For reality stars, the Brown family isn"t the most active on social media. Sure, Bam Bam and his girlfriend provide some updates, but it"s mostly only Rain Brown who speaks for Alaskan Bush People on the interwebs.
Which means that a strange task fell to her, as you"ll see in the video below.
Rain Brown took to social media to share that Gabe Brown hasn"t been online and is going through a rough time right now. Because apparently a catfisher has been pretending otherwise. …
Most reality stars use the fame that they acquire on the small screen to make their star shine even brighter.
That can mean product endorsements. It can mean crossover reality appearances (especially if anybody"s marriage or relationship isn"t going so well).
But, bare minimum, it means using social media to the fullest extent. You can grow your audience that way. You can also market yourself and your fame to companies that way.
The stars of Alaskan Bush People, however, don"t do that so much.
Rain Brown, the family"s youngest — she just turned 15 — has become the Brown family"s de facto spokesperson.
Which led her to share this strange, strange message on Instagram:
In the video that you"ll see below, Rain (who seems a bit anxious as she speaks, but we get it) warns of a stranger who is spreading misinformation about Gabe Brown.
"There"s this girl posing to be Gabe"s girlfriend. I wanted to quickly [clear] some things up for you guys."
That"s super alarming. It sounds like either the girl herself is just seeking fame over an imagined relationship, or someone is pretending to be Gabe online in order to catfish Alaskan Bush People fans.
It sounds like it"s the latter situation, because Rain goes out of her way to assure the world that Gabe is not online at the moment.
"Gabe does not have his phone; hasn"t had his phone in a long time."
That"s unusual for anyone these days.
"Please don"t listen to anything that anyone says about him."
That"s not uncommon for reality star siblings to say about each other — it"s natural to be protective.
But it"s good to remember that being contacted by someone claiming to be a celebrity … well, you should almost always assume that it"s not really them. Look for that blue checkmark of verification and even then, consider that they may have been hacked.
Rain elaborates on Gabe"s circumstances, and though she"s pretty vague, it doesn"t sound good:
"He"s going through a very hard time and his phone broke and he does not have it."
Considering that the Brown family has been living large in a Beverly Hills mansion recently, we"re guessing that there"s much more to Gabe"s lack of a phone than the first one getting damaged.
Because surely they could just buy another. It sounds like he"s in a really bad place, emotionally.
Rain takes the opportunity to share a message about her sister, Birdie.
"And also Birdie likes to be kept very private."
Again, the Brown family is much, much more privacy-oriented than you"d expect for a bunch of reality stars.
"And so she doesn"t, you know, she doesn"t really let anyone follow her. And she doesn"t like people messaging her."
Rain then seems to almost immediately contradict herself (again, she"s talking about a serious subject; some anxiety goes with the territory).
"But you are welcome to message her, and she"ll read it, and sometimes I think she replies — I"m not positive."
So maybe Rain should have checked with Birdie before she spoke about what Birdie likes or doesn"t, but Rain"s doing her best.
"My family"s really private, and that"s really the only reason that I"m the only one on here."
No 15-year-old should have to be the spokesperson for her famous family, but here we are.
"And I never say anything about the rest of my family because they"re all very private people."
So, first of all: catfishing is bad, but catfishing as a celebrity who is already going through a hard time — we"re guessing that Ami Brown"s lung cancer is just one of his current struggles — is worse.
You might think that only a fool would get caught by that, but that doesn"t mean that a foolish person deserves to be deceived.
There are a lot of desperate, lonely people who would love to believe that they"re in a relationship with a famous person.
And there are some truly unhealthy people who would get a thrill out of tricking someone into believing that.
Second of all, though, the Browns are continuing to make a big mistake by staying off of social media.
Remember the fan controversy over that photo of Billy Brown? If Ami and Billy were active on social media, they"d have a chance at controlling the narrative about Billy continuing to smoke while his wife battles lung cancer.
At the very least, they could bombard fans with enough content that a random photo of them would have gotten less scrutiny.
Also, Rain uses the video to share that she has "almost" 40,000 followers on Instagram. She actually has more than 40K, now.
Anyway, here"s the video of Rain Brown. As we said, she seems a little anxious, but that"s more than understandable.
