MTV aired the finale of its off-the-wall dating reality show, Are You the One?, on Monday night.
The show purports to help contestants find ‘the one’ by the end of the series. In fact, the show’s creators have already determined the perfect match for each contestant through a series of interviews with the participants, friends and family members, and psychological testing.
The trick for the contestants is to figure out who that is.
(Spoiler coming…)
This season’s edition featured an entire cast of sexually-fluid participants.
On the finale, hottie Remy Duran announced he and contestant Paige Cole were now a couple. No, they weren’t each other’s predetermined ‘Perfect Match,’ but they were totes in happiness.
Until.
The couple shared the news on their respective Instagram accounts by posting a pic featuring the duo posting with a dildo hanging from the wall.
Just hours later, though, Remy’s entire Insta account was deleted by the powers that be at Instagram.
The image is still viewable on his Twitter account here.
Speaking to Vice, Remy expressed his frustration saying, “I’m so pissed. I thought, ‘Oh, shit, my picture got taken down,’ but my whole account got deleted without warning. I didn’t get an email. Nothing.”
Interestingly, Paige’s post of the image was removed, as well, but her account remains intact and online.
Calling the deletion ‘homophobic,’ Paige points to posts that are far more graphic than the couple’s light-hearted photo.
“You see car accidents where people probably died, you see photos of animal abuse on popular pages,” Paige shared with Vice. “There are real issues on Instagram, but they have a problem with sex workers. They have a problem with a titty popping out. They have a problem with a gay man and his gay girlfriend posing with a dick on the wall.”
She continued, “We say ‘Homophobia!’ jokingly, but there’s no excuse for deleting his account and not mine for literally posting the same content.”
At the end of the day, it’s not just the ‘dang it’ of having one’s account deleted.
The hours directly following the finale of AYTO can be crucial for someone like fashion designer-turned-party promoter Remy as the public’s interest is at its peak.
Vice reports that Remy has been building his social media brand since 2014 to promote his party-planning business and support both himself and his mother. Remy says before the deletion his account of 49k followers was gaining over 100 new followers every 20 minutes.
“I’m sick for him,” Paige tells Vice. “Being on the show has enabled me to be contacted by brands for influencer gigs. I’m hoping to use it to build my modeling career in the entertainment industry because people watching you is worth more than currency. Get the right person watching you, and your whole life can change.”
“We know all the right people are watching us within 24 hours [of AYTO’s season finale], and they can’t even look at Remy,” added Cole.
The Community Guidelines for Instagram do specifically ban things like “sexual intercourse,” “genitals,” and “some photos of female nipples.” While it’s not clear why Remy’s account would be shuttered but Paige’s account would get just a slap on the wrist, Remy does admit he’s had two prior violations with the social media giant.
Censorship has become a big deal on social media since the March 2018 passage of the bipartisan Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in the U.S. Senate. The legislation provides for holding online businesses liable for any content (even if posted by users) that could be viewed as relating to sex work.
They’re both idiots for posting the pic with the dildo. This isn’t persecution, it’s called the community guidelines they agreed to, IG isn’t Twitter.
People still watch reality tv?