Why People Became Convinced Channing Tatum Had a Secret Instagram Account to Trash His Ex

Fame By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Heather Schwedel? Sept 23, 202612:41 PM Christoph Soeder/picture alliance via Getty Images Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. This week we learned that Channing Tatum is not—I repeat, not—maintaining a secret burner Instagram account where he says shady things about his ex-fiancée … but wouldn’t it be great if he were? Little in this life thrills me more than when a celebrity burner account is discovered. There were a good 24 hours when I thought Tatum had one, and I’m afraid I will be chasing the high of that day for a long time. This past weekend, rumors began to spread online that Tatum was behind an Instagram account with the handle @bidness_nonya, a saucy way of saying “none of your business” you may recall from middle school. From the name alone, I was sold, because it seemed like such a perfect distillation of Tatum’s sense of humor and its singular mix of immaturity and confidence, as once memorably demonstrated in a leaked Sony hack email. Immediately, nothing had ever made as much sense as him having a burner account called @bidness_nonya. There was also only one person following the account, Tatum’s public Instagram profile, which is something, and, based on some of the comments it was leaving, it seemed to offer a special window into his perspective. Under a post containing images of Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles, for instance, the account commented, “Just here for the hate.” Tatum was in a relationship with Kravitz, a fellow actor, for about three years, between 2021 and 2024, which reportedly began while the two were working together on Blink Twice, Kravitz’s directorial debut. In October 2023, they confirmed that they were engaged, but they split about a year later. Both stars are now romantically linked to other people, Tatum to an Australian model named Inka Williams, and Kravitz, in a somewhat more high-profile manner, to Styles. News of her and Styles’ engagement broke this spring. Famous people are always getting engaged, way more than they actually end up getting married, but still, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for a recent ex of hers to feel a little butt-hurt about both how quickly Kravitz got engaged again and the international sex symbol she got engaged to. Hence how easily we all, or I at least, bought into the theory that @bidness_nonya was actually Tatum. In other comments, @bidness_nonya posted like someone who seemed to know Kravitz and Tatum personally. “When I see these two,” the account wrote under another post about Kravitz and Styles, “I think back at how her former fiancé called her the most intentional person he knows.” It went on to say, “Now she is constantly spotted with Harry compared to the ex who we heard about long before they were seen together.” In other words: These two are constantly showing off for paparazzi, unlike Kravitz and Tatum, whose love was pure and untainted. Surely this “intentional” comment had to come from Tatum himself, right? The account wasn’t just responding to Instagram posts about Kravitz and Styles. It also praised Tatum himself (“He’s so genuine. No false pretenses with this guy. And funny as hell, too”) and weighed in on a variety of famous women, including Meghan Markle (“Kate and the bald headed one could nevuh”), Jennifer Lopez (“She’s so desperate. Besides, Madonna did it better”), Taylor Swift (“God help us all”), and Ayo Edebiri (“Love her! And she’s just getting started”). If you’re starting to think it’s odd that an Instagram account operated by Tatum would have a feed full of female pop stars and royals, you’re right, and this was an early sign that all of us who hoped this was Tatum’s burner had been hoodwinked. These do not seem like the posts of a straight man, in either subject matter or style: Do we really think Channing Tatum would use the hugging-face emoji or a sequence of soda–laughing face–popcorn? It was, like many things in life, too good to be true. Over the weekend, fans began to compile other evidence pointing toward the account not belonging to Tatum, including references to a birthday different from Tatum’s and an outright denial that he was running it. One creator guessed that it was a former fan account—Tatum has been known to follow fan accounts—that had changed its name. Tatum himself officially disavowed the burner account on Monday, writing in an Instagram story, “Yo i truly can’t believe this is what yall think I’m doing with my free time. Fuckin hilarious. Also why would I follow a burner account if I didn’t want people to connect me to it? Wtf come on. But if I really need to say it, I only have one account @channingtatum.” Now, that’s the voice of Tatum we know and love, complete with yos, yalls, fuckins, and no female-coded emojis to speak of. There’s no reason not to believe him. For better or worse, Tatum is the type of guy who crashes out in public, not behind the anonymity of a burner. And yet I find myself wistful for the burner account that never was. Wouldn’t the world be a slightly more amusing place to inhabit if Tatum were posting on a burner account? If he, like it were still 2014, was trying to get away with posting mean but ultimately harmless things about an ex he clearly still has feelings for? Though that dream has died, and in all likelihood @bidness_nonya was just a fan with a particularly strong parasocial connection to Tatum, there’s still the possibility that it was someone close to him, like his mom or a female relative. But that would be none of my business. Celebrities Instagram Internet