E! IllustrationA decade ago, celebrity drama was presented to the public by way of tabloid covers stacked along grocery store aisles. Today, many stars have taken it upon themselves to chronicle their own personal strife from the very palm of their hand.
With the international reach offered to celebrities by social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, a handful of famous names have opted to contact their fans directly to share varying degrees of personal details. While some celebrities sit comfortably at the surface level, simply promoting their newest trailer or sharing the latest selfie, others use such outlets for far deeper expression, whether it be commenting on a social issue affecting the country, reacting to their own public criticism or, in the most extreme cases, giving fans a play-by-play of their breakup just as it's unfolding.
While most celebs have shied away from that last option, a select few have taken the public along with them as their relationships began to crumble. Most recently, 30-year-old Lindsay Lohan was an open book when her fiancé, Russian heir Egor Tarabasov, failed to come home over the weekend. "I guess I was the same at 23… S---ty time-it changes at 26/27 @e2505t thanks for not coming home tonight. Fame changes people," the actress wrote in a post on Instagram before deleting it.
Lohan was not done taking aim at her beau, next posting a photo of Tarabasov at a club while highlighting another woman. "Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker," she captioned, tagging stylist Dasha Pashevkina. "Home? First time in my life-bare with he/ he cheated on me with hooker." Though Lohan had personally shared the images and captions to nearly 5 million of her Instagram followers, she later removed the posts and issued the following plea to the public.
"I would appreciate if these speculations regarding my personal life would respectfully come to a halt. Unfortunately, a private matter has become more public than I can control and I would be extremely grateful if my fiancé and myself could discuss our personal matters on our own," she explained. "There are more important things going on in the world than our relationship. Please leave us be to solve our personal matters."
As is the ongoing trouble with social media, 140 characters can easily spiral into a public blunder when celebrities find themselves oversharing after it's already too late. In the case of Calvin Harris—the Scottish DJ once romantically entangled with Taylor Swift—Twitter was the platform of choice to praise and simultaneously criticize his ex-girlfriend amid their emerging songwriting scandal.
When Swift's camp confirmed the pop star had secretly co-written his latest track, "This Is What You Came For," Harris spared little time sharing his account of their private agreement with the public, at first politely and then bitingly.
"And she sings on a little bit of it too...Amazing lyric writer and she smashed it as usual. I wrote the music, produced the song, arranged it and cut the vocals though. And initially she wanted it kept secret, hence the pseudonym," Harris tweeted."Hurtful to me at this point that her and her team would go so far out of their way to try and make ME look bad at this stage though."
The tweets suddenly took a turn when the producer wrote, "I figure if you're happy in your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex bf down for something to do," Harris tweeted. "I know you're off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy [Perry] ETC but I'm not that guy, sorry. I won't allow it."
However, he ultimately would not allow the tweets to stay up for the world to see. Yet again, he also deleted his comments, though as is the repercussion of the Internet, nothing can truly be wiped away once its live online.
Iggy Azalea used the transparency of Twitter to document her entire split from Nick Young and debunk rumors along the way. While the Grammy nominee and basketball pro were slated to walk down the aisle eventually, their plans for a life together came to a screeching halt with just one Instagram message.
"Unfortunately, although I love Nick and I have tried and tried to rebuild my trust in him—It's become apparent in the last few weeks I am unable to," she shared in a statement post to her social media account. "I genuinely wish Nick the best." Young echoed the sentiment in even fewer words, writing "Single" in a lone tweet on his account.
What began as a concise finale to a rocky public relationship escalated into a detailed digital account of Young's infidelity. "I broke up with Nick because I found out he had brought other women into our home while I was away and caught them on security footage," she tweeted.
"This is just like a second shot to the chest," she continued, referencing surfacing reports that he had impregnated ex-girlfriend Keonna Green. "I feel like I don't even know who the hell it is I've been loving all this time." The social media rants drove even more of rift between the rapper and her ex-beau. "Nick is mad Iggy keeps opening her mouth on social media," a source told E! News.
As is the trend, Azalea subsequently deleted her comments—after they had already been retweeted by fans thousands of times.