Indian cricket icon Virat Kohli recently found himself at the center of a social media storm, not because of his tremendous batting stats but because of a strange Instagram post. On May 2, 2025, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru batsman shared a very strange and cryptic Instagram story to clarify a recent accidental "like" on a fan page picture of actress Avneet Kaur, creating a sizable buzz with his 271 million followers. 

Kohli's note read, “I’d like to clarify that while clearing my feed, it appears the algorithm may have mistakenly registered an interaction. There was absolutely no intent behind it. I request that no unnecessary assumptions be made.” Kohli's clarifying note came as he was redoing his Instagram feed, and as he explained in a note from late April 2025, he was moving all of his promotional posts in the form of reels to make more room for personal and cricketing moments. Fans wondered if the accidental interaction, a routing mishap by the algorithm, was consequential to his private life, totally dismissing the occasion he blamed it on his wife, Anushka Sharma.

The Context and Impact 

Kohli’s remaking of his Instagram is viewed as part of a comprehensive strategy to reset an online persona he previously described as "an interesting place with social media. Currently, I am not in a space where I would have been engaging too much." This came after about a year of fan frustration driven by Kohli's brand-centric feed, coining feelings of followers by saying "AdGram" as an account that wasn't utilizing "Instagram" as intended. Kohli wanted to reestablish authenticity with his feed. Kohli is meant to be using Instagram to engage with fans, and this represents an unintentional moment suggesting how difficult it is to harness a major account like his and remain human. 

INSTAGRAM STORY OF VIRAT KOHLI 👑 https://t.co/oh7yB9vnS6

— Johns. (@CricCrazyJohns) May 2, 2025

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While Kohli’s on-field engagements find him sustaining a good run with 443 runs in IPL 2025, including his hundredth T20 fifty, recall his focus in cricket as he now guest posts on Instagram. Kohli quickly dispelled this issue with "no intent," again underscoring his lack of knowledge on "baseless assumptions" in his argument to protect "being real" as he negotiates the tensions of social media, in return ensuring transparency on behalf of his ?? die-hard following. This event highlighted what many public figures experience online when they perform either intentionally or unintentionally. Social media individuals, including major profiles, will pore over your every action, to the point where a relative blog can become a topic of heated debate. Ultimately this incident reminds us of the strengths and weaknesses of digital influence.