Kartik Aaryan Rumour And The Familiar Trap: Turning Scrutiny On Women Instead Of Power Dynamics
The first thing that went wrong after unverified rumours involving Kartik Aaryan surfaced online was not misinformation; it was speed and an anti-feminist, woman vs woman narrative that the internet just couldn’t hold in any longer. Social media moved faster than caution, faster than nuance, and much faster than accountability. Within hours, the discourse had shifted away from what the rumour was even about and landed somewhere else entirely: a bizarre comparison between Ananya Panday and a 17-year-old girl. Two women were dragged into the frame, flattened into symbols, while the man at the centre of the story became oddly peripheral.
Scroll long enough in this Kartik Aaryan whirlwind of rumours, and a pattern emerges; comments weren’t asking whether the reports were credible; they weren’t commenting on the inappropriate behaviour the reports entail amongst their “Coca Cola Tu, Sola-Sola Tu” punny melodies. They weren’t questioning power dynamics or ethics; all they were asking was “Why her?” Why not, Ananya? Why would someone “choose” a minor when a glamorous Bollywood actor exists? The implication was clear and deeply unsettling, where desirability had become the moral yardstick. Accountability didn’t disappear but was quietly replaced. Kartik Aaryan was the so-called central figure in the “aadmi ko sona ka katora do, phir bhi woh bheekh hi maangega” narrative.
Let the woman take the blame?
This reflex to explain discomfort by turning it into comparison isn’t new. When something doesn’t sit right, people look for reasons that make it easier to digest. Psychologist Melvin Lerner described this decades ago through the Just-World Hypothesis: the belief that bad things don’t just happen, that there must be a reason someone ends up in harm’s way. Online, that belief mutates into blame. If the situation can be reframed as preference or temptation, then no one has to sit with the idea that harm can occur without justification.
The 17-year-old, meanwhile, wasn’t treated as someone deserving protection or care but as an anomaly to be interrogated. This is Objectification Theory playing out in real time. Women are reduced to surfaces, age, body, and visibility, while men retain interiority.
That’s how Ananya Panday entered a conversation she had nothing to do with. She wasn’t discussed as a person but as a reference point and a benchmark of beauty, fame, and social value. She became the proof that the man “could have done better.” The 17-year-old, meanwhile, wasn’t treated as someone deserving protection or care but as an anomaly to be interrogated. This is Objectification Theory playing out in real time. Women are reduced to surfaces, age, body, and visibility, while men retain interiority. One is dissected, while the other is debated abstractly. Good one you pulled there, wildly inappropriate internet!
Wait, we have seen this before, right?
What’s striking is how quickly this framing felt normal. No one stopped to ask why a rumour centred on a man had turned into a referendum on women’s worth. As legality faded and ethics were blurred, the internet did what it often does best: turned a serious situation into content, stripped of consequence.
We’ve seen this movie before, and it didn’t end well. In 2020, Rhea Chakraborty became the national stand-in for grief, anger, and unresolved questions following Sushant Singh Rajput’s death. Before investigations concluded, her body language, clothes, relationships, and personality were put on trial nightly. She became the face people could direct their outrage at, while institutional failures and uncomfortable systemic questions quietly slipped out of focus.
That wasn’t coincidence; it was more like a psychological convenience. Albert Bandura calls this moral disengagement, the process by which responsibility is diffused so people can feel morally settled without confronting the real source of discomfort. When outrage is redirected onto a woman, especially one adjacent to a powerful man, the public gets closure without consequence. The anger goes somewhere, and justice doesn’t.
What’s in a Woman? mere eye candy? still?
The minor involved is offered no sympathy; dignity is more like a far-fetched prize for them. But how Ananya Panday gets flattened into a reference point and a benchmark for beauty here is beyond understanding. While Kartik Aaryan remains strangely insulated, his name is central, and yet his agency is blurred under this woman vs woman debate.
This is the quiet asymmetry that online culture refuses to acknowledge. Men are allowed complexity, contradiction, and distance, while women are asked to absorb impact. They become the surface on which public morality plays itself out.
What makes this cycle especially corrosive is how easily it disguises itself as “discussion”. Misogyny is reframed as curiosity, and cruelty is dressed up as opinion, and similarly, comparison is passed off as harmless commentary. But none of this is neutral; these narratives shape how society understands power, consent, and blame. They teach us, repeatedly, that women are easier to punish than men are to question.
This story isn’t really about a rumour; it’s more like a reflex, about how quickly outrage slides sideways and about how often women become the battleground so that power can remain intact. And until that reflex is called out, not just named, the internet will keep mistaking comparisons for criticism when it is plain mockery.