Apoorva Mukhija has known both spotlight and shadows intimately this year. Popularly known as the Rebel Kid, she carved a space for herself on the internet with bold content that mirrored the chaos of Gen Z life. But earlier this year, things spiralled out of control. A clip from India’s Got Latent went viral for all the wrong reasons, setting off a storm of hate, threats, and moral policing. And just like that, Mukhija went silent. Now, with her return on Amazon Prime Video’s The Traitors, she’s speaking but not to explain herself. In this exclusive conversation with mid-day, the social media star reflects on what it means to survive the internet’s ugliest side and why she was no longer trying to be understood. This is Apoorva 2.0, unbothered, but on her own terms.

Excerpts from the interview:

You’ve called this your Apoorva 2.0 era. What did you have to leave behind from your former self to become who you are now?
Apoorva 1.0 looked confident but doubted everything. I didn’t know how to take compliments. If someone said, “You’re smart” or “I love your content,” I’d assume they were being sarcastic. I had low self-esteem, even when things looked great on the outside. I’d read every comment, DM [direct message], roast and let it eat away at me. After everything that happened, I just stopped. Not because I stopped caring, but because I finally proved to myself that I can survive things. Now I trust myself more. I make content because I enjoy it. I’ve found the people who really matter to me. For the first time, I felt I didn’t need the internet to tell me who I am. I read this quote that said, “You accept the love you think you deserve” and I just never thought I deserved any. I realised I am not the comments I get on Instagram.