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As we trudged through lockdown in spring, everyone was glued to their phones, even more so than usual. Our internet usage broke records<\/a> as people frantically refreshed news apps, Zoom quizzed<\/a> and lost hours flicking through Instagram stories about banana bread and indoor vegetable patches<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in March, the woman behind the anonymous Instagram pop culture news page DeuxMoi<\/a> began providing the ultimate distraction from the bleak everyday: celebrity gossip. She opened her DMs to anyone who wanted to talk shit about their run-ins with the stars \u2013 wait staff, bartenders, onlookers. Then she screenshotted the DMs and posted them to her stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n DeuxMoi hasn\u2019t looked back since. Request to follow the private account and you\u2019ll be treated to an array of juicy rumours, ranging from the time a certain star screamed at her live-in nanny to a whole host of A-list actors and allegations about their illicit affairs.<\/p>\n The rise of DeuxMoi follows the year\u2019s trend of social media overtaking traditional press as the epicentre of celebrity gossip. First, there was that viral Twitter thread<\/a> in March on people\u2019s experiences working on Ellen DeGeneres\u2019 daytime show, Ellen<\/i>, leading to its network WarnerMedia investigating<\/a> the allegations of a toxic work environment<\/a>. In July, Hailey Bieber was accused of rudeness by a waitress on TikTok. (Amazingly, Bieber apologised<\/a>.) DeuxMoi\u2019s reach increased accordingly, with 45,000 followers growing to 380,000 followers since March.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really rogue back then [in March], like a little secret club,\u201d DeuxMoi tells VICE UK over Zoom. Her camera is off, naturally. \u201cI feel like I have to be a lot more careful now with the things that I post.\u201d<\/p>\n With more eyeballs on her page and news outlets now syndicating her stories, this recent hesitance isn\u2019t unfounded: \u201cI go off the information I believe to be true based on reading hundreds of posts a day.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, surely there\u2019s no telling if someone\u2019s real life gossip is another person\u2019s lies? DeuxMoi doesn\u2019t sweat it too much. \u201cI can usually tell which are fake or fanfiction by the wording. If I post something that\u2019s not true, the fandoms will let me know. Sometimes I correct it, but sometimes I leave it up for people to decide for themselves. I tell people all the time to take it with a grain of salt.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not uncommon to see contradictory accounts of celeb behavior. One contributor will say an A-lister is a total dickhead, the next will say they\u2019re a sweetie. With 300 to 500 messages coming in per day, DeuxMoi\u2019s opinions on certain celebrities change often. \u201cMy view of Jennifer Aniston<\/a> has changed, because in my mind, she was just this cool, laidback, Californian best friend,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve learned she\u2019s a little more uptight than that, which actually, if you think about it makes sense, because she\u2019s very famous and successful.\u201d<\/p>\n Does DeuxMoi really expect any extraordinarily famous celebrity \u2013 Aniston included \u2013 to be nice all the time? \u201cI try to put myself in their shoes. With all the pressure they\u2019re dealing with, would I be a nice person?\u201d she asks. \u201cOr would I be screaming at an assistant?<\/p>\n \u201cThe account is more about human behaviour than about celebrity gossip for me. I was like, \u2018let\u2019s dig deep on Jennifer Aniston and try to find out what kind of person she really is.\u2019 We will never get that answer, but it\u2019s fun to hypothesise, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n DeauxMoi\u2019s owner keeps the account set to private and is careful to blank out the names on the most salacious stories about sex, drugs and other misdeeds to make them blind items, but lawyers warn that its content still toes the line on libel law.<\/p>\n Steven Heffer<\/a>, the head of media and privacy law at Collyer Bristow, says that these measures might not be enough to keep DeuxMoi out of the courtroom.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to say someone\u2019s bit grumpy occasionally, but if you say they\u2019re constantly rude, nasty and unpleasant, that might cause serious harm to their reputation and could form the basis of a libel claim,\u201d he tells VICE UK. \u201cPotentially, whoever operates the host site or runs the account can be sued for damages.\u201d<\/p>\n As with anything gossip-related, there\u2019s also the issue of privacy and whether it\u2019s fair to report on the minutiae of real peoples\u2019 lives. Diehard fans of Taylor Swift<\/a> slated DeuxMoi for sharing intimate details of Swift\u2019s life in New York, as observed through the window by a nosy neighbour.