Selena Gomez was not too thrilled about her candid audience reactions to the MTV VMAs becoming memes on social platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram. Gomez posted an Instagram Story on Monday morning, sharing her honest feelings about unwittingly becoming joke fodder for some people on the internet.
“I will never be a meme again,” she wrote. “I’d rather sit still than be dragged for being myself. Much love.”
Beyond that statement, Gomez’s Instagram Stories from the VMAs were generally focused on her fashion. She did post something adding funny commentary to this photo of her and Taylor Swift’s reunion:
“She looks stunning I look constipated,” Gomez captioned it, adding a playful “typical” below it.
Gomez has been open about why she generally stays off social media and the impact mean comments have had on her mental health. In October 2021, she spoke to WWD’s Beauty Inc about the moment she “snapped” and deleted Instagram.
In reference to being off the app, “I say that because that’s a huge, significant part of why I feel like I’ve been as healthy as I have been,” she said. “I’m completely unaware of actually what’s going on in pop culture, and that makes me really happy. And maybe that doesn’t make everybody else happy, but for me, it’s really saved my life.”
“To be honest, I was just, like, ‘This is too much information,’” she continued. “This is too much of my personal life spread out everywhere, and it just felt uncontrollable. I felt like my thoughts and everything I was consuming revolved around a million different other people in the world saying good things and bad things. And I just thought, ‘Why would I—I don’t get anything from it. Nothing is giving me life.’ And I just snapped, and I was over it. I wanted to delete it altogether, but my team was smart enough to convince me not to. But I’m happy I didn’t, because it is such a wonderful way to stay connected, and when I do go on, it makes me happy to know that I’m just being completely honest and being true to who I am.”
Senior News and Strategy Editor
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
