Due to the rise of social media, we now know what celebs are up to every second of the day. Twitter, Facebook and gossip columns allow us to keep tabs on our favorite star’s whereabouts so we can laugh at the latest scandals. Twitter makes it possible for us to get updates straight from the source—as long as there’s a little ‘verified’ check by their name.
Only four months ago, something… strange… became all the rage on Twitter. That something—or someone—is the Amanda Bynes herself. Let’s take you through a little Amanda history so you can get caught up to speed.
We all know Amanda Bynes from The Amanda Show, which aired from 1999 to 2002 on Nickelodeon. If you didn’t watch The Amanda Show then you never got to see dancing lobsters or Drake Bell dressed up as airhead guitarist (“Totalllllly Kyle”).
Amanda also starred in the TV shows All That and What I Like About You. She then went on to make some killer teen movies such as What a Girl Wants, Big Fat Liar, Love Wrecked, and, of course, She’s the Man.
In 2010, Bynes played Marianne, the religious, vindictive antagonist in Easy A (where we first got a taste of how funny Emma Stone is), despite having “retired” from acting earlier that year, which she announced via Twitter.
In 2012, Bynes ran into some legal trouble, raising some concern, but since it seems to be so common of childhood stars in Hollywood (Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears) to run into legal issues, not too much of a fuss was made over it. On March 7, 2012, Bynes was stopped by the police for talking on her cell phone while driving. On April 6, she was arrested and charged with driving under the influence. On September 4, she was charged with a hit-and-run after leaving the scene of two separate accidents. It seemed that Amanda was going through what almost every good childhood star has—the Hollywood Syndrome.
Even though Bynes remained relevant thanks to her trouble with the law, she wasn’t particularly relevant for her acting work. Ever since Easy A, it seemed that Bynes had actually retired, until recently this year when she reappeared on the Twitter scene with some interesting changes that gained her some notoriety once more.
At first, Bynes, wasn’t ‘verified’, which may have caused some to be a bit skeptical. The now 27-year-old actress started sending out very bizarre tweets about herself, her weight, her apparent need for a nose job, and the rapper Drake. Two months ago, however, Bynes became verified, and as more and more people began to notice her strange, albeit hilariously entertaining tweets, the stranger she got and the more concerned gossip columnists and Twitter users grew.
Prior to her strange behavior on Twitter in 2013, Bynes was known for sending strange tweets, but recently they’ve seemed to be unstable. She’s best known for calling out different celebrities (mostly Drake) on being ugly. Miley Cyrus, Jason Biggs, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Courtney Love, Lance Bass, and most recently, Barack and Michelle Obama, have all been dubbed ugly by Ms. Bynes. Bynes even called out her own family members on being “ugly”. On June 26th she send some Twitter shade out to her sister, Jillian:
Bynes later deleted the tweet after much commotion was raised.
Drake, unfortunately, has felt the worst of Amanda’s unstable wrath. Amanda is now well known for either loving or hating the Canadian rapper. The actress often calls Drake out for being ugly with his “downward eyes”, but the next day she’ll declare her undying love for him:
Along with her odd tweets, she also posts weird selfies, which make it clear that this is no imposter. She has also shown up to court twice now in outlandish wigs, the latest one a bright aqua blue:
One can only hope that Bynes is pulling a major practical joke on us all (in which case, way to go, Ms. Bynes) but for now, we can’t be too sure. One thing we can learn from this frenzy: what you put on social media websites can haunt you forever. So please, don’t post about Drake being ugly if you think it’s just a mood swing!
After Britney’s apparent breakdown in 2007, Lindsay Lohan’s multiple drug/alcohol arrests and stints in rehab, Amanda Bynes’s back-and-forth tweets, and even Bieber’s latest controversy over peeing in a restaurant’s mop bucket, is it safe to say that fame at a young age makes celebs go nuts? Part of us may want to believe that as long as there are actresses like Jennifer Lawrence, Hollywood can’t be that bad of a place. Another part has to ask: Hey Hollywood, are you OK?