This doesn’t mean they always get it right: gossip pages often still fall into the same traps as traditional mags, sharing incriminating stories of people’s most vulnerable moments and putting them up for discussion. “I've become very engaged recently because of their posts about Black Lives Matter movement.” “I feel like The Shade Borough seems to be more engaged with important conversations around race more recently, rather than constantly posting petty nonsense that BKChat London are doing,” Kamariah, a Birmingham-based makeup artist, tells me. As Complex UK music writer Minou Itseli explains: “They’re on the ball when it comes to music news, they will have behind the scenes posts about upcoming music videos and you also just see your favourite rappers in the comments section as well.”Įven within the British landscape of gossip pages, there are strong variations. “We've had at a couple of red carpet events because we just felt like it is so important to have a platform that really embodies the bad and good of young Black British culture,” Ruby-Jade Aryiku, the co-founder of social marketing agency VAMP UK, tells me over the phone.įor PRs and writers, these pages can be essential. The impact of these platforms are so substantial that they now are a part of PR strategies. Enter Instagram gossip pages, where some of this info could be collated in fun, light and humorous ways. In other words, it wasn’t just the celebs themselves who could post the minutiae of their lives, but anyone surrounding the celebs, which could then be shared by anyone interested in the space of minutes. “Witnesses to any event can now capture and share what they see not just with acquaintances but with the world, and without the filter and delay of news media.” “We are in the era of news served raw,” Jeff Jarvis, a lecturer and journalist told The Guardian back in 2012. Once pics could be posted in real time, traditional gossip mags simply weren’t immediate enough. As culture writer Anne Helen Petersen explained in Buzzfeed News in 2019: “Celebrities simply became their own paparazzi, posting all manner of details and footage of their daily lives on social media and effectively put real paparazzi out of business.” The 90s and 00s were defined by celebs getting mobbed by paparazzi camera flashes of pop stars and public figures that ended up on the glossy pages of gossip mags like Heat, Star, Reveal and Look.īy the 10s, everyone had camera phones and everyone had Instagram. To understand where pages like this exist in pop culture today, we need to first rewind a little. “Over the last year, celebrities are embracing blogs like ours because they’re realising it’s the best way to promote themselves and stay relevant in people’s minds,” they add. The platform has grown exponentially in recent months – The Shade Borough just passed 500,000 followers. Speaking over the phone, three members of the team – who asked to remain anonymous – explain the page’s origins: “We took a step back and thought maybe we actually had something going here, maybe this is actually something missing from the media industry and there is a gap to be filled bringing UK urban culture into the mainstream.” But soon the founders saw an opportunity to establish something bigger, more like a media company. The Shade Borough started in 2016 as something casual a page collecting trending gossip relevant to a young Black British audience. These pages have become a one-stop-shop for young Brits wanting to keep up to date with their favourite vloggers, influencers and music artists. They follow a similar sort of formula: funny memes, videos and recycled tweets relating to celebs, with a focus on Black British culture. UK versions of pages like these – The Shade Borough, IMJUSTBAIT and UK Gossip TV – now dominate many of our feeds. This was the moment which solidified the page as a credible celebrity gossip news source, following in the footsteps of US site The Shade Room, which also has over 20 million followers on Instagram.
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