Anti-Social Media: Celebs Show Us How NOT To Break Up On Twitter

You know how it is, you're with bae and they're doing something cute and you Instagram it. And they Tweet you and obviously you follow each other and you've got your Facebook status locked down and your photos in your memories - stuff like 'Life event: got coffee together! #Love'

And if you're a celebrity, every photo is re-grammed, every message retweeted, every gif reblogged by significant volumes of your millions of followers. Which is fine, because you were sharing how happy you are with them! What a lovely thing.

Unless you break up.

Earlier this week, Iggy Azalea split from her fiancee Nick Young. For someone who's been heavily criticised for statements on social media, Iggy managed to put something heartfelt and respectful up, Instagram-ing that she had been unable to rebuild trust in Nick (after accusations of him cheating on her) and wishing him the best.

We've all had the dilemma, when a relationship breaks down; when do you tell people? If you think there's any chance of salvaging it still, then you might hold back before you change that status. It is always, after all, complicated.

Unless one of you decides to err, get a bit blunt about that door having closed-

Awkward. (She evicted him and had his car towed, Iggy fans)

Even when you're both on the same page, things can get a bit complex. Take T-Swift and Calvin Harris, for instance; originally it was all tweets about respect and love and them both maintaining a tasteful privacy around whatever made them actually break up.

It's very much the way you'd hope to handle a public break-up - enough information that you can both avoid or decline further questions about it but no gory details or resentment.

So long as you actually do have enough love and respect for each other that if, say, one of you is photographed kissing Tom Hiddleston the other one doesn't go on a Twitter deleting rampage, take down everything about keeping it civil and private, unfollow you and delete every photograph of you both together.

The problem is that most break ups don't happen because you really love and respect each other still. Some do, with external factors the cause and some just change, without losing any love for each other - but usually, it's because something went wrong.

And when something's gone wrong you don't want to respectfully continue to love the person involved on a public level. Which is fine, if no one apart from your mates or your mum is ever going to ask you about it. Fiiiiine. Just absolutely fine seeing their photo on Facebook and their mates, who all became your mates, cheering them up on Twitter and that new person they're following on Instagram and how all their likes on Tumblr are people who look nothing like you and it's just fine. Definitely.

We're all a little bit exposed to the experience of celebrity, these days - if we're on social media then we live life a little bit publicly. And we tend to share our social media spaces with the people closest to us, like significant others and best friends.

Which can make them as complicated as all the IRL stuff, to sort out at the end - and when you're least inclined to be nice about it, maybe justifiably so, it's the first (and worst) place to kick off a far-too-public feud.

For most of us, of course, no one's going to screenshot our late-night rant about our ex. Even if social media might sometimes get us all into an awkward situation, the vast majority of us don't have millions of people scrutinising what we show.

Unlike celebrities, especially when it comes to their love lives. Take Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez - they used to be a couple, then they were a bit on-and-off, now they're permanently off. Given they're only 22 and 23 years old respectively, with busy lives, it's sad but not that surprising and they seem to be handling it relatively well.

And of course they have good memories of time they spent with each other. So in March this year Justin posted this-

Most of us would get away with liking and commenting on it without even everyone we knew seeing it, let alone the world closely scrutinising that Selena 'liked' it and left a comment saying 'Perfect.'

Justin and Selena insist they're not together - but when even him following her on Instagram again, earlier this month, sparks rumours that they are an item, it must be difficult to handle how to be friends.

Celebrity's social media gets searched for signs a couple is back together, as much as for scandals. We often end up rooting for our favourite couples to get back together but even seeing them as they present on the internet doesn't mean we know them well enough to judge whether they should be together - a decision entirely down to the individuals.

But it can be super cute when a couple reconciles; Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth had their fair share of social media gaffes after they called off their engagement a few years ago - but since January 2016 seem to have been reconciling.