On December 21, 2025, Smriti Mandhana made history. She became the first Indian woman and only the second player globally to cross 4,000 T20I runs, reaching the milestone faster than anyone before her. The same week, photographs mocking her biceps went viral. If you were scrolling Instagram or Twitter that week, chances are you encountered far more content about Smriti Mandhana’s body than about her huge career milestone. But why is that? Smriti has been in the news for a while now. Why do we only see discussions around her body, not her career?

The engagement trap: Why hate goes viral

Smriti Mandhana being body-shamed is all over our feed, and it’s not an accident. It’s algorithmic design, and it’s systematically burying women’s achievements under body commentary. Social media platforms are built around a simple objective: maximise engagement. More engagement keeps users online longer, which drives advertising revenue. What the algorithm prioritises, therefore, isn’t value or importance — it’s reaction. Research on platform behaviour consistently shows that content triggering strong emotional reactions, such as shock, disagreement, outrage, spreads faster than neutral or informative posts. A February 2025 study published in PNAS Nexus found that engagement-based algorithms consistently amplified emotionally charged and hostile content, even when users reported that such content made their experience worse.

In other words, people didn’t like what they were seeing, but they couldn’t stop interacting with it either. Why? Because outrage provokes a response. We comment to argue, share to criticise, and repost to condemn. From the algorithm’s perspective, all of that counts as success.

So when a post about Mandhana’s appearance sparks debate, whether it’s praise, criticism, mockery, or defence, the system reads it as “successful” content and pushes it further. Achievement-driven posts, which usually generate slower and quieter interaction, simply can’t compete.

The rich-get-richer effect

There’s another layer at play: historical performance. Algorithms don’t just promote what’s engaging now; they promote what has worked in the past. Men’s cricket, or men’s sports in general, has enjoyed decades of higher viewership, heavier coverage, and more consistent engagement online. As a result, content related to men’s sport is already marked as “safe” and “popular” by the system. This is what the researchers call “rich-get-richer” dynamics. Content that performed well in the past gets amplified further, while less popular content struggles for visibility regardless of quality.

Men’s cricket has decades of dominant coverage, millions of followers, and established engagement patterns. Women’s cricket, despite growing popularity, starts from a position of algorithmic disadvantage. Every time a user clicks on men’s cricket content, the algorithm learns: “This is what sports fans want.” Women’s achievements don’t stand a chance.

What Mandhana’s story reveals

The trolling came during an already difficult period. In early December 2025, Mandhana confirmed her wedding to singer-composer Palash Muchhal had been called off following a medical emergency involving her father.

She was navigating personal crises, professional triumph, and public body-shaming; all within days. However, we all know which two things the algorithm amplified the most. When a woman breaks records, reaches milestones faster than anyone in history, and powers her nation to a historic title, that should dominate our feeds. Instead, photographs of her arms at a brand event generate more coverage, more engagement, more algorithmic amplification.

This isn’t about Smriti Mandhana alone. It’s about how algorithmic systems, trained on biased data and optimised for engagement over value, systematically prioritise content that divides over content that celebrates. Especially when it comes to women.

Until platforms redesign their algorithms to value achievement over outrage, quality over controversy, and equity over engagement maximisation, women athletes will continue fighting two battles: one for excellence on the field, and another for visibility that isn’t tied to body commentary. Mandhana deserves better. So do the millions of girls watching, wondering if their strength will be celebrated or criticised. The algorithm has a choice. So do we.

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Related: Smriti Mandhana-Palash Muchhal’s Wedding Cancelled: What Every Woman Should Learn From This Fiasco