Sarwat Gilani says ‘enough is enough’ to trolls

Trolling affects the artistes very much as they are also people with emotions

Despite its heaps of positive aspects, the world of social media is not free from its negative impact too. This is particularly more valid for female actors and celebrities who often bear the toll of baseless criticism, defamation and round-the-clock trolling on social media.

Sarwat Gilani, Pakistan’s leading TV and film actress and fashion model, has recently drawn critical attention to the toxic and invasive trend of online trolling, which is all about spewing negativity and spreading hatred against the leading celebrities and well-known people from various walks of life.

Denouncing habitual sceptics and hate-mongers, Sarwat Gilani said that such baseless, nonstop trolling affects the artistes very much as they are also people with deep emotions, while those who are behind the hate-mongering must introspect and avoid the temptation to spread rumours and hostility online.

The Qaatil Haseenaon Ke Naam actor recently appeared on a podcast and said, “Let’s call out trolls because I feel that a lot of celebrities go through a lot of tough times, they almost fall in depression, insecurity and shame.”

“It’s so important to speak your truth as a personality out in public because people assume everything about your life, which is possibly not true,” Sarwat Gilani said.

Calling online hate-mongering a lethal trend, she said that such things lead people to stay away from social media “because it creeps under your skin”.

Citing her own experience of being a defiant victim of excessive trolling and bullying, the Churails actor said that she stands strongly against all kinds of bullying. “I am the bully, I can’t be bullied. I will be a bully to people who are bullying me, always. I’m never a bully with weak or meek people. I feel that just because you have an internet connection and a keyboard, it does not give you the entitlement to put people down.”

According to her, it has become our collective culture as most people here tend to focus on the negative sides of others in place of highlighting their positive points. “That has become such a cultural thing for us. We don’t raise anything, be it a leader, a political figure or someone from the entertainment industry. If someone is doing good, we will not talk about it. The one who’s doing something wrong, we will talk about them. It’s our culture,” Sarwat Gilani said.

“We saw this very clearly during Joyland’s time, people hadn’t even seen the film, the film hadn’t even been released and [they said] ‘This is against Islam, this is LGBT, etc.’ — watch the film first? And then when they watched it, they went like, ‘Oh, this had nothing worth banning in it.’ So you spread poison without even knowing. ‘Oh, okay sorry’ — what? So all these trolls, who might even pen tales under this conversation of ours, first look within and learn to control yourself and resist the negativity,” the Jawani Phir Nahi Aani star stated.

She said that people tend to act this way because of some reasons. “[It’s] because we aren’t happy and content in our own lives. We’re very pathetic. We are because we judge, we bring people down, we want to come out as the right person and we are not even honest with ourselves. We’ll never correct ourselves, we will never say sorry. It needs to change,” she added.