Privacy is a dead concept, buried under layers of SEO-optimized garbage and the relentless tick of the algorithmic clock. We’ve reached a point where the digital afterlife of a relationship is longer and more profitable than the relationship itself. Case in point: the internet is currently losing its collective mind because Rakshit Shetty mentioned he’s still "in touch" with Rashmika Mandanna.

Old news. New clicks. Same old cycle of parasocial obsession.

For those who haven't been doom-scrolling through the specific corner of the internet where South Indian cinema meets tabloid frenzy, here’s the gist. Shetty and Mandanna were engaged back in 2017. They broke up in 2018. In the timeline of the modern web, 2018 is basically the Bronze Age. Since then, Mandanna has become a "National Crush," a pan-India juggernaut, and a frequent target of a particularly toxic brand of social media scrutiny. Shetty, meanwhile, has doubled down on his status as the thinking man’s auteur in the Kannada film industry.

The "news" here isn't that two adults are acting like adults. It’s that the internet won’t let them be anything else. Shetty recently confirmed they still exchange messages. Occasionally. Like normal people who once shared a life. But in the ecosystem of X (formerly Twitter, still a mess) and Instagram, this is treated like a decrypted signal from a deep-space probe. It’s "viral." It’s "breaking."

It’s also incredibly profitable for the platforms.

Every time a five-year-old quote or a mundane update about these two hits the feed, the engagement metrics spike. It’s a feedback loop of nostalgia and voyeurism. We aren't just consuming news; we’re participating in digital archeology. The friction here is obvious: the human cost of being an "algorithm-friendly" entity. For Mandanna, every mention of her past is a fresh wave of trolls questioning her loyalty or her "character." For Shetty, it’s a distraction from his actual work, a recurring pop-up ad in a career built on substance.

The trade-off for fame used to be a lack of privacy in the physical world. Now, it’s the permanent loss of a narrative. You don't get to move on because the data centers in Northern Virginia won't let you. Your past is indexed, tagged, and ready to be served up as "content" whenever the daily trending topics need a boost.

It’s a cheap trick. Content farms take a snippet of an interview, strip away the context, slap on a clickbait headline, and watch the ad revenue trickle in. It’s the lowest common denominator of "tech-enabled" journalism. We’ve built these massive, sophisticated neural networks and global communication arrays just to argue about whether an actress still texts her ex-fiancé.

The fans are the worst part of the machine. They treat these celebrities like characters in a long-running procedural drama. "Will they get back together?" "Why did she leave?" They aren't looking for news; they’re looking for a plot twist. They want the dopamine hit of a "reunion" arc. It’s a weirdly intimate form of entitlement, fueled by the fact that these stars are accessible through the glass rectangles in our pockets.

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with watching the same story get recycled every six months. It’s like being trapped in a digital version of Groundhog Day, but instead of Bill Murray, we get "viral" screenshots of old Instagram comments. The platforms don't care if the information is relevant or even new. They only care if you linger on the page for more than three seconds.

Shetty’s comment was actually quite grounded. He spoke about mutual respect and the reality of moving on while maintaining a thread of connection. It was a rare moment of maturity in an industry that usually thrives on manufactured drama. But the internet doesn't do "grounded." It does "explosive." It takes a quiet admission of friendship and turns it into a battleground for fan clubs.

The price tag of this viral cycle isn't just the annoyance of the celebrities involved. It’s the degradation of our own attention spans. We’re being trained to react to the ghost of a story rather than the reality of the present. We’re being fed the same scraps of gossip, repackaged for the hundredth time, because the AI driving the feed knows we’ll bite.

So, Rakshit and Rashmika are in touch. Big deal. They’re navigating the wreckage of a public breakup in an era where nothing is ever truly deleted and everything is a potential headline. They’re trying to be human in a system that only values them as data points.

If two people can survive a public engagement, a public breakup, and a decade of relentless internet scrutiny while still being on speaking terms, they’ve probably achieved something more impressive than any box office record. But don't expect the algorithm to highlight that. It’s too busy looking for the next old quote to exhume.

How many times do we have to read the same story before we realize we're the ones being played?