This study examines the construction of celebrity everyday life on social media, focusing on how artists strategically intertwine their cultural productions with personal narratives to cultivate perceived intimacy and authenticity. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of face management and the everyday, this research analyzes the Instagram profile of Liniker, a prominent Black transgender artist in Brazil.

Liniker’s profile serves as a platform for showcasing both her artistic endeavors and her daily life, challenging traditional representations of transgender women. Employing a dual analytical approach, combining panoramic observation and detailed visual analysis, the study explores how Liniker’s posts, categorized into promotional and everyday life themes, contribute to a complex performative construction of self. The analysis reveals that behind-the-scenes content emphasizes collaborative efforts and affective bonds, while musical partnerships highlight her integration into a prestigious cultural field. Individual images, including selfies and posed photographs, project intimacy towards her followers.

By juxtaposing artistic achievements with quotidian experiences, Liniker broadens visual representations, challenging prevailing narratives that often depict transgender women in contexts of violence. Her portrayal of success, love, and happiness diversifies life potentials and contributes to the discourse on transgender rights. This platform facilitates the articulation of aspirational life possibilities, interweaving professional success, personal relationships, and the visible affirmation of transgender identity, thereby contributing to the study of celebrity culture, digital media, gender, and everyday life.

In January 2020, beauty vlogger Nikkie de Jager (better known by her username NikkieTutorials) publicly came out as a trans woman, after more than a decade-long career on YouTube during which she passed as a cisgender, heterosexual woman, and under duress of a blackmailer who threatened to leak her “secret” identity. Far from ending her career, de Jager’s disclosure propelled her to greater success in the cutthroat creator economy, increasing her celebrity status. In this article, I argue that de Jager leveraged her coming-out to bolster her performance of authenticity as a microcelebrity, reaffirming and deepening her intimacy with her audience. This dialogic intimacy is central to the performance of microcelebrity. While previous studies have theorized the strategies that creators use to perform microcelebrity, little attention has been paid to the role of the audience in microcelebrity. I argue that microcelebrity is a strategy of performance that is co-constructed with the audience, making it distinct from parasocial relationships.

The interplay between authenticity and attention is central to social media sociality, yet navigating this tension is complex. Previous research has explored how influencers and content creators perform authenticity, but our study focuses on everyday users, analyzing their experiences and strategies through a meta-analysis of ethnographic and interview data spanning 13 years. Our findings highlight three key dynamics. First, users experience an inherent tension between authenticity and attention, shaped by platform norms and community expectations. Even those who do not seek to capitalize on their popularity feel pressured to leverage the attention they generate, and negative perceptions of 'attention-seeking' seem to be broadly internalized. Second, users reaffirm authenticity through distinct registers of love, lifestyle, and greater good, strategically framing their socially mediated self-presentation to maintain a sense of authenticity while engaging with social media’s attention structures. Lastly, perceptions of platform affordances, in particular in terms of how attention is meant to circulate on platforms, shape how users navigate the tensions between attention and authenticity. Rather than a fixed ideal or a purely instrumental form of performance, social media authenticity emerges from this analysis as a flexible construct. This argument contributes to a nuanced understanding of how everyday users—not just influencers—navigate the complexities of digital self-presentation in an era where attention and authenticity remain in constant negotiation.

Brazil’s racial dynamics are often obscured by myths of racial democracy and harmony, allowing subtle forms of racism to persist through stereotypes and microaggressions that frequently go unchallenged. This study explores masked racism within the Brazilian context by examining the reality show Big Brother Brasil (BBB) as a space where racial bias is both reinforced and contested. Through critical discourse analysis, I analyze how everyday racism manifests in Brazil’s cultural landscape, focusing on two Instagram posts from BBB’s 24th season addressing how Wanessa, a famous white singer, perpetuates stereotypes of Black aggression toward Davi, a Black contestant, and how audiences interpret and respond to these portrayals in the posts’ comment sections. Findings indicate that Wanessa’s discourse subtly perpetuates racism through linguistic choices that align with historical tropes of Blackness as animalistic and aggressive. However, Instagram users actively resisted this narrative, using humor and irony to highlight Wanessa’s inconsistencies and hypocrisy while also criticizing the show’s role in maintaining racial hierarchies. Comments further expressed solidarity and empathy toward Davi. This research underscores how pervasive and dangerous masked racism is in Brazil, highlighting the possible role of digital spaces in disrupting systemic racism and fostering counter-discourses.