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Social media has made it very convenient for people to communicate but what people have to say is not always very helpful or kind. Calling out trolls who spew negativity online, Sarwat Gilani reminded them that celebrities are also people with emotions and that the hate effects them very much. Addressing haters, she said they need to introspect and resist the urge to spread hostility online.

The Churails actor appeared on FWhy 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.”

She drew connections to Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s public criticism and recently released documentary saying, “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 called virtual hate “lethal”, saying it leads to people going off social media “because it creeps under your skin”. 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 one who’s doing something wrong, we will talk about them. It’s our culture,” she added.

She explained why she believes people act this way. “[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 stated.

Giving a recent example, she talked about the lack of effort in people when forming judgments. “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.