This week, Jessie J, possibly in a moment of boredom, possibly in a moment of desperation for some attention, decided to hit delete on ‘half of her followers.’
As anyone knows when performing a prolonged and contrived social media cull, once people realise that you don’t want to hear their wittering any more, the backlash – neediness, anger and mutual unfollowage – is going to be harsh. That’s why Facebook now allows you to ‘unfollow’ while still staying friends with all those school mates baby-spamming your timeline, and Twitter lets you ‘mute’ any inconveniently dull work contacts you can’t disenfranchise for fear of never getting a job again.
So why is it then, that Jessie - an artist between albums, post-The Voice, and possibly edging towards the pop wilderness these days - would trigger a social media catastrophe of her own making? Surely having fans who intermittently bore on about humdrum nonsense and then spam you with heart emojis from time to time is better than having no fans at all? She did recently accuse them of 'spreading lies' and 'creating drama' about her love life, so it sounds like it all just got a bit much.
Sometimes you just can’t take the commentary any more. Or FOMO-ing other peoples’ lives descends into a pit of comparison despair. And while we have the luxury of taking ourselves off Twitter with not many people (OK, literally no one) noticing the difference, Jessie’s action could make a dent in her fame game.
Jessie subsequently deleted the other pesky half of the people she followed to make an even-handed statement that it wasn’t just fans she had ditched. Sometimes you have just got to reset – and take the 2D social consequences. That way, instead of spending time scrolling, you’ll have a moment for a bit of soul searching instead.