‘Anon Pls, The Novel From @deuxmoi, Draws Power From The Cloak Of Anonymity

For the celebrity gossip account on Instagram @deuxmoi, anonymity has been a key factor in getting insider information and its massive popularity.

Anonymity is also what sets him apart in the celebrity gossip ecosystem.

Today, internet celebrity gossip is as prevalent as traditional print media People and Life & Style compete for flicks and eager looks from TMZ and Perez Hilton , promising all readers the most exciting, revealing, and exclusive stories. While cutting-edge media names and sensationalist sites compete, others report news exclusively to social media, with information curated and shared exclusively on those platforms. Many of us are increasingly drawn to the hypnotic lull of Instagram and TikTok for all of our digital consumption, including celebrity gossip. It is this greater tension that has prompted deuxmoi - intentionally or unintentionally - to tap into a void in the world of celebrity media: the anonymous celebrity messages fueled by Instagram.

The deuxmoi (meaning “two me” in French) account was started in late March 2020 as an opportunistic project between two best friends to cure the grief and boredom caused by stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19. The couple asked their followers to share daily tea snippets from celebrities such as restaurant orders, public sightings or fan interaction. Since then, @deuxmoi has exploded to nearly 1.6 million followers as enthusiasm for harmless gossip and uncontroversial gossip fuels mass cultural corrections to celebrity gossip and helps soften the clichés in everyday life that allow us to escape social media.

Now, anonymous founder @deuxmoi has released a fanciful take on the account's origins, appropriately titled Anon Pls . The story goes that Cricket Lopez, personal assistant to former reality TV designer Sasha Sherman, started twome for fun and to see if he could get free loot stuck in the world of influencers. . It's also an online escape, as life under Sherman is stressful and demoralizing: the designer forces her employees to use their personal credit cards for business purchases (so they can earn high interest rates), and she regularly throws a tantrum when salad dressing is overpacked. inside. salad container. While Lopez was drunk, she decided to spread some celebrity gossip she had heard from a friend. With this and other information being shared across the Instagram inbox, @deuxmoi is about to go viral.

People were quickly fascinated by unedited celebrity Instagram accounts - from tips, how far they looked to the servers they were seen in action. Lopez's legal and tech contacts advised adding a disclaimer to the account (noting that this DM is unverified) and tightening up the security of his primary account (unless it was wrongfully revoked). The DM's anonymous screenshots immediately began captivating the humble audience, all of whom were thirsty for a quick drink of celebrity tea and quiet greetings from the general public. Then publicists, stylists, makeup artists, and even some celebrities themselves began moderating and discussing the truth of the story publicly or privately on social media.

For an account whose name seems, according to López, to be "just an ignorant French idiot ringing the wrong bell", deuxmoi began to wield enormous cultural and political influence. This began to dictate celebrity gossip cycles and disrupt the impact of evolving entertainment media on access and exclusivity within the ecosystem. (Fictional) celebrity rumors are proving increasingly difficult to deal with, as anonymous leaks suggest that actors who get canceled because of major movie projects (à la Ezra Miller) or former pop princesses are actually at the mercy of their handler cliques (after Britney Spear). . Lopez attempts to mitigate these problematic elements as curious journalists (and celebrities) continue to spy on @deuxmoi's account to learn the identity of its true owner.

Please hurry to understand how celebrity gossip culture has been completely democratized by lobby commenters, unconfirmed and viral rumours, and voracious influencers plotting on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. While the novel serves as a nice description of @twome's supposed origins, there's also a clever thematic shift in his anonymity that makes it stand out more than the usual "Romanization." The book delves into the politics of anonymity: Cricket Lopez's fictional right to it; the alleged secrecy of any public collaborator who submits a blind article to the Dubai Municipality; Also the real founder is deuxmoi. (The couple who started the original twome this year were revealed — Google it if you must.) Celebrity news business. Should fantasy creators expect to remain anonymous when navigating this gossip ecosystem? Is the current founder of deuxmoi also worth expecting secrecy? If celebrities can be exposed (even for innocuous items like Starbucks orders), are anonymous celebrity account managers safe from multiple exposure? After all, everyone gets into a conversation about anonymity and privacy.

The @deuxmoi account tells us that anonymity can be a powerful antidote to our increasingly exposed world of curated online life, a world where power imbalances in gimmick industries like fashion and entertainment can degrade those who aren't in the spotlight. Anonymous celebrity information can be a powerful weapon (and sometimes a good solution). We are told that the fictional twome account "was created for that exact moment when celebrities had complete control over their image by having the power at their disposal from their social accounts."

So it's no surprise when you read on Anon Pls how celebrities themselves name and embarrass other celebrities in direct messages, always trying to outdo everyone else's brilliance. Leaks — from other celebrities, no less — see Lopez wrap up at an exclusive nightclub party celebrating the former teen pop star, all with the promise of a potential reunion. However, Lopez only found the reclusive and lonely pop star being cared for by her smoking dog handler. While this news of drug addiction will never make it to the @deuxmoi newsfeed, for Lopez (and for us) it's a sobering reminder of how cluttered and cannibalistic celebrity culture can be — and other celebrities want wome too, you help weaponize account records. . Anonymous and always unconfirmed gossip is star-forbidden and relentless, perhaps no more so in the world of celebrities. But it is rarely published by a large anonymous online publisher.

Although advertised as an extravagant dish to promote the deuxmoi brand, the anonymity here means that the novel continues the tradition of unauthorized books. Anonymity in publishing has served a variety of purposes, sometimes for taboo subjects, sometimes to ensure the author's blind success. The Marquis de Sade's first erotic novel, Justine (1791) , surprises readers with frank and frank sexual encounters. These actions led to Sade's eventual imprisonment, even though the work was not originally titled. Go Ask Alice (1971) revealed to 1970s America that teenage girls were participating in an unseen drug epidemic with a tragic end, even when a Mormon housewife destroyed her best friend's "diary." More recently, The Incest Diary (2017) recounts the abusive relationship between a daughter and a biological father, using anonymity as a cover to protect the author's privacy, while detailing the attack.

Anonymous writing allows the writer to be dim and unfiltered. It also provides readers with the immediacy and candor that anonymity seems to provide: these books hide their authors because sometimes the truth is so powerful. While the main celebrities featured on Anon Pls are fiction, there are enough references to real-life stars like Sydney Sweeney and the Gossip Girl reboot to remind us of the real trading within the twome he's actually doing on those stars. Internet sharing.

Another anonymous novel, some 25 years ago, captured the attention of the American public for its seemingly veiled truth and was closer to Anon Pls in approach and reception than any other unauthored book. Primary Colors ( 1996), a single romance covering the presidential campaign of a fictional Southern governor, exploited similarities to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. The book is anonymous and fictional (as Anon. Pls ), and uses those two facts to distance itself from the obvious information and truth it promises. With her sharing about the actual 1992 presidential campaign (which the author clearly saw up close). and personal). Instead, the author says to read between the lines. Readers have always wanted access to the most hidden and guarded parts of American society; A book, even a novel, that promises a glimpse, but indirectly, of Bill Clinton is much more interesting to read, anonymous or otherwise.

The same tension exists with Anon Pls , which shares some truth about celebrity gossip networks, all behind veils of anonymous fiction. The founders of @twome have asked us to accept continued anonymity to reveal access to the complex and gritty world of gossip-sharing and the culture of empowerment in Hollywood. The items are often innocuous, like ordering a coffee or buying groceries, but we're told there's a more complex story behind every anonymous screenshot. Do you think it is fair trade from Anon or not. Go ahead , it's up to you whether you want to double-tap the wome screenshot or share the item blindly when you're done.