Remy Ma and Papoose’s fallout shows why keeping your relationship off social media is a smart move
OPINION: The rappers and former “Love & Hip Hop: New York” reality TV couple are today’s poster children for putting all of your business in the streets.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I try to stay out of other people’s relationships as much as possible; I have my own marriage to keep afloat without other people’s problems clouding my love story. Despite my best attempts, my social media timelines have decided that today — on this here December 12th in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-four — that I will be a party to the shenanigans of Remy Ma and Papoose. Here’s what I know, in a nutshell.
The couple, who once were Love & Hip Hop: New York‘s favorite duo, are still married.”. Remy allegedly cheated on Papoose with a dude that Pap eventually knocked out. Pap wants a divorce. They are still married. Remy alleges that she’s actually been the faithful one and Pap has been cheating on her while they are still married and live together. They have a kid caught up in all of this. This has to have been going on for at least a year or more at this point. They are still married. It’s all too much.
On social media, Remy and Pap have been trading social media shots at one another about each other’s alleged (do we have to call them alleged at this point?) infidelities and indiscretions. Seriously, just go to their Instagram accounts, all the receipts are there. And in the event they both wise up and delete everything (which doesn’t look likely), every Black gossip site has all of the back-and-forth. We have screenshots and photos and captions and IG stories and the whole nine. Every avenue and attempt to destroy one another is being employed at this point.
While the messiness that they’re employing towards one another truly only impacts them and their families (pray for the kids), there are some lessons for the rest of us to learn here. Reminders, if you will, that often come from the world of celebrities, love, and social media. (Shouts to Keke Palmer and Darius Jackson and Halle Baily and DDG, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera for the countless examples of the cost of public relationships).
2025 is right around the corner. By my mathematical calculations, which are always astute, we have 19 (or 18 depending on when you read this) days left in 2024, a year I cannot wait to move on from. People like to get all reflective and aspirational around the new year so I hope that anybody paying attention to Remy and Pap’s ballyhoo goes into 2025 with a mind to keep your relationship pratfalls off social media. Sure, it’s fine to post pictures of significant others and share the good times. But when we get to using platforms for pettiness (which sounds like a fundraiser — I assure you it is not) the relationship has no choice but to become the Titanic.
Plus, let’s say you do decide to try to work things out after having gone nuclear on social media, the rest of us are not only not supportive but divest fully. I don’t want to hear anything about your relationship with that toxic person you decided to “do life” with because you have love despite the haters. You don’t even have haters; you have people who you dragged into your nonsense that now you want to stay out of it.
Keep the detailed daily inner-workings of the ups and downs of your romantic lives off of social media, I beg of you. It’s much easier to be a happy couple without EVERY other human having the ability to comment on it.
I don’t know what will come of Remy and Pap’s relationship. By all accounts (that’s a pun since it’s all over social media) their relationship has been over. Why they’re still married is beyond me. From what I can see they’ve both moved on. Though I guess they still live together. Adults need to learn how to adult. I hope their kids are all okay in this, but the kids almost never are. Mom and Dad are fighting, publicly, when they really should just have ALL of these conversations in private.
Please, somebody, take their phones and remember, don’t be Remy Ma and Papoose.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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