Comments by Celebs, whose posts we’re featuring here, has made a specialty of capturing these fleeting exchanges and was quite literally built for this new reality. In fact, what has now become a major celebrity media brand—an honoree in the 2019 Webby Awards, with merchandise and podcasts including the spin-off Comments by Bravo—started with an Instagram algorithm change in 2017.
Whereas comments had previously been displayed chronologically, the change prioritized those from verified and high-profile accounts. Suddenly, celebrity comments were much harder to miss, and two self-proclaimed “pop-culture enthusiasts,” Emma Diamond and Julie Kramer, took notice. “All of a sudden, we were seeing these hilarious comments that we had never seen before. We were constantly studying them, [and] we were screenshotting them and sending them to each other in our group chats,” Diamond explained to Vanity Fair, adding, “I just said to myself, ‘I have to capitalize on this.’”
But the intention wasn’t simply to recreate the more salacious side of tabloid culture. As Diamond told Vanity Fair in 2018, “I think something that we kind of pride ourselves on is the fact that we’re not looking to shade people, we’re not really looking to ‘get’ people—it’s not that.” Rather, she explained that their approach was intended to be lighthearted and humorous, with the aim of giving celebrities a “safe space” to showcase their human and humorous side.
And that might just be a significant part of the appeal. A celebrity leaving a joke under a friend’s photo can make them seem a little less like a carefully managed public figure and a little more like, well, anybody else scrolling through Instagram: making jokes with friends, hyping people up, or chiming in simply because they can’t resist. Luckily, Comments by Celebs is here to cut through the noise and catch the best of them for us.
