Deuxmoi, the now infamous anonymous Instagram account, has become more feared than the actual tabloids. Why? Because Deuxmoi’s “Anons,” who DM tips, are everywhere, all over the world. Constantly looking for the next celebrity sighting and viral rumor. However, this idea isn’t new. The hit TV show Gossip Girl did it first.
The way Deuxmoi works is people DM Anon(ymously) “tips” and pictures of celebrities out and about. Then Deuxmoi screenshots them and posts them on their story for everyone to see. Sometimes, they have sponsored posts or theme posts with things happening in pop culture and events coming up. From casual spotting to real dirt, Deuxmoi is sparking rumors, perpetuating gossip, and making eagle-eyed fans even more hungry for celebrity gossip, because now they can be involved in it, even if no one knows it’s them.
The thing is, this concept isn’t original. The original part is it happening IRL because Gossip Girl started this idea of anonymous tip sending and gossip-fueled chaos back in the early 2000s with Cecily von Ziegesar’s book series and the hit CW TV show. In fact, this concept was even more threatening because these were kids, minors. It was the beginning of the internet age and using it socially. These tips were focused on the 0.2% in New York 1%, their teenagers. These kids had futures to plan and colleges to get into. Therefore, Gossip Girl was an even bigger threat because even if they had loads of money and connections, once something is on the internet, it’s there forever. While Deuxmoi focuses on celebrities, people who were in the public eye regardless if an Instagram account posts about them, E! News will still do interviews with them and TMZ will still photograph them. Because of this, Gossip Girl basically invented cancel culture.
Now, celebrity culture has been a thing for a while. However, its biggest boom was in the 80s through shows like The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and the invention of Entertainment Tonight. The second boom was when reality TV became all the rage. Celebrities were flocking to share their dirty laundry from The Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey to The Anna Nicole Show. That gave rise to seeing the filthy rich in reality shows, flaunting their designer clothes and beach vacations. Welcome the Real Housewives franchise and Keeping Up With The Kardashians, both with huge and deviated fanbases. However, seeing the filthy rich fictionalized had fallen fairly out of style by this time. Dynasty and Beverly Hills, 90210 ended years ago. The OC just went off the air. However, with celebrity online culture rising in popularity, Gossip Girl provided entertainment to the unfilled market, making it a guaranteed success.
Von Ziegesar was very ahead of her time when she wrote the book. At the time, blogs didn’t even exist. So, the idea that there was a website dedicated to teens behaving socially and oftentimes almost criminally, was certainly not even a seed of an idea yet. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and even MySpace didn’t exist yet. So, by the time the show did come out, when MySpace and Facebook existed, it was still somewhat new, but not unheard of. The unheard-of part was seeing it and all of its stakes portrayed on TV, and nonetheless shown through the eyes of filthy rich young people.
Social media is inescapable today. If you have it, you feel pressured to always keep up with it and if you don’t have social media, you have to work extra hard to not get a mad case of FOMO. Our obsession with people we don’t even know and sometimes don’t even like has fueled websites like Gossip Girl and Deuxmoi. We hate to love them. We pat ourselves on the back when we get the chance to send in a tip of the latest celebrity spotting, even when it’s something as glamorous as going grocery shopping.
This obsession is not healthy. We may feel like we know our favorite actors, musicians, influencers, media personalities and models like friends, but we don’t. This “cancel culture” causes people in the public eye to be ruined by a simple mistake, made recently or deep in the past, that would be glossed over by normal people (obviously excluding actually damaging and discriminatory things). It’s toxic, but at this point in our society, it is sort of unavoidable.
Now, I’m not saying social media is bad overall. We get to keep in contact with people who we don’t see very often, learn new things, and it can bring awareness to things we care about. But you can’t deny that the urgency, FOMO and constant surveillance that social media brings is quite daunting and threatening when you think about it, especially for people in the public eye.
Deuxmoi would not exist without Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s decision to adapt the popular YA book series to TV. But the question to ask is, while it’s hard to imagine a world without the pop-cultural phenomenon that is Gossip Girl, is it wrong that someone is inspired by its threatening technological concept and brings it to a real-life, bigger scale? So, on the off chance you spot Chace Crawford on a coffee run or Leighton Meester surfing in California, maybe think twice before you DM Deuxmoi a “spotting.”