I first came across Kaarina Kaisar’s content sometime around 2018 or 2019. It was a short video about a young woman visiting a gynaecologist, only to be advised (almost predictably) to get married or have children as a solution to her health concerns. Anyone who grew up in Bangladesh would immediately recognise the scene. We laughed, but mostly because we knew how painfully common it was.

That was what Kaarina did so well. She could take everyday sexism, body shaming, social expectations, and the small absurdities of urban Bangladeshi life and turn them into something we could laugh at. But the laughter was rarely empty. Her content often carried recognition. We laughed because we had seen these situations before, because we had lived them, or because we knew someone who had.

For many young Bangladeshis living abroad, content creators like Kaarina meant something special. Their videos helped us feel connected to Bangladesh from a distance. When you live away from home, you start missing small things: the language, the humour, the chaos of Dhaka, family conversations, social habits, and even the things that annoyed you. Kaarina’s content brought back those familiar pieces of home. Through her videos, many of us, or at least I, could feel close to Bangladesh again.

She was not simply “an influencer” in the shallow sense in which the term is often used. She was part of a generation of digital creators who gave form to a particular Bangladeshi experience: urban, young, funny, politically conscious, and constantly negotiating between tradition and change. Like many public figures, she also faced trolling, mockery, and body shaming. But she continued to appear, create, act, and direct.

This is why the public reaction to her illness and death has been so painful to witness. Since the news of her hospitalisation emerged, social media became not only a space of prayer and grief, but also one of cruelty. Some celebrated her suffering, framing it as “karma” because she had publicly stood with the July–August 2024 uprising and joined the celebrations after the fall of Sheikh Hasina on August 5.

There is something profoundly disturbing about this. Political disagreement is one thing; wishing death upon a young woman in intensive care is another. Bangladesh is already a deeply polarised society, where people are often reduced to their political positions. But Kaarina’s case shows how far this dehumanisation can go. In such a society, even illness is politicised. Even death cannot guarantee dignity.

For many Bangladeshis, Kaarina’s position during the 2024 uprising made her courageous. She spoke up at a time when speaking up was not easy. But for others, especially those loyal to the old political order, that same position made her someone to hate. So when she was hospitalised, some of the reactions were not just ordinary trolling. They felt like political revenge. It revealed something very ugly about our public culture: our political hatred has become so strong that even illness and death cannot always soften it.

People can disagree with Kaarina’s politics. They can dislike her content, criticise her choices, or question her public positions. But celebrating someone’s illness or death is something else altogether. No political belief should make us forget basic humanity.

Alongside this political cruelty, another familiar form of prejudice resurfaced: body shaming disguised as concern. As soon as the news of her critical condition circulated, many people began speculating about her body, her weight, her lifestyle, and her supposed health choices. Instead of thinking about her grieving family, her friends, her colleagues, or the fear she must have experienced, some turned her death into a public interrogation of her body.

This is not new. Women’s bodies in Bangladesh are rarely allowed to simply exist. They are monitored, commented on, disciplined, and judged. A woman is too thin, too fat, too dark, too loud, too ambitious, too visible, too modern, too political, too emotional, too much. For women in the public eye, the scrutiny becomes relentless. Kaarina had long been mocked for her weight, yet she also became powerful precisely because she refused to disappear under that mockery.

Perhaps that is what her death should leave us with: not only grief, but discomfort. Discomfort with a political culture that celebrates the suffering of opponents. Discomfort with a society that turns women’s bodies into evidence against them. Discomfort with a public sphere where empathy is distributed unevenly.

But alongside all this ugliness, there has also been a great deal of love. Many scholars, artists, fans, and ordinary Bangladeshis have remembered Kaarina with immense affection. They have written about her humour, courage, kindness, and the way her work made people feel seen. In only 31 years, she seems to have touched many lives. I think that happened not because she felt like a distant celebrity, but because she felt familiar, like someone from our own circle.

This familiarity deserves reflection, too. Part of the reason so many of us are grieving Kaarina is that she felt like someone from our own world. She represented a certain urban middle-class Bangladesh: educated, expressive, imperfect, funny, and political. She could have been a friend, a cousin, a classmate, someone we followed on Facebook and felt we somehow knew. For diasporic Bangladeshis like me, she carried fragments of home. For young women, she represented defiance against judgement. For many middle-class viewers, she reflected our own contradictions.

This does not diminish her contribution. Rather, it helps explain the depth of public feeling surrounding her. Public grief is never only about the person who has died; it is also about what that person represented. Kaarina represented possibility. She represented the confidence to be visible in a society that punishes women for visibility. She represented humour as resistance. She represented a generation that used digital platforms not only for entertainment, but also for social commentary.

At the same time, we should remember that attention itself is shaped by class. Many deaths in Bangladesh do not receive this level of mourning. Many women die from medical neglect, violence, poverty, and social abandonment without becoming national conversations. Kaarina’s visibility, her class position, her cultural capital, and her online presence all shaped the scale of public grief. Acknowledging this does not belittle her. It simply asks us to widen our compassion.

Perhaps that is what her death should leave us with: not only grief, but discomfort. Discomfort with a political culture that celebrates the suffering of opponents. Discomfort with a society that turns women’s bodies into evidence against them. Discomfort with a public sphere where empathy is distributed unevenly.

Kaarina Kaisar deserved to be remembered for more than the cruelty that followed her final days. She deserved to be remembered as a creator, performer, daughter, friend, and young woman who made many Bangladeshis laugh, think, and feel closer to home. But the reactions to her death also deserve to be examined, because they reveal something about us.

Dr Marzana Kamal is a lecturer in social sciences at Liverpool Hope University, UK.

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