Beyonce and Jay-Z were at a basketball game sitting next to the owner of the Golden State Warriors and his wife Nicole Curran. Curran has been hounded off Instagram after an interaction with Jay-Z was filmed and went viral.
Beyonce’s fans, known by the ‘Beyhive’ moniker, interpreted Ms Curran leaning over Beyonce to talk to Jay-Z as a slight against Beyonce and proceeded to harass the woman, commenting bee emojis on all her Instagram photographs.
Hardcore fans of stars like Beyonce or Taylor Swift are known for bombarding the social media accounts of those who have allegedly slighted their ‘queen’ with emojis. Whilst the Beyhive use bees, Swift’s fanbase have been known to use snake emojis.
However, the sheer amount of fans targeting Ms Curran naturally meant that some less than charming individuals sent the woman in question death threats. ESPN reporter Ramona Shelburne tweeted to say Curran was ‘in tears’ and had to disable her Instagram account due to the number of death threats.
Whilst Beyonce has not stepped in to ask her fans to back down, her publicist Yvette Noel-Schure posted a direct plea to fans on Instagram, writing: “It will bring no joy to the person you love so much if you spew hate in her name.”
The incident is one in a wider pattern of toxic fandoms, whereby fans react violently to those they feel have insulted the artist they worship. Last year, a Canadian writer was hounded by Nicki Minaj fans (and encouraged by the star herself) for offering honest critique of Minaj’s music and career evolution. Other incidents include Ariana Grande’s fanbase harassing her ex-fiance Pete Davidson and Star Wars fans racially harassing Kelly Marie Tran, who featured in the most recent film of the franchise.
The issue commonly comes in hand in hand with a discussion on whether celebrities should take ownership of harassment done by their fans in their names and actively discourage this behaviour, rather than ignoring it.
