Grammy Edition: Celeb's Throwing Shady Glances?

So, we've been stressing for years now that every word you put on social media could be critiqued and used against you.  Now, we're taking this warning to a whole new level.  In my recent post-awards-show social media monitoring, I've noticed an interesting trend taking shape.  We are no longer just being held accountable for every word, but every FACE we make too!

A perfect example of this happened during last night's Grammy Awards.  Taylor Swift won for Best Album of the Year, and gave a kind-of-empowerment speech about getting credit for your own hard work.  During the speech, the cameras panned the audience, and happened across singer Toni Kelly.  Toni's face appeared slightly less than pleased, and EVERYBODY noticed.  Headlines started going around that Toni was giving "shady side eye" to Taylor and rumors started that they must not like each other.  All from one second of a facial expression. 

This isn't the first time this has happened. Just a month ago at the Golden Globes, one of the most popular post-show stories on social media was a gif of Leonardo DiCaprio's face when Lady Gaga passed and bumped him on her way to get her award.  Again, accusations of Leo "throwing major shade" at Gaga flooded social media.  

Is this fair? Do you think these celebs are really hating on each other, or just caught by a camera at a bad moment?

Nicki vs. Taylor in the Twitter-storm of the Year

Last night, a music industry Twitter-storm erupted and things have only slightly settled down.

It all started yesterday when the MTV Video Music Award Nominations were released.  Of course, Twitter had a lot to say about these, with #VMA leading as a trending topic.  But soon joining in the trending topics were more specific artists.... namely  #TaylorSwift and #NickiMinaj.

Nicki Minaj vented on Twitter after her biggest hit "Anaconda" wasn't nominated for Video Of The Year.  The video, which received 19.6 million clicks in its first 24 hours, set a music video record at the time.  So, Minaj had a point when she thought she was snubbed.  She tweeted:

Well, apparently Taylor Swift thought that Nicki was dogging on her specifically, because she replied, 

Nicki replied with a confused "Huh?" and a back and forth ensued between the two.  Well, I guess rather than "between the two", I should say "with all of Twitter" as it seemed like every reader had an opinion on this conversation which erupted into a sprawling conversation about race and gender. 

What do you think of the debate?  Are you #TeamNicki or #TeamTaylor?

 

Social Media's Hottest Dress of the Season!

Since it is the end of awards season, you would think it is the end of dresses being the top hit on Twitter. 

But last night, Twitter was overtaken with a new dress that caused a huge controversy.

Dubbed #TheDress, this color optical illusion basically divided the internet into two camps, #TeamBlackAndBlue and #TeamWhiteAndGold.

To explain a bit, depending on your brain's perception of color, viewers can see an image of the same dress as either black and blue striped, or gold and white striped.  The concept is fascinating, but since this isn't a brain function blog, I'll let you read about the science elsewhere.  If interested, I think WIRED's recap of it is the best.

Another fascinating aspect, though, is just how quickly this sensation swamped our newsfeeds!  #TheDress was first posted to Tumblr on Wednesday.  Apparently, as Washington Post reported, the dress was intended to be worn in a wedding.  And when the mother of the bride snapped a picture of it to send to members of the wedding party, they all saw the dress as different colors!  To settle the debate, they posed the question to social media and BAM.  

Tens of millions of tweets siding on either end of the debate led to trending hashtags #TheDress, #whiteandgold, #blackandblue.  Even celebrities from Taylor Swift to Mindy Kaling to Julianne Moore chimed in about #TheDress.

When I first saw it, I thought people were pranking me!  It was clearly white and gold.  But now, a few images that I've seen actually do look blue and black!  We are clearly going mad!

What colors do you see?  

How Kanye Actually Won The Grammys

Kanye West didn't win an actual Grammy Award last night, but he definitely won on social media.

If you didn't see the big show last night, then you missed Kanye's fake out stage crash. Reminiscent of his 2009 crash of Taylor Swift's award speech (gosh, that video still makes me cringe), Kanye headed up to the stage after the Album of The Year Award was presented to Beck.  The whole audience seemed to hold their breath until Kanye stopped, smirked and sat back down.  Whether he was joking all along, or just decided not to actually crash another speech, who knows.  But I am glad he sat down!  

The Twittersphere was not pleased with Kanye's antics.  The awkward interaction ranked as the most tweeted moment of the Grammys in terms of tweets per minute, and landed Kanye as the most tweeted about celeb at The Grammys.

What did you think of Kanye rushing the stage?  'So funny' or 'So rude'?

The New Wave of Celeb Hackers

"And the hackers gonna hack hack hack hack hack"

Yeah, I couldn't help but get Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" song stuck in my head again today!

Poor Taylor was hacked on Instagram and Twitter yesterday
!  Of course, the social media accounts of stars being hacked is nothing new.  But Taylor just happens to be one of the most-followed celebs in the social media world, so you can bet her fans noticed when something was fishy about her account!

And that leads me to what might be the most interesting point about this celeb-hacking: its purpose.  Many times, hackers have done so to post a lewd photograph or start a juicy rumor or something similar.  But not this time.  No, this hacker seemed to mainly be after one thing: followers. Yeah, followers!!

The hacker posted a tweet as though it was from Taylor telling her fans to follow his actual Twitter account.  And later, he asked them to do the same for a supposed friend.  What a crazy thing to do to gain some social media followers!!  And while most of Taylor's followers recognized the hacker and told him to take a hike, a few had a different plan.  They messaged Taylor's account (while the hacker was on it) and asked him to follow them from Taylor's account!  

This "follow-for-a-follow" type of world is crazy and the things people do to elicit social media followers are just as nuts.  What's the craziest thing you've heard of someone doing to get social media followers?

Best Social Media Moments from the 2014 Grammys!

Did you watch The Grammy Awards last night? Did your favorite artist win? The Grammys is HUGE on social media- definitely one of the most-tweeted events of the year. To this point, last night there were over 15 MILLION Grammy related Tweets! And we shouldn't let that get to our HEADS. Okay, that is a terrible attempt at a pun but it is strange to me how many of the tweets have to do with heads, hair, helmets and hats!!

Here we go:

HAIR:  If you watched Taylor Swift's lovely performance of her song "All To Well", you might have taken a quick break to the mirror to practice your own hair flip! Taylor's wild head flails landed her with massive amounts of tweets (many hoping her neck isn't sore today!) and even several Vine videos like these ones!!

HELMETS: Daft Punk, notorious for not showing their faces due to helmets and robotic wear, managed to go through the entire night fully donned in helmets and not saying an entire word! Needless to say, after winning four Grammys including album of the year, the Twittersphere had enough to say for the both of them! ,

HATS:  This might have been the most talked about article of clothing on Twitter last night. That means a lot too because the "style" chatter about the dresses and shoes and jewels and costumes was, as usual, plentiful. Pharrell's lovely hat. And while most of the Twittersphere laughed at it, Pharrell did fine for himself, never once missing a beat with this hat and also taking home two Grammys for Record of the Year and Producer of the Year. AND this hat gave us one of the BEST brand tweets of the night. Actually, I am going to go out there and say this might be one of my favorite brand tweets of all time.  It is relevant, current and SO tied into the company's brand that it almost seems too good to be true. Thanks, Arby's, for restoring my faith in branded tweets!!

What was your favorite GRAMMYs moment??