SOCIAL SUICIDE
Celebrities who use Instagram and Twitter to boost their image are getting hit with blowback
THE honeymoon is officially over for celebrities and social media.
Just ask Sarah Jessica Parker. On Feb. 6, the former “Sex and the City” actress commented on co-star Kim Cattrall’s Instagram post that her brother had turned up dead after going missing for several days in Canada.
“Dearest Kim, my love and condolences to you and yours and Godspeed to your beloved brother. Xx,” Parker wrote.
Grieving on social-media platforms often comes across as yucky and selfpromotional even between friends. But Parker and Cattrall have a burdensome history of off-screen sparring that made SJP’s apparently innocent comment seem disingenuous.
In return, Cattrall replied with another Instagram post that wasn’t so sweet.
“I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time, @sarahjessicaparker,” she wrote. The caption below the message piled on: “I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.”
Ouch.
The international media had a field day with the feud, and the story landed on The Post’s front page with the headline “Stilettos at Dawn.”
So much drama — all from just 94 characters and a click.
Social media, no matter the user’s intent, is now aninstrument for accidental self-destruction. What began as an empowering wayfor celebs to skip the public-relations middleman and blast out a personal message straight to their millions of fans has become a battleground where every tweet, Instagram and Snapchat message can blow up in their face.
Celebrities who famously use social media can even be ripped for not posting anything at all.
On Feb. 4, Kylie Jenner announced the birth of her daughter, Stormi, on Twitter. The reality TV star followed her happy news with an 11-minute video, which included footage of the hospital room. Conspicuously absent from Kylie’s bedside? Her Olympian mother Caitlyn Jenner.
Naturally, Twitter users and the press declared Caitlyn an absentee mom who skipped out on the big day. “Caitlyn Jenner missed Kylie giving birth and doesn’t feature in announcement video,” declared Metro. “No sign of @Caitlyn Jenner in Kylie’s baby re- veal video. No public congratulations from Caitlyn on Twitter either,” noted one Twitter user.
Fans didn’t have to wait long for their demands to be met. Two days after Kylie’s announcement, Jenner posted on Instagram, “It’s amazing to be by your side through this journey. She’s SO beautiful already. Can’t wait to watch her grow.”
Caitlyn lived to survive another day. Immediately after her post, the world’s tabloid media ran a variation of the headline: “Caitlyn Jenner breaks silence after Kylie gives birth.” Yes, just two days off Instagram turns you into a Cistercian monk who’s vowed to keep your trap shut.
The touchiest territory today for celebs on social media, though, is the #MeToo movement. Stars work tirelessly to craft the perfect, unassailable comment, absolving themselves from criticism and opening them up to yet more adulation. Good luck with that.
One poor actor who found himself in the cross-hairs was 22-year-old Oscar nominee Timothee Chalamet, a star of the upcoming Woody Allen film “A Rainy Day in New York.”
While on a recent press tour for an- other film “Call Me By Your Name,” Chalamet was hounded in interviews for comments about Allen, which he routinely shrugged off.
OnJan. 15, the pressure must have got to him. In a long Instagram post, Chalamet finally went full-bore, saying, “I amnot able to answer the question due to contract obligations. But what I can say is this: I don’t want to profit from my work on the film, and to that end, I am going to donate my entire salary to three charities: TIME’S UP, The LGBT Center in New York, and RAINN.”
Phew. Glad that’s over.
Not so fast. On Jan. 19, The Huffington Post claimed to have dug up Chalamet’s contract and found no restrictions from him speaking about the controversial director. Chalamet, an earlycareer actor with very little power and influence compared to Allen’s other recent collaborators such as Justin Timberlake and Kate Winslet, was put in the public stocks and shamed.
Because on social media today, there’s just no way to win.
There was a time when celebrities simply released a brief statement to make any major announcement, and perhaps some are going back to that model. OnThursday, whenJennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux broke the news that they were separating, they didn’t post detailed missives on Instagram. They gave it to the Associated Press.
“Normally wewould do this privately, but given that the gossip industry cannot resist an opportunity to speculate and invent, we wanted to convey the truth directly,” the statement said. And that was that. Sure, fans still had a lot to say, but as neither star acted as their own messenger, they weren’t set up to receive direct commentary.
And if a celeb doesn’t have real news to share or a project to promote? It would make more sense to swear off the obstacle course of tweets and shares altogether. Instead of shamelessly broadcasting her generosity by posting her sympathies on Instagram, SJP should have kept her condolences to Cattrall private. It’s not like we ever see Meryl Streep posting on her celebrity pals’ feeds as soon as they’ve lost a loved one.
That’s because Streep has sworn off social media completely. And her decision hasn’t madeher any less acclaimed, powerful, relevant or beloved. She’s proof positive that in this era of nonstop noise, silence can still be a virtue.