The 2024 edition of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is currently taking place in Goa, and Tamil actor Sivakarthikeyan, fresh from the success of his latest release Amaran, was one of the celebrity attendees at the event. Sivakarthikeyan sat down for a chat session during IFFI 2024, and the actor revealed how maintaining a distance from social media, especially X (formerly Twitter) has helped him improve his career. 

"What I'm following for the past two years is using social media very less. i'm giving very less time to social media. And you have so much of information, so much of positive things, and if you want to use, you use internet. This is my kind advice. Don't use much of social media especially Twitter (X). Elon Musk might block my account (for saying this). That'll be the first success I think for me (if Musk blocked Sivakarthikeyan's account). 

 

I feel like if we come out of X, we'll have a very free mind-space. I experienced this because no one is feeding their thoughts into my mind. When something goes wrong in my film, or usually when something goes wrong with our work or one of our film doesn't go well, we'll get confused and we;ll try to find where the answer is. At such times, I used to search for my answers on social media, and I confused myself. I did different kinds of films without understanding what the film is, everything happened. 

 

Then suddenly one day I realized how it works. Stick to the basics. Usually when cricketers go out of form, they just stick to the basics..Like that I realized that this social media came in between. When I was in television, these things didn't influence me. I got the appreciation or anything from the audience, from the ground.

 

When I get on to the stage or go for any other event, I get feedback. They say, 'I saw this episode, that was really good'. And majority of the people, if we meet them in person, they will not say your negatives first. That is the biggest quality of Indian people, I feel always. Irrespective of the languages. 

 

Some of my films would have disappointed them but (in person as opposed to social media) they would just avoid that and said only positive things. So I take that as 'okay why those films (with positive feedback) work'. Because of what. Not only because of me. Because of the story or because of the way it was presented. So I try to stick on to the basics. So last two years I'm quite off from social media, and that really really works for me."

Sivakarthikeyan also shared during this IFFI session about how he contemplated quitting the Tamil film industry, but his wife Aarti's encouragement resulted in him continuing doing movies.