Celebrity Instagrams: Why Are They So Important?

As of recently, it has come to my attention that different platforms of celebrity entertainment have been reaching as low as Instagram for their sources. Selena Gomez is the most popular story to certain gossip sites, and it’s rather sad that this is how they determine whether or not she is doing well with her life. The minute that her Instagram account was completely erased, it was like the she was hidden from the world. Honestly, throughout all of this Justin Bieber mayhem, the girl deserves a bit of privacy.

Not only is she in the midst of what seems to be a very dramatic almost quarter-life crisis, but she is also falling through the cracks of the other women in her talent category. In between all of the Taylor Swifts and Demi Lovatos, the girl has a lot of talented peers. She was also a half of very famous friendships in the tween audience celebrity category. Demi Lovato was known to be her best friend for a while, and if there wasn’t a photo being posted of the two of them every five minutes, people just assumed they weren’t friends anymore. This seems to be a bit of a stretch for assumptions, but apparently that’s what the audiences go for these days. Very recently, as in Met Ball recently (Monday night), it was a conversation at least once a week that she was no longer friends with Taylor Swift. This seemed to be a very warmly welcomed friendship in Hollywood, so when it began to disintegrate, it was all over the celebrity gossip interweb. I was personally interested in it because I did enjoy the two of them as friends. When the Met Ball rolled around, Instagram was blossoming with so many different friendships and relationships dressed to the absolute nines. Selena posted a video of herself and Swift dancing around acting like adorable best friends, which all of a sudden had sites assuming that nothing had ever changed. The fact that stories are so dependent on a simple photo is absolutely astonishing.

Another example of how desperate certain sites are for stories was published yesterday, when the biggest news included Reese Witherspoon dropping the F-bomb in an elevator when talking to Cara Delevingne (UPDATE: video has since been removed). First of all, I always have to roll my eyes when “stories” like this make headlines, because Reese is like any other woman. She is allowed to say what she wants, and this was a very casual moment with friends while at a party. Why does it really matter what language she uses while expressing sarcastic frustration in pronouncing her friend’s last name? Also, why is it major news intended to take a hit on her as a person? People act as though they don’t use that language in their everyday life, when they very well know that in the privacy of their own home they most definitely do. This “story” was taken from an Instagram. The only source of information people are grabbing came from a fifteen-second video, which seems so odd. Why is this the outlet of information, when this attention could be focused on bigger, more important situations? Why are these Instagram accounts the only way that audiences have insight into the lives of their favorite stars? These brief seconds in time create an entire persona, which is not the case for a normal person. I know that when I post a photo to my own Instagram, my friends and family aren’t making these sort of drastic assumptions about my life. Why are general audiences doing the same thing to people who appear in movies or sing a song on the radio? They’re normal individuals just like you and me, and shouldn’t go through all of these levels of scrutiny because of simple photos and videos.