Media365
Nadaaniyan premiered on Netflix on March 7 and met with a massive backlash. The film marked the debut of actor Ibrahim Ali Khan and director Shauna Gautam. It was also the digital debut of Khushi Kapoor, whose first movie Loveyaapa released in theatres in February. Despite the incessant trolling regarding the performance of the lead actors, the shoddy storyline and the sub-par dialogue writing, Nadaaniyan made it to the top 3 most watched films on Netflix in 2025. The reason, social media allege, is ‘hate-watching’.
Ever since the release of Nadaaniyan, there has hardly been any positive word of mouth about the project. So much so that speaking at a trailer launch event, the producer of the movie had to request critics to be less harsh on the lead actors. The only appreciation that came the movie’s way was because of the presence of veteran actors like Mahima Choudhary, Jugal Hansraj, Suniel Shetty and Dia Mirza, but this too was marred with the fact that they were given insignificant screen time in the project.
Nadaaniyan also brought back the raging debate on nepotism, with social media users claiming that star kids (ie. Ibrahim and Khushi, in this case), get chances to work on projects with big banners, despite them having ‘no talent’. However, even after the barrage of criticism, the romance comedy became the third most-watched movie on Netflix, after Dhoom Dhaam and Pushpa 2. As per a report, Nadaaniyan has garnered 8 million views on the streamer, surpassing movies like Daaku Maharaaj and Emergency. Social media users have alleged that ‘hate-watching’ is the reason for the same.
Like the saying, ‘It’s so bad it’s good’, hate-watching is a term coined by the internet that describes the phenomena of viewers engaging with the content just because it has been talked about negatively. Hate watching is primarily driven by watching or consuming media content just to criticise or laugh at it. The concept is fuelled by curiosity to understand the chatter around a piece of work, to form social bonds by mocking the same thing or just to enjoy the sheer absurdity of an easily available content. While there is no definite way of finding content that was hate-watched, social media users cite 13 Reasons Why, Bachelorette, Emily In Paris and Elite as common examples of hate-watching.
