In the 90s, musicians brawled outside clubs and dragged each other in the tabloids. In the noughties, they included less than subtle barbs at each other in their lyrics (who among us can forget the truly vicious spat between Eamonn and Frankee of FU Right Back fame?). In the hellscape that is 2018 though, famous people feud a little bit differently. In fact, they’re just like us — it’s all on social media.
Whether it’s Kim posting her secretly recorded Taylor Swift phone call on Snapchat, or the President of the United States blasting and blocking just about everyone on Twitter, the richest and most powerful people in the world are no better than the rest of us when it comes to not sending an angry message that you might regret. After eight years of Instagram (has it really been that long!) social media feuding is nothing new, even for celebrities, but it’s advanced so much that now it’s reached new heights of pettiness. Now, the latest celebrity trend is leaking screenshots.
An art first perfected by Yeezy himself, the screenshot is, essentially, the celebrity way of having your mates back you up in an argument. When the world was left reeling by Kanye telling us that slavery was a choice and it was totally fine to put the words “poop de de scoop” in a song, Ye defended himself by dropping a text from his well-respected friend John Legend.
Earlier this week model and trans activist Carmen Carrera joined in on the action, with an Instagram post calling out Caitlyn Jenner on her lack of support for the trans community. The post, which has since been removed, contained a portion of a text conversation between the two, with Caitlyn writing: “Hey, we need to talk. Instead of putting negative things out in the press, about me, which hurts what I’m doing, you should be aware of what I’m actually doing. Call me and I’ll give you an update.”
It makes sense that every time one of these celebrity text bombs drop we’re so captivated by them. In a way that the gossip columns, tabloids and carefully orchestrated PR stunts that last for months miss, they provide an authenticity that people crave. On a very base level, it provides us with the confirmation that the rich and beautiful really are just like us. They’re messy and petty and they make poor social media choices. Sometimes they let those choices stand the test of time unapologetically, a la Kanye, and other times they’re hastily deleted, like Carmen’s, but either way they provide an insight that we don’t usually get to see, past the PR, past the careful image handling.
Text screenshots then, are the new Solange and Jay Z fighting in a lift. They’re the logical next step for a baying public that want to know every intimate details of celebrities (and each others’) lives. But they also give the celebrity gossip and rumour mill an air of autonomy that were missing in sinister paparazzi shots of them falling out of clubs — or, CCTV footage of them fighting in an elevator. It’s a way for them to choose to give us a snapshot of their lives that we’d never get from an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Most crucially, they’re sloppy and they provide drama, and so obviously we want more of them. Please, give us more.