our real lives) and seeing them being mocked like these makes up for comedy.
Another social media profile has popped up recently in the last era. It's the ever playful " Montu Hati" that plays the role of a kid elephant called Montu and then makes posts with captions with an elephant picture behind which people can relate too. There is a nice humour to them that people can relate to. They also use their social media platform for fundraising causes and speaking about justice especially related to Hadi's murder or the rape case that happened last year. This adds another layer of genuinity to him that makes him different from a typical meme page.
Making personas in social media is nothing now but making a persona that's relatable to people that people interact with as if you are as a real person is a really interesting phenomenon in the current Bangladeshi social media sphere. It mirrors how some people make CharacterAI bots to interact with their favourite fictional characters only these time real people are behind writing such characters that you can interact with.