Why The Channing Tatum Burner Account Rumor Felt So Believable

In the celebrity realm of PR-trained interviews and meticulously curated social media profiles, there’s nothing more tantalizing than getting the real, unfiltered tea in the most chaotic ways possible. That’s why one anonymous Instagram account recently captured every pop culture fan’s attention, as online sleuths deduced the faceless troll page was actually Channing Tatum unleashing his unvetted and relatably catty thoughts on ex Zoë Kravitz and her new fiancé Harry Styles. As exciting as this supposed treasure trove was, it seems incredibly unlikely that Tatum is really running this account. Still, the whole situation is a welcome reminder of the actor’s history of digital mayhem, which made the rumor feel so convincing.

The Instagram account named “Nonya Bidness” first made waves on Sept. 19 when a fan noticed it commented, “Just here for the hate” under a Deuxmoi photo dump of Kravitz and Styles kissing, and pointed out the mysterious profile’s only follower was Tatum. That detail opened the floodgates, as full threads of “Nonya Bidness” comment screenshots went viral, particularly replies where the user called Kravitz and Styles’ romance “calculated” and profusely praised Tatum.

As a reminder, Tatum and Kravitz started dating in 2021 and got engaged in 2023, before they broke up in 2024. A year later, Kravitz began dating Styles, with whom she’s now engaged. Tatum is currently dating model Inka Williams.

While it was exciting for social media users to imagine Tatum running this gossipy anonymous account, further sleuthing has cleared up that “Nonya Bidness” almost certainly an unrelated person. As a deep-dive video explained, “Nonya” frequently commented on Gemini-specific zodiac posts, but Tatum himself is a Taurus. The account has also had multiple name changes, suggesting it may have been a Tatum fan account at some point, which led to Tatum following it in a previous iteration.

What makes this last point especially believable is Tatum’s history with following fan accounts. He famously soft-launched his relationship with Kravitz by following several Zoë Kravitz fanpages, and notably did not unfollow them after their breakup. After his following spree became a public fascination, Tatum told Vanity Fair he thought he could keep his Instagram activity under the radar: “I have no chill. I was just seeing what she was up to! Also, I didn’t know anyone would know.”

This statement lines up with the idea that Tatum may have followed an fanpage dedicated to himself, and just never unfollowed it when it changed names. But of course, it also made the original assumption of Tatum running his own covert burner account sound convincing.

The Kravitz fanpages weren’t the first time Tatum has inadvertently won the internet over with his hilariously relatable digital footprint. Back during the 2014 Sony email hack, Tatum’s unhinged message to studio execs celebrating the success of 22 Jump Street went viral for its endless, all-caps string of laughter. Because of these attention-grabbing online accidents, it just made sense to believe Tatum could be running his own burner account and just not hiding it all that well. But maybe those past experiences have actually taught him it’s best not to try to get one over on the Instagram detectives anymore.