Anatomy of the Hate Campaign Against Dara

The campaign against Dara began on January 31 when BNT aired the final of the national Eurovision selection. Eight performers appeared, and after voting by the audience and the jury, 27-year-old Dara was declared the winner.

The first spark of discontent came after the television decided not to show the audience's voting in real-time during the second live broadcast. Immediately, social media was flooded with comments suggesting that the contest was rigged, just like all others in Bulgaria. It was claimed that everything was predetermined weeks in advance, the jury was biased towards Dara, and BNT had selected a "pre-determined favorite."

A TikTok user claimed to have "hacked" the BNT website and seen the "real results," leading to dubious screenshots of the voting that showed another contestant had more public votes. The false classification circulated showed MONA with 23,853 votes, Dara with 10,500 fewer, and even third behind Michael Marinov. BNT refuted this with the official ranking, where Dara won with 22 jury points and 21,267 public votes, while MONA had 18,211 votes and was third behind Marinov.

However, this part of the regulation seemed to elude thousands of social media commenters, and the dispute over the contest escalated into personal hate directed at the singer. Dara became the villain, accused of causing this injustice, and faced a powerful nationwide backlash.

Forty-eight hours later, the networks were boiling, and the algorithm further amplified the spread of conspiracy videos, analyses, and false "real results." Forums, Facebook, and TikTok groups repeated the same narrative: "Everything was predetermined weeks in advance. Dara can dance, but she can't sing live" and how "with fake singing, you can win." According to others, without autotune to correct her unstable voice, she couldn't perform a song live at Eurovision, and her appearance would be a sure failure. Vocal coach analyses on TikTok showed clips from her live performance to prove she "has no voice." One such video reached over 150,000 views before the profile was deleted due to cyberbullying reports. Today, most of these hate groups no longer exist as they were deleted, but they played their role at the time.

Despite BNT officially refuting the lies and threats to seek legal action, it was like a voice in the wilderness.

The fans of the competing contestants MONA, Michael Marinov, and Roxana were dissatisfied with the result, but they were not the only reason for the hate campaign against Dara. At least three narrative threads developed around her.

One was related to the fact that Dara is part of the "Virginia Records" label owned by Sanya Armutlieva. This gave a new twist: "Sanya arranged everything." However, conveniently overlooked was the fact that Michael Marinov is also from the same company. Armutlieva officially refuted these claims in the networks, but the avalanche of hate continued to gain strength. To stop all these rumors, BNT issued an official statement: "During the voting window, the team that organized and secured the IT infrastructure of the site successfully blocked over 1.5 million votes from Asia, identified as an attempt to manipulate the vote. The claims of hacking the BNT website are completely unfounded, as they aimed to ensure the protection and integrity of the process."