Billie Eilish lost 100k followers after coming out

roastedDeflator@kbin.social to LGBTQ+@beehaw.org – 111 points – Billie Eilish lost 100k followers after coming out
thepinknews.com

Billie Eilish has lost a whopping 100,000 Instagram followers since coming out last month and sharing she was attracted to women.

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She has 110 millions insta followers. 100,000 represent a 0.1% loss. I wish only 0.1% of the population were homophobic.

How is it news that she lost less than 0.1% of her followers?

I kinda thought something similar, but in a way I think there's some value in observing homophobia in a community.

Yes, but it's just not statistically significant. Unless we see longer-term trends of her follow count, this could easily be a random fluctuation, bot crackdown, etc.

@TheAlbatross @midnight

I don't expect a lot of Ellish fans to be homophobic. Entirely not the vibe of her and her music.

I tend to agree with a bot crackdown being the culprit for a lot of them.

It would be neat if there were context, like if other artists had any similar drops. That popular accounts get a ton of bots isn't that interesting.

I’m encouraged that the percentage was that low.

The percentage was low, but 100k people is still a lot of people.

Probably a lot of them were bots

Why would a bot unfollow because someone is coming out as lesbian?

Correlation != causation.

That because is doing some heavy lifting

The post itself implies causation. Also why would a bot unfollow at all?

Bots are routinely rounded up and banned. A lost follower is not necessarily an unfollow.

The article is reaching for a narrative. The lady they talk about has done other things in this period of time. Other stuff has happened. The change in followers is minuscule in relation to the magnitude, so it could be noise.

It could be homophobia obviously. It could be some controversy about unfortunate body image declarations. It could be noise. It could be the war on Middle East and a round of banned bots. It could be too much time since the last record. She could be losing the spotlight. The social network could be purging deleted accounts.

The reason “homophobia” is a guess. The reason “bots” is another. None invalidates the other because in both cases you have to make assumptions about the motives of 100.000 entities.

Also could be 5.100.000 followers lost and 5mil gained. The article talks about the delta, but there is not a reliable analysis about the composition of the following and its change over the last months, except one simple number.

It sure does. Is that a founded assumption? Or click bait?

So am I!

However, I can't say I listen to or follow Billie Eilish - I only found out about her coming out from reading this, in fact - but even as someone who's just mildly aware of her, I will say I've never assumed her to be straight. My gaydar's probably better tuned than the average person's but even so, I feel like her being some flavour of queer was fairly obvious and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's influenced / shaped the kind of audience she has.

Unfortunately, I suspect an artist who's less obviously queer would lose a larger following for coming out. But yes, Billie Eilish only losing 100K followers is really encouraging still!

How was it not obvious to everyone already? She oozed lesbianism from the start.

A lot of homophobes don't realize how much they love gay culture

She has explicit lyrics referring to men across her albums so far. I just assumed that she was a heterosexual tomboy.

I really don't understand... Was their thought process someone like this?

"We were gonna hook up any day now, but since she came out that won't happen anymore, so I'll unfollow her!"

Hopefully something less insane, like:

"I liked fantasizing/having wet dreams about her while listening to the music, but since she came out that won't happen anymore"

This doesn't really feel like news. 100k not showing up to a concert? That's news. But these could be bots or Facebook just adjusting stuff behind the scenes.

Yeah, exactly. In terms of online followers it's just not that big a change. Even in this article they say she has just over 100 mil followers right now.

I'm sure that a few bots and angry basement goblins unfollowed her, but it's much more likely a little whoopdedoo in the datastream.

Holy shit, this article is based on just a 0.1% change? That’s not a statistically significant change over the course of a month.

Ngl she is so real for these words.

I never felt like I could relate to girls very well,”

“I love them so much. I love them as people. I’m attracted to them as people. I’m attracted to them for real.”

Eilish continued: “I have deep connections with women in my life, the friends in my life, the family in my life. 

“I’m physically attracted to them. But I’m also so intimidated by them and their beauty and their presence.”

One more win for gay bottoms. I needed this today.

Is she going to switch from sad girl music to happy pop music now?

No, she was born that way and her music isnt just gonna change over announcing it to people who didn't realize. Besides, I'm the pastel lesbian. And she's the bad guy 😳

Oh no the 40+s who waited so patiently for her to turn 18 before making disgusting comments are upset!