Dating back to the early 2000s, we had to pick up a magazine in the grocery store to find out the latest celebrity gossip. We had to go on to actual blogs like Hollywood Life or watch an episode of TMZ to find out what was going on with our favorite celebrities. Now all we have to do is log onto Instagram, type “theshaderoom” into our search bar, and there is all the celebrity drama that happened in the last 24 hours. On the contrary though, The Shade Room does post some positive content, such as posts for black businesses, some comedy things, people doing good deeds, etc. The Shade Room is loved by many but is also an enemy to many.
Infamously known, The Shade Room is an Instagram based media company. It was founded by Angelica Nwandu in March of 2014. Her family actually wanted her to be an accomplished accountant, but she had different plans for herself. The Shade Room’s Instagram page has the sole job of reporting all types of news, ranging from politics to spiritual testimonies to celebrity drama to funny videos to shoutouts for black businesses. The Instagram page now has over 20 million followers and the numbers are still climbing!
As intriguing as The Shade Room might be to a bystander, much of the content that The Shade Room posts has upset celebrities in the process. There have been incidents where The Shade Room has posted gossip and information about a celebrity and their relationship before the celebrity was even aware. Think about it in this way. Someone had a surprise to tell you, and you ran into a stranger in public and they told you what the surprise was. So once you got home and you were about to receive the surprise, you didn’t have any excitement left because it was ruined for you by a stranger. The Shade Room is the stranger that does that. They don’t realize that what they post can have a huge affect on these celebrities. There have been many incidents where The Shade Room has caused unnecessary drama or beef between two celebrities. They tend to take celebrities’ tweets and claim that the tweets are about someone else. While sometimes they’re right on the mark, other times they are completely wrong. The Shade Room has been called toxic and messy on many occasions, and at some point you start to wonder, “Do these people even have a moral compass on them?”. It’s like they completely disregard the fact that celebrities are still human beings with families and children at the end of the day. A huge issue with The Shade Room is that some of their information can be called false information. The so-called “sources” used by reporters are just people with no real connections to the celebs they’re talking about (and they have biases too). On many occasions, celebrities have bashed and went off on The Shade Room on their Instagram stories right after The Shade Room made an inaccurate post about them.
The Shade Room does have some positives to it though. It’s not 100% drama. They consistently shout out small black businesses which is good for the black community. We need pages with huge followings to help support these black businesses. These large companies owned by rich white men have enough of our money. It’s time we start supporting our own people. They post scriptures almost every other day, positive affirmations, and strong Gospel lyrics. These things may just help somebody pull it together or give them a better feeling about their day/week. Personally, it’s good to see something like that while scrolling on Instagram. It’s always like a quick positive message that you needed, you just didn’t know when you needed it. The Shade Room also consistently posts about the news and current events. Honestly, The Shade Room is the reason why I don’t watch the actual news anymore because they report the majority of the current events that are happening in the world. They present it in a less biased way and a simpler version than news channels like CNN and Fox. It’s beneficial for our generation that all they have to do to stay updated with the world is check The Shade Room from time to time.
Ultimately, a lot of us have a love-hate relationship with The Shade Room. They can be very informative at times, but just too toxic at other times. They’re like that one friend you’re lucky to have, but they have no filter on their mouth so they let everyone know everything about everybody’s business. It’s hard to deal with them but you still keep them around because they have some great benefits.