It’s one thing to post something dumb on Twitter. Anyone can be forgiven for firing off a quick 140 characters and clicking send without thinking of what they just posted. But it’s especially clueless to be tone deaf on Instagram. You’ve spent all day crafting the best photo, putting it through a filter, maybe even PhotoShopping it, and then writing the perfect caption, carefully selected hashtags, emojis and all. Yet still a lot of celebs post stuff that is worse than even just a face palm. Sometimes celebrities earn the backlash for controversial views or body shamers, but these Instagram fails are bad no matter what filter you put it through.
Lorde
Lorde will always love a good bath, but she caught a lot of flack when it was pointed out to her that captioning a photo of a bathtub with a Whitney Houston lyric makes light of the fact that Houston was found dead in a bathtub in 2012. “Extremely, extremely poorly chosen quote,” Lorde wrote after deleting her original post. “I’m so sorry for offending anyone — I hadn’t even put this together I was just excited to take a bath. I’m an idiot. Love Whitney forever and ever. Sorry again.”
Mischa Barton
“The O.C.” star Mischa Barton posted a stirring message on her Instagram after the death of Alton Sterling by Louisiana police back in 2016. But her followers were less surprised by her politics than by the fact that she had WiFi on her yacht when she posted this message. “Mischa Barton came riding in on her giant high horse of white privilege. Glad she got good lighting on the pic,” one detractor wrote criticizing her sunny bikini clad photo.
Louise Linton
Actress Louise Linton, married to Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, posted a photo of the couple exiting a plane on a trip to Kentucky, but she caught heat when she tagged all of her designer clothes and accessories in the photo. When a user criticized her in the comments writing, “Glad we could pay for your little getaway #deplorable,” Linton dug a deeper hole. “Have you given more to the economy than me andmy [sic] husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice [sic] to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our “trip” than you did.” Linton later deleted the post and apologized.
Liam Hemsworth
“Here’s to ice baths and flexing in tiny shorts,” “The Hunger Games” star captioned a video of himself on Instagram. Most of his followers likely didn’t mind the extra skin, but his brother Chris Hemsworth wondered just what the hell he was thinking. “That felt like a late Friday night drunken kind of post, and the next morning like ‘did I?… oh no,’” he told ET. “Was that intentional?”
Selena Gomez
There’s nothing wrong with showing a little skin, but maybe don’t do it in a mosque? Selena Gomez was criticized for hiking up her skirt and revealing her ankle and posing for a goofy photo with Kendall Jenner while taking a trip to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and posting them on Instagram.
Bow Wow
The rapper Bow Wow tried to show off by posting a photo of his “private jet.” Except his followers found that his photo was an easily searchable image on Google. His fans even started a hashtag, #BowWowChallenge, of transparently making your Instagram more glamorous than it appears.
Priyanka Chopra
Of all the places where it’s acceptable to take a selfie, Priyanka Chopra learned that perhaps the Holocaust Museum in Berlin is not one of them, posting two photos to her Instagram story.
Scott Disick
Well at least he can follow instructions. Reality star Scott Disick got an email from the marketing team of one of his sponsors to post a photo of himself with a protein shake at 4 p.m., and we know because he accidentally copied and pasted the email’s instructions into his Instagram post.
Lindsay Lohan
Like Mischa Barton, Lindsay Lohan tried to show her solidarity for a cause while weirdly posing in a scantily clad photo. In a tribute to terrorism victims in Nice and Turkey, Lohan wrote this while lounging on her bed in lingerie: “If history were to be folded,” she writes, “Where would we put the crease? Pray for the ones we lose everyday.”
Melissa Joan Hart
Believe it or not, your vacation getting cancelled is not a tragedy. But Melissa Joan Hart made it feel like an inconvenience after Hurricane Maria battered the Dominican Republic. “And just like that, our family vacation is canceled. Such a bummer but we plan to hit the @nickresortpuntacana resort another time this year,” she wrote.
