Eighteen-year-old Karin Novilda, who goes by the name Awkarin online, is one of the hottest social media star in Indonesia today, having used her stream of glamorous Instagram photos and her I-don’t-give-a-fuck persona to attract well over a million followers.
She has also attracted quite a few critics, who have complained that Awkarin has become a negative influence on Indonesian children.Chief among those critics is the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), which thrust the the controversy around the social media star into the spotlight when they reported Awkarin and another Instaceleb, Anya Geraldine, to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Menkominfo) for their supposed “vulgarity”.
Despite the fact that Awkarin and Anya are both adult women, both have never published anything approaching pornography, and both have absolutely no legal obligation to act as role models for children, the KPAI implied that there might be criminal elements to what the two social media celebrities were doing and insinuated that they could see their accounts blocked by the IT Ministry or even face criminal charges.
Maturely, Awkarin decided to take the diplomatic approach to the ironically childish actions of the KPAI and yesterday she and her management had a meeting with members of KPAI and Menkominfo.
KPAI chairman Asrorun Niam said that all parties came to an agreement during the meeting that Awkarin’s posts would include more “positive elements” in the future.
“[We agreed] that the content should not just be for the sake of entertainment, but also have dimensions of education as well. Because her currently uploaded content has more negative elements that disrupt the growth process of children, because the basic rights of children is that they should be able to grow and develop properly, and be given good information in accordance with their development,” Asrorun said as quoted by Detik.
Again, we don’t understand what business KPAI has demanding that somebody on social media include not just entertaining but also “educational” content in their posts. Does everybody in Indonesia who gains any popularity on social media now have to worry about being a good role model for children lest they get threatened with legal action?
But we can at least respect Awkarin for meeting with them and playing their game. Frankly we are hoping that she just continues to do her own thing. Which we suspect she might. That “Fuck Off” Instagram photo above? She posted it two hours before she post her photo of meeting with the KPAI.
