Two people who were going out and have had a child together, have agreed to separate.
This article could end there. Some would say it shouldn't have even begun, yet here we are. And now, with it started, the genie is out of the bottle, the wheels are in motion, and there is now a contractually obligated minimum word count that I've to fulfill, so let us plough further into the rough of petty speculation.
The unenviable collapse of a once-functioning and lovely MCFP (Mutually-Consensual-Fuck-Partnership) is an undeniably tragic and upsetting event for all involved. "But people break up all the time?" I hear you mutter, through gritted teeth, your lips speckled with foam as you struggle to contain your rage, "Why is this cluttering up my newsfeed!? Why am I here!?"
Well, while people break up all the time, this break up involves two famous people; two celebs, whose lives are, culturally deemed to be, more worthwhile than yours, than mine, than any of ours.
We are sad to announce that we are going our separate ways. It's been a tough decision for us to make. We still have so much love for each other as a family. Bear is our world and we ask that you respect his privacy as we navigate our way through this together.
— Cheryl (@CherylOfficial) July 1, 2018
The apparently now-mononymed Cheryl and Liam Payne have, shirked the softness of a 'conscious decoupling', and gone for a good old-fashioned break-up. They each announced the decision on their respective Twitter profiles, using very similarly worded pre-prepared statements. However, the responses granted to each of them were vastly different and a bleak indictment of the internet's incapacity for empathy. While this is in itself not news, there are occasional moments when you came face to face with the true extent of the barren hellscape that social media has become, where you are forced to stare deep into the cruel, dead eyes of the beast, before it bares its teeth and leaves a disparaging and misogynistic comment on a Twitter thread.
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Under Liam Payne's Tweet, there was a slew, a veritable outpouring of support from fawning ex-One Direction fans who could conceivably also perhaps be fans of his solo work - though this is just idle speculation as there is nothing in either their words, nor his solo work, that would warrant this. Sympathies were offered, support was proffered, it was essentially a large cyber pat on the back for Liam.
Whereas, under Cheryl's announcement all the depravity, all the caprice of mankind, was laid bare within 280 characters. Immediately a fast-paced, tiki-taka back and forth of comments erupted, that within seconds had generated a profoundly unnecessary - if commendable at the speed with which it was contrived - put down of her announcement.
While the grand irrelevance of this event to the majority of our lives is undeniable, this does not mean that it warrants criticism. The difference with which their, almost word for word identical, announcements were greeted - impassioned sycophancy on the one side, and sheer derision on the other - is further, albeit utterly superfluous evidence, of how social media's disconnect from reality is utterly antithetical to compassion.