<\/p>\n The info itself was pretty innocuous (Swift apparently cooked a lot of pasta), but there\u2019s still a risk of infringing someone\u2019s rights. \u201cPrivacy laws apply in areas you have an expectation of privacy,\u201d Heffer explains. \u201cAnd it\u2019s sometimes difficult to see where that line is drawn, but sometimes it veers into the question of harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem is, DeuxMoi\u2019s USP is posting the kind of salty tidbits even the Daily Mail<\/i> would wince at. \u201cI used to love reading tabloid gossip, but DeuxMoi showed me not everything is as it seems,\u201d Dawn, a hairstylist who has been following the page for six weeks, tells me.<\/p>\n Haeley, a Toronto-based follower, agrees. \u201cIt strips away the carefully crafted celeb images and tells the stories of real people,\u201d she says. \u201cIt definitely feels more attuned with our current moment. And it disrupts the celebrity PR machine which, I think, people have become a lot more aware of and critical of this year.\u201d<\/p>\n The recent rise of DeuxMoi has indeed been disruptive. While a lot of the rumours could be dismissed as fake gossip or urban legend, she\u2019s also been the first to report on several later-confirmed rumours, like Kim Kardashian\u2019s BFF Larsa Pippen hooking up<\/a> with Khloe Kardashian\u2019s current boyfriend Tristan Thompson.<\/p>\n Tabloids are often only given access to celebrities \u2013 even ex-Love Island<\/a> contestants \u2013 if they jump through hoops, agree a list of vanilla topics with an agent and promote whatever fake tan or fashion brand the star is affiliated with. DeuxMoi, on the other hand, gets straight to the gossip.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is one anonymous Instagram page with less than a million followers really capable of wreaking havoc in the celebrity PR sphere? Richard Hillgrove<\/a>, who has represented Rose McGowan, Julian Assange and Amber Heard, doesn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think DeuxMoi threatens PRs wanting to micromanage the image of celebrities,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just another communications vehicle to place stories, taking a strategic role in navigating the celebrity\u2019s image through the image white water ride of publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n I ask whether Hillgrove would react differently if he were currently representing James Corden, for instance, whose rep has taken a hit recently<\/a>. He\u2019s cynical. \u201cThere\u2019s been talk since August that Corden is Ellen DeGeneres\u2019 likely successor, so the natural defence from her supporters would be for the same sort of \u2018rude to staff\u2019 rumours to swell up about him,\u201d he says. \u201cDeuxMoi is a great place to fuel this info-war. My first response would be to sit back and simply watch the unsubstantiated rumours rise and potentially fall away because there\u2019s no real substance to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if the more salacious tip-offs die down, followers would still gobble up crumbs of everyday information on celebrities\u2019 lives. A popular item on her page is \u201ccelebs who dine together\u201d, featuring pics or written accounts of surprising famous friends spotted out for dinner. Others are even more banal: Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a> riding his bike in New York, Brad Pitt ordering four cheeseburgers in an LA McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n These kind of submissions are DeuxMoi\u2019s faves, she tells me: \u201cSomeone sent in Chris Evans\u2019s sandwich order. It was a ham sandwich, orange juice and salt and vinegar crisps. People thought the combination of those three things was sociopathic.\u201d<\/p>\n As someone who used to work at the now-defunct gossip magazine Reveal<\/i>, I found the constant battle for access to celebrities frustrating rather than exciting. As former colleague and celebrity journalist Kimberly Bond puts it, \u201cBeing in the field made me realise celebrities are no different, or no more special, than us \u2018normal\u2019 people \u2013 they\u2019re just as terrified as being humiliated, terrified or belittled as we are, except they have such a huge stage as a platform for their fuck-ups, and so many more people eager to watch them fall.\u201d<\/p>\n But maybe we can learn something from the appetite for these humanising tidbits of celebrity lives. In pandemic times, we don\u2019t want Gal Gadot and co<\/a> to croon \u201cImagine\u201d from their cavernous LA mansions. We\u2019re not interested in staged paparazzi shots outside Nobu and we\u2019re infuriated by Kim Kardashian\u2019s trip to a private island. We want the minutiae \u2013 Chris Evans eating ham sandwiches with orange juice and Taylor Swift\u2019s pasta dinners.\u00a0We just like celebrities most when they allow themselves to be \u2013 as the US Weekly column claims<\/a> \u2013 just like us.<\/p>\n