Fans were really curious as to why Glee's Naya Rivera deleted her Twitter account this week, but now, mere days later, Rivera has reactivated her account. Why, you ask? Well, I think the short break from social media was all about self-promotion. After her brief exit from the Twittersphere, Rivera's account was back up on Tuesday with a new message from the Glee star.
My account is back up! It needed some beauty sleep ;-) I have something special tomorrow for you guys! #BombShellsOfSummer.
The big reveal turned out to be that she's on the cover of this month's issue of Galore . The "bombshell" she hashtagged apparently didn't mean that the news was shocking, or especially important. Rather it referred to the fact that the magazine is calling her one of summer's bombshells. It seems apparent now that her the circumstances of her Twitter deletion are somewhat manipulative and designed to increase public awareness.
Consider, if you will, how brief Rivera's Twitter break was. Distressed tweets from fans about her deletion can be traced back to June 7. Seeing as she returned on June 10, that's only a three day break; hardly what anyone would call a real, restorative rest from social media. And the timing of her return seems fishy. The media didn't pick the story up until June 9, and then suddenly, the next day, she's back up. Seems like Rivera left her account down long enough to get media attention, and now that she has people paying attention to her Twitter, she's going to promote #BombShellsOfSummer is to an even larger audience.
It also seems a little too convenient that the only social media account she deleted was Twitter. She continued posting on her Instagram, which makes sense, because she has about 700,000 fewer followers: It wouldn't make any sense to promote her surprise on Instagram (1.08 million followers), when over on Twitter, she 1.7 million followers. Thus, it was only her Twitter she decided to direct media attention.
Plus, once her Twitter was back up it came with all of her previous tweets, so this wasn't even a "start fresh" kind of scenario like Rob Kardashian pulled. Instead, it seems like a deletion of convenience: Remind the media you exist by removing your Twitter and as soon as they notice, restart your account with the promise of a surprise. Then sit back and watch them monitor your feed and write about said surprise.
Well played, Naya. Well played.
Image: giphy
