If you love Miley Cyrus to the point that you follow all the social media fan pages devoted to all the latest gossip on the singer’s personal life, then you may have caught wind of a startling rumor over the weekend.
Several such outlets breathlessly exclaimed that Miley and Liam Hemsworth have broken up yet again.
And this time, they claimed, their source was not some bogus insider, but Miley herself, who seemed to have broken the news on her Instagram page.
If you read beyond the headlines, however, you may have found that while Cyrus has engaged in some very unusual activity on social media recently, it would require quite a leap in logic to conclude that she’s trying to send a low-key message about her love life.
Yes, Miley deleted every photo of Liam Hemsworth from her Instagram page.
But she also deleted all other content from her account and changed her profile pic to a plain black background.
Miley also blacked out her Twitter avatar, but she did not delete her tweets.
Obviously, it’s not hard to see why some fans would take this is a sign that something is amiss in Miley’s personal life.
But in all likelihood, the move has more to do with her professional life.
It appears that Miley is participating in a recent and somewhat annoying trend in self-promotion.
You see, lately, celebs have been drumming up interest in upcoming projects not by teasing their new work with tweets and Instagram pics, but by deleting (or archiving) all of the content on their pages.
Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik have both taken that approach to drumming up interest in upcoming releases.
Back in April, rumors of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds getting divorced began to circulate non-stop as a result of Blake’s decision to remove all content from her Instagram page and unfollow her husband.
It was later revealed that Blake did all this to promote the release of her upcoming film A Simple Favor.
(Side note: that movie still hasn’t come out yet, so we’re thinking Blake jumped the gun a bit in terms of promotional stunts.)
Not surprisingly, Miley fans are losing their minds trying to figure out what’s next for the eccentric songstress:
“The fact that she’s [deleting] all her 2013-14 posts already and is still deleting is HUGE. We are getting a proper era? Building hype?” one Cyrus enthusiast tweeted.
Yes, the world of mainstream pop music stans is a fascinating one.
Only in 2018 could a 25-year-old artist with only 5 non-Disney studio albums to her name be credited as the architect of multiple musical “eras.”
But hey, you’ve gotta hand it to her — if Miley’s goal was to drum up interest in her new music, mission accomplished!
