Why @CommentsByCelebs is Important to Our Mental Health

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

It's easy to blame social media for a lot of things.

We have attention issues, we have lack of mindfulness, we are all going to have neck problems, probably. We obsess over posting the perfect pictures, we take too long using the restroom because we are scrolling, we are anxious and depressed because we are seeing everyone posting their good days and perfect angles rather than what's happening in the other 86,399 seconds of their day.

All of those things are true, and you can find a ton of articles about how bad social media is for us.

So I'm going to talk about one thing I love about it: the Instagram account, @CommentsByCelebs.

First of all, it's genius. Whether you hate it or love it, the popularity is difficult to argue with and all they did (in the beginning) was cut and paste. How simple an idea and how awesome is it to see everything compiled even when you're not exactly fans of all these celebrities? I'm sure it takes a lot of work to get everything ready and posted, but they've built a substantial success from a simple concept and that is really incredible to me.

But the real gift from CommentsByCelebs is not in its simplicity, but in the support that celebrities (overall) show each other and stand up for themselves. 

Yes, we look to celebrities for things we really shouldn't; we ask them what we should do in our personal lives to improve them, we obsess over their clothing, we beg them to endorse brands so we can decide what to buy, we ask them to tell us stories we want to hear. We yell at them on the screen, we curse their names when they act outside of what we believe their character to be. We lift them up above ourselves, aspiring to the images we project onto them. 

But for all of this misinformed behavior, we do this because we seek something bigger than ourselves. We look for ourselves in these larger-than-life identities; we hope for their character to ring true, to triumph over hardship, to be the brightest and the greatest in hopes that we too have that chance in our own parallel universe. 

When I look at CommentsByCelebs and I see celebrities taking down hateful comments with clever clapbacks and scintillating shutdowns or supporting each other's work with sweet or sassy comments, it gives me hope for the kind of community that I want our future generations to create for themselves. 

So many artists could use it to fuel competition and give in to the massive amount of filth that I'm sure they have to endure as a public figure - instead, when their comments are compiled into the lovely set of flipbooks I see every day, they are being goofy, sassy, uplifting, protective, congratulatory, and downright ordinary. In the past, we may have gotten glimpses of this of former celebrities, but they were always shrouded in such mystery and persona. 

Nowadays, maybe we know too much about each other; maybe there is too little privacy for our dear celebrities or too much pressure for them to put on a good face in the public eye, so all they can do is flash their expensive smiles and blow diamond kisses at each other to make us all sigh and tag all of our friends.

Maybe @CommentsByCelebs is all fluff and an image of celebrities putting on yet another smile for the camera.

But when I see something like this:

or this:

or this:

It makes me think.. you know, maybe it is fluff on the surface. Maybe we are all suffering and putting on a good face. Maybe we are all pretending to be friends on the outside, and on the inside, we are dying to be connected, to be closer, to be loved - and going about it all the wrong ways.

But when I see celebrities speaking out in ways they previously never had before, it makes me wonder if there are seeds of truth in our masquerade, if we really do support each other the way it seems to be in the movies and on the high holy hill of Instagram. And that *public* support has been enabling us to come to that place where we are able to speak out, take risks, be vulnerable.

It makes me think, maybe there is some form of true care in the comments, hidden between the lines.

More on the topic.. great read also: Why I Love It When Celebrities Talk About Mental Health