By Stacy Lee Kong

I teach a journalism class at Centennial College here in Toronto and this semester in particular, I’ve been talking a lot about pop culture with my students. This is always fun, though sometimes a little bit embarrassing for me. (Why yes, I did make us pause talking about Avatar: The Way of the Water to pull up the Google Images results for Fern Gully, solely so they could understand my snarky early ‘90s reference 🤷🏽‍♀️.) I say this to explain why it’s not weird that this week, one of my students asked me if I was Team Selena or Team Hailey. 

I had actually been ignoring the ‘feud’ between Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber entirely, but that student’s question made me think about celebrity feuds in general, and then someone tweeted Alex Abad-Santos’ great explainer from last week and then pop culture Twitter account Pop Base posted video of the crowd at Rolling Loud chanting “Fuck Hailey Bieber” during Justin Hailey’s surprise performance. Suddenly, I was thinking a lot about Selena, Hailey and (most importantly) how TikTok incentivizes a particularly combative form of fandom.  

How did we even get here?

Well… it really depends on how far back you want to go. Selena and Justin dated on and off from 2010 to 2018; Hailey and Justin dated on and off from 2015 to 2018, and he got serious with her a month after splitting with Selena for good. It’s probably not that surprising to hear that fans had strong opinions about who Justin should’ve been with at the time. (Or at least, it should not be surprising if you have spent any time with passionate fans of, um, anything. The one thing all fans have in common is an abundance of opinions.) So: there were a lot of weird comments on the internet that professed to ‘know’ who he really loved—and unsurprisingly, that extended to speculation that the women were feuding… which is why Selena and Hailey have been commenting on rumours that they’re secretly shading one another for about five years now. This most recent iteration of the commentary is different, though, and yes, in a bad way.

The Cut has a good breakdown of what exactly went down, but basically: back in January, Hailey, Kendall Jenner and another friend posted a (now deleted) video of themselves lip syncing to the “I’m not saying she deserved it, but God’s timing is always right” sound, which some people speculated was a dig at Selena, who had recently faced body-shaming after her vacation photos went viral. Hailey left a comment clarifying that the video wasn’t directed at anyone, Selena commented that she doesn’t “let these things get [her] down” and it seemed like it was over. But the next month, Selena posted a TikTok of herself with janky eyebrows, explaining that she had over-laminated them while trying to emulate Bella Hadid’s brows. The same day, Kylie Jenner posted a video of herself and Hailey FaceTiming about their brows, which TikToker @devotedly.yours interpreted as shade. Both Jenner and Selena commented on the post to deny there was any beef, but it was too late. Fans jumped on the perceived feud, not just taking sides but conducting endless internet research to uncover evidence that Selena and Hailey actually hated one another—and creating content around their findings. 

That was weeks ago, and while I would normally be mildly surprised that anyone is still paying attention such a minor piece of celebrity gossip, that sense of solving a mystery—and the accompanying content creation—is actually really important, because it’s not just driving intrafandom interest, it’s also spilling into mainstream entertainment media, which both prolongs and legitimizes the gossip.

There is definitely a link between this type of drama and toxic true crime fandom

Let’s start with the sleuthing. Because don’t the people comparing each woman’s tattoos (I am ashamed to admit that I know this but: there’s a conspiracy theory that Hailey copied a tattoo Selena got as a tribute to her younger sister), searching Hailey’s old tweets and tracking down award show footage to find ‘proof’ of their feud remind you of true crime-obsessed internet researchers who try to solve crimes that law enforcement can’t, or won’t? Both groups share similar qualities—vigilantism, dedication, hyperfixation—and seem to enjoy the sense of hidden knowledge, as if they are privy to something others aren’t. Both groups see the mystery they’re trying to solve as entertainment, which ultimately leads to the dehumanization of the victims they’re supposedly so concerned about. And both groups become the subject of mainstream speculation and fascination, which ends up further propelling their behaviour.  

I know the concept of armchair detectives isn’t new; we love amateur investigators in fiction (Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher was a popular example, as were Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew) and I think it’s safe to assume there have been real-life versions for centuries. In fact, the first web sleuth actually got his start offline; in the 80s, a then 17-year-old Todd Matthews heard a story about an unidentified woman whose body had been found in 1968. Sadly captivated by her story, he spent years trying to identify her remains via library research and cold calls, only moving his search online after the advent of the internet in the 90s. But the exploding popularity of true crime helped popularize this hobby, and while there are sometimes positive results—in 1998, Matthews ended up identifying the Jane Doe as Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor thanks to an online classified from a woman looking for her missing sister—more often, these sleuths are ineffective, if not downright wrong. 

Perhaps the most famous example is Sunil Tripathy, a 22-year-old student who had gone missing in March 2013, prompting his family to set up a Facebook page to get the word out. After the April 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon, police released photos of the suspects, and Reddit and Twitter users began scouring the internet to identify them. Eventually, someone suggested Tripathi looked like one of the men in the photos; soon after, someone else posted that they heard his name on the police scanner. The speculation went viral. Reporters called the family at all hours of the day and night, leaving voicemails asking them to comment on the accusations and sending camera crews to their home. And of course, internet users continued digging up—and spreading—misinformation. The tragedy of this all? Tripathi had died by suicide well before the bombing even happened. (And this is far from the only example; there are enough web sleuths getting it wrong that New York magazine turned them into a listicle in 2020.)

