Nairobi News

She boasts of over 269,000 TikTok followers and 126.5 million views of her content. 

Wangari Maina,23, popularly known as Maina Mal, rose to fame with her witty and hilarious take on social issues affecting Kenya and the world at large- entertaining her followers with skits using various personas including the praying mother and the stereotyped Kenyan teacher among others.

She also joins in on social activism when it comes to demand for justice for victims of crime as she did in the #justiceforJeff.

However, despite the fame, there will always be detractors. Whether they don’t like her personas or are just jealous of her online success (which these days translates into money-making opportunities), Maina Mal spoke to Nairobi News about how she deals with critics and trolls who never fail to leave negative comments beneath her videos.

“Of course such characters can never lack, such characters who are not content by themselves can never lack. I have two ways of coping. I delete, block and move on because on my page, this is not a democracy. Democracy is the Republic of Kenya, not on my page. My page is monopoly, my page is a dictatorship. You are going to subscribe to what I do on my page.

On lives, we deal with you there and then. Personally, I’m not the type of person who accepts being told ‘oh, just block and delete; or just moderate and mute them’ No. Did you want the clout? Come let us give it to you. I’ll just answer you and move on because I feel that if I don’t address it at that time, I will sit down somewhere and reflect and overthink what that person said to me. I don’t want that for me because, as I said, I am here to be happy, not here to be doing emotional Olympics, I’m not here to have my emotions toyed with or be depressed because someone said, etc. And some comments are so damn hurtful but yes, as for me, I deal with you then and there, and we move.

She revealed that the one comment she has ever received and really crushed her was sent in October 2020 when the commenter said she was such an old grandmother and she didn’t have any children.

“I was like, yoh, guys, I’m still young. Why are you aging me? For you to come and tell a fellow woman that she is barren! And when I went to her profile, she had lost her mum and I was like ‘look at this opportunity sitting right here’ but then my mum told me I am better than that. Otherwise, I would have clapped back. Seriously because I have a notion whereby you can’t toy with my emotions because you feel like toying with them. If you want to toy with mine, I will also toy with yours. There is no space here of me being forgiving. Do I look like Jesus? No! I am a human being with emotions so allow me to process my emotions as I can,” said Maina Mal.

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