I am the bully, I can’t be bullied: Sarwat Gilani says she doesn't let trolls get to her

The entertainment fraternity has time and again spoken against the trolling they face on social media and how it affects their mental health. After Syeda Tuba, Saboor Aly and Anoushey Ashraf, Sarwat Gilani asked fans to be considerate towards celebrities and introspect within to resist any urge to spread hostility online.

The Churails actor appeared on her friend and neighbour Frieha Altaf’s FWhy Podcast and shared how celebrities struggle with inner complexes after reading negative comments under their posts. She also urged people to focus on the positive side of things more. “Let’s call out trolls because I feel that a lot of celebrities go through a lot of tough times, they almost fall into depression, insecurity [and] shame.”

Drawing parallels to Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s public criticism and recently released documentary, she added, “It’s so important to speak your truth as a personality out in the public because people assume everything about your life which is possibly not true.”

Gilani shared that virtual hate is extremely “lethal” as it “creeps under your skin” and consequently, leads to people going off social media. Speaking about herself personally, the actor said she refuses to get bullied. “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.”

The Qaatil Haseenaon Ke Naam actor called it our culture to always focus on the negative rather than encouraging the positive. “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 ones who are doing something wrong, we will talk about them. It’s our culture,” she added.

Explaining the psychology behind such a mindset, she exclaimed, “[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.”

The Joyland actor stated that people do not put any effort into their judgments and she saw this during the promotion of her Cannes-winning film. “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,” she concluded.