Monday night on American Idol, Top 10 contestant Breanna Nix was preparing for her performance of Idol alum Danny Gokey’s “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again” when she admitted to Fantasia, the mentor for the night, that social media is shattering her composure.
“I feel like the show has been a wonderful blessing for me but the hate sometimes on the Internet…,” Breanna said. “Being a Christian, there’s a lot of opinions that come with it: ‘That is not what a Christian should wear’ or ‘a Christian shouldn’t sing a song like that.’ I had a comment that said ‘she’s not a Christian anymore’ and it devastated me.”
Fantasia, who has had her own issues with social media, told Breanna that she can find God in any song she sings and she advised Breanna to stay away from social media.
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Fantasia’s advice helped, because Breanna got praised by the coaches for her stellar performance. And Carrie took a moment to address the social media issue as well, not just for Breanna but for all of the Top 12.
“I want to tell you all an important trick,” she said. “It’s called ‘post and ghost.’ You put your stuff on social media and you don’t look at the comments. That’s how I live my life, man. Anybody who thinks they’re yelling at me, or insulting me, or telling me I’m a certain way, or not enough this, or I’m too much that, they’re just yelling at the clouds. I don’t hear or see any of it. So, post and ghost people.”
Backstage after the show, Parade, in a roundtable interview, asked Carrie how she deals with all the haters who are online.
“Even when I was on the show 20 years ago, we had message boards,” she explained. “So that was kind of the beginning of social media. But you had to seek it out a little more. Now, it’s in your face no matter what you do. And especially if you are an aspiring musician, you have to put yourself on social media. It’s part of the deal because you want to gain fans and it’s such a huge way to do that.”
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Carrie the went on to explain that while social media is a tool to building a successful music career, it’s important to understand that that’s not a fair representation of reality.
“It’s social media, and it’s its own animal. And some of the most toxic people on the planet are the ones that are on running things and posting things the most,” she continued. “So becoming comfortable within yourself and what you do, putting it out there for people to see and looking at the people that you like to follow [is my advice]. But then, do you really care what somebody that you’ve never met before and are never going to see cares about you? Don’t worry about it. Do your thing.”
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On the more positive side, Carrie weighed in on some of the highlights of the night’s most memorable performances, including Breanna, Jamal Roberts and Josh King.
“Jamal was a huge moment in the show,” she said. “He was the perfect person to close everything out, and the way he held on to everybody’s attention. When it ended, it was like nobody knew what to do. I thought the way Josh really opened up about himself and his feelings just became uber relatable to a lot of people watching. Brianna, I feel it was really brave the way she talked about the hardships she’s been dealing with, because that’s the nature of social media. I feel like Fantasia got them to connect with their songs and tell their story, and in doing so, connect with the audience, which was really something to watch.”
American Idol airs Sunday and Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
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