A social media account can tell you everything and nothing about a person.
Nothing in so much as, well, here’s a photo of me with a giant bottle of Prosecco and scores of friends and a big smile, but you’d have to walk over my dead body before I showed you my oily hair, dry skin and droopy eyes on a flat day.
A highlight reel, if you will, that paints a picture of a life enveloped by all things nice, bright and pretty.
And then, sometimes, a social media account can tell us exactly what the character in question wants us to know. A channel through which they can send us their strongest and most important messages.
Take Bec Judd, for example. The mum-of-four shares a lot online without actually sharing much at all. We know what her family looks like, but not what they do when they sit around the dinner table. We often know what she thinks, but rarely do we know the inner-workings of her mind. We know the things she wants us to know. Nothing more, nothing less.
Listen: How does Bec Judd do it? Post continues…
And this week, if your eyes dart across her Instagram feed, a common thread appears. Because in the last week, Bec Judd – you could argue – subtly put the tabloids back in their box, without opening her mouth or saying a word.
A week ago, the tabloids ran a report without sources, without facts and without comment from the Judds themselves, merely throwing the seed of a gossip bomb deep into the internet, and letting rumour and innuendo do the rest.