Obviously, a bunch of people trying to figure out if Selena and Hailey hate one another isn’t quite the same as a bunch of people harrassing a grieving family during the most difficult time of their lives, but I think it’s worth noting how a fairly niche internet hobby has since transcended the subculture where it first appeared, and has now become just another way to be on the internet. I mean… remember the reaction to the Try Guys drama? That scandal only unfolded after fans got suspicious about the relationship between Ned Fulmer and producer Alex Harring after spotting them IRL and began comparing notes online.

And we can’t forget that TikTok encourages this sort of takedown

Not to go hard on TikTok again (I still love and spend too much time on this app, okay?), but the other part of this conversation is definitely about how the platform encourages people to comment on trending topics, and why that so often devolves into a kind of fandom tribalism that almost always seems to end up at misogyny. Like Twitter, which prioritizes the type of communication that yields likes, comments and quote-tweets (i.e., ‘engagement’), TikTok incentivizes exactly this type of pile-on through its product design and algorithm. First of all, and sort of obviously, it allows people to easily make ultra-consumable videos, which it then serves up to exactly the people who are most interested in watching them. But, more importantly, it makes it easy for others to join the conversation by stitching or duetting that video, which only amplifies its reach. From there, the equation is simple: create content that jumps on this ‘trend’ + accumulate likes, comments and follows = the opportunity to monetize your account/content. 

All of a sudden, your relatively tame hobby of trying to solve mysteries on the internet becomes an opportunity for content creation, and that has very different implications—as we’ve seen before. During Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against Amber Heard, TikTokers and YouTubers pivoted from their usual beats to trial coverage, and saw real financial benefits for doing so. According to a June 2022 Washington Post article, content creators who began making videos about Depp and Heard could earn thousands of dollars—an estimated $80,000 in one month for ThatUmbrellaGuy, a YouTuber who made exclusively pro-Depp content. “You can use those views and likes and shares that you get from it, to monetize and build your account and make more money from it, meet more people and network,” content creator Christopher Orec explained to journalist Taylor Lorenz. But only if your content was positioned the right way. According to Rowan Winch, a 17-year-old content creator interviewed for the same piece, “Johnny content performed a lot better. When people do post stuff trying to defend Amber Heard, they will lose followers. A lot of major content creators probably don’t even care about it that much — they just care about the views that it gets.”

The problem with that (um, aside from the part where people spewed misogynistic misinformation for financial gain) is that even if the content creators themselves didn’t have strong feelings about Depp and Heard, audiences did, and these videos stoked the discourse—not to mention wider anti-Heard sentiment. As I’ve written before, this had serious implications for the trial itself (the jury was not sequestered, so they were as free to consume this content as anyone else) and highlighted a troubling undercurrent of misogyny in our society—especially among young women.

I’m even seeing a similar strategic use (or rather, misuse) of social justice-adjacent language. During the Depp/Heard trial, many people advanced misogynistic ideas under the guide to advocating for male victims of abuse. Here, much of the content is focused on the idea that Hailey is a ‘mean girl’ who doesn’t support other women, though at least one TikToker argues this feud is “rooted in white supremacy.” And listen, maybe Hailey is mean! But I’m not sure race or privilege are as relevant as these content creators claim, because neither she or Selena are actually the ones keeping this ‘feud’ going—it’s social media users who are trying to win a years-old stan war, entertainment outlets that are updating their timeline articles to capitalize on the interest, brands who use it as marketing fodder and those of us who are consuming this content without thinking critically about how the framing is just another example of how the internet, and particularly young women, are leveraging misogyny against other young women without understanding the harm they’re doing. As Twitter user @cocainecross tweeted this week, “I don’t care about Hailey Bieber but eventually we need to talk about Tik Tok’s obsession with ganging up on women. They always find someone to collectively attack and humiliate to an extreme level. I was only on that app for 10 mins and every other video was about Hailey.”

To end on a somewhat encouraging note, though, I’m actually really proud that I didn’t even get a chance to answer my student’s Team Selena or Team Hailey question before someone else in the class said, “she’s going to say neither and that we shouldn’t be pitting women against one another.” A) my brand is so strong, you guys and B) despite what it looks like on TikTok, the youth actually do see what’s going on.

And Did You Hear About…

This explainer on the Vanderpump Rules cheating scandal, which I found very helpful because  Tom, Raquel and Ariana have been all over my social media feeds and I’ve been so confused.

Writer Tayo Bero’s excellent piece on Chris Rock’s Netflix special, especially the way she takes down the idea that ‘woke culture’ is ruining comedy.

Writer Laura Wagner’s argument that Jon Stewart’s viral interview with Oklahoma state senator Nathan Dahm (and his larger strategy of pointing out conservatives’ hypocrisy) isn’t as effective as we want it to be.

Jasper the Doll, which makes me laugh so much harder than it really should.  

The conversations Creed III—and Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors’ press tour—are sparking about Black men and masculinity.

The problem with Mr. Beast, who Jezebel writer Kylie Cheung describes as a “stunt philanthropist YouTuber,” and his brand of ostentatious charity.

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