Deux Moi has jumped the shark. Anon please
The celebrity and pop culture gossip account can’t keep playing innocent.
I really try not to do the thing where I suddenly decide something everyone likes is actually bad, but last night may have been my final straw with Deux Moi. The Instagram gossip account, which regularly accepts submissions for celebrity sightings, posted two different “spots” claiming to be of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders—one of him allegedly golfing in Orlando, Florida and the other milling around in Pekin, Illinois. Putting aside the fact that I’m not sure a 79-year-old politician’s activities warrant documentation on the same account chronicling those of Real Housewife Luann de Lesseps, the men in these pictures were not Bernie Sanders.
The account posted an email from another tipster pointing this out, reminding Deux Moi followers that “not every old guy with white hair is Bernie.” As someone who last week mistook an old white guy in Fort Greene park for Larry David, I’m sympathetic to the spotters. I’m less sympathetic to Deux Moi itself.
Deux Moi doesn’t claim to be an actual news source. In fact, its Instagram bio reads “this account does not claim any information published is based in fact.” But when you have 889,000 followers—a number 10 times what it was less than a year ago—I don’t know how much you can realistically say the information you post doesn’t matter.
I get what Deux Moi was originally going for: something more akin to a discussion board than an authoritative source. But the account owner, who remains anonymous, routinely suggests they have definitive knowledge of certain things and that there’s tea they’re holding back. So if there is some editorial discretion as to what gets posted as gossip, why was a clearly false email claiming Woody Allen was going to host Saturday Night Live deemed worthy to post?
Not to mention the fact that legit publications have started citing Deux Moi tips in their reporting—something the account both proudly shares and also shies away from, depending on, I imagine, how wary they are of legal exposure. Whether or not the account owner wanted this to happen, Deux Moi is now bigger than a consequence-free gossip sesh in a group chat. Celebrities’ go-to Starbucks orders mingle with accusations of sexual impropriety against the thinly-veiled owner of a certain controversial sports and pop culture website, in front of almost a million people. It would really help to know if what we’re reading is true. —Kate Lindsay
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