Dawn Images

Ali Ansari thinks the problem with social media is how people post things without the context needed to understand what they mean. Nadia Khan, he believes, is a victim of this.

The star was on Khan’s show Rise & Shine on August 19 and was asked about how Khan was trolled over her review of Ansari’s sister-in-law Sajal Ali’s performance in Zanjeerein.

Khan felt the wrath of Sajal’s fans — including some of her industry colleagues — when she mocked a scene in the show where the actor was running away from armed assailants while shouting “Koi hai? (Is anyone there?)”

Many at the time felt Khan had gone too far in her critique by mimicking Sajal’s acting on TV and the host even got into a social media spat with screenwriter Saima Akram Chaudhary over the incident.

Ansari said he hadn’t seen the scene himself and only heard about it after Khan’s review went viral. He said Sajal was family and that he knew Khan well enough to say she was just “enjoying herself during her segment and just said what she did in the flow [of things]”.

The host interjected, saying her critique wasn’t aimed at Sajal at all. “No, Ali, I was pointing out a technical fault with the editing. The voice they inserted didn’t match with the visuals. I wasn’t talking about [Sajal’s] performance.”

Ansari said it was his understanding that Khan’s whole point about technical faults was probably longer than the 15 to 20 seconds that got posted to social media.

“That is the problem with social media, [people] take small clips and fabricate. Even if the point is something else, they’ll give a different angle and perspective and the matter gets blown out of proportion.”

Khan said the latest charge against her was favouring Durefishan Saleem because she praised her acting in Dar-e-Nijaat, with trolls asking the host how much Saleem had paid her for the favourable coverage.

Ansari laughed hearing this and told Khan not to let the trolling “get to your head”.

The actor isn’t the first to point out the dangers of video clips posted without context on social media. Tauseeq Haider had a similar experience when he made a video refuting claims he had gotten married to Farah Saadia — which was another story in the dangers of social media and artificial intelligence (AI).

As a joke, the two industry veterans began the clip by congratulating each other on getting married before moving on to say the pictures shared of their ‘wedding’ were AI-generated fakes.

He told Khan in an earlier episode of Rise & Shine that people had cut out the joke at the start and posted it as confirmation of the marriage instead.