Selena Gomez Unfollowed Hundreds of Celebrities and Friends on Instagram, Including Demi Lovato

Selena Gomez rearranged her whole Instagram persona yesterday, including a new profile photo, bio [...]

Selena Gomez rearranged her whole Instagram persona yesterday, including a new profile photo, bio and a massive unfollowing spree.

All told, the singer unfollowed at least 279 accounts, leaving just 37 that she still keeps up on. That short list includes Taylor Swift, Jessica Alba, Amy Schumer, several brand accounts, and many Selena Gomez fan pages. It also includes Gomez's best friend, Francia Raisa, who donated a kidney to the star over the summer.

Not all of Gomez's friends survived the follower purge, however. In fact, Gomez's personal assistant, Theresa Mingus, was unfollowed, along with many other close friends who Gomez has been seen out and about or on vacation with. Fans were particularly surprised to see that she'd stopped following Demi Lovato and Gigi Hadid.

A fan account claims that the new profile picture Gomez switched to is an old photo of her mother, Mandy Teefay. The two look so similar that, to the untrained eye, it could easily be Gomez herself.

In all likelihood, the unfollows were not personal. In an interview with Vogue last March, Gomez confessed that she didn't even personally run her Instagram anymore. She said she'd handed it over to an assistant after she began to feel like "an addict" of the social media platform.

"As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out," she admitted. "It had become so consuming to me. It's what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn't want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn't want to care about. I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram. Which is why I'm kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit."

It's likely that the huge reduction in accounts she's following had something to do with a larger branding strategy by Gomez's representation. In fact, despite unfollowing Lovato, Gomez commented on the photo she posted yesterday, writing "FIRE" underneath.

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