You’ve probably heard of the Streisand effect, but allow me to explain it again (or introduce it to first-timers). The Streisand effect, named for Barbra Streisand, refers to the social phenomenon whereby the effort made to conceal a story only blows it up even further. Such is the case with Rachel Bilson and Rami Malek, after the former revealed a story about the latter trying to conceal something, and it went viral. Lol.
Much like the OG Streisand incident (whereby the singer sued a photographer in an attempt to remove all trace of a pic from the internet, inadvertently increasing the photo’s reach exponentially), the Bilson x Malek incident also involves a photograph.
Specifically, it’s a photo of taken of the stars in high school before they were famous, which Bilson posted to Instagram back in 2019.
As it turns out, Bilson and Malek attended the same high school.
“We were in the same crew,” Bilson told Dax Shepard on a recent episode of his Armchair Expert podcast.
“We did The Crucible together senior year. We were the leads in it together, like all these things. We kind of kept in contact a little bit.”
During Malek’s Oscar campaign for Bohemian Rhapsody, Bilson decided to post a lil throwback photo of the two of them, from their senior trip to Broadway in NYC.
“We were super-nerdy, just the dorkiest picture of both of us. But I throw it up ‘cause it’s funny, and I think it’s so important to be able to make fun of yourself. And he had a gold chain, and I’m like, ‘Rami where’d you get the gold chain?’ Whatever. So I’m just being funny, we were good friends.”
However, it turns out Rami wasn’t a fan. Not long after, she received an Instagram DM.
“But it wasn’t like, ‘Hey! How are you?’” Bilson said.
“It was straight to, ‘I would really appreciate it if you take that down, I’m a really private person.’”
Bilson said she was taken aback, but did as he asked.
“I even wrote to him a really nice message, like, ‘I’m so sorry, go get the Oscar, you’re doing amazing.’ And I never hear anything back.”
The best part? Bilson said it wasn’t a ‘flattering’ photo (but whose high school photos are?).
I have to assume that someone, somewhere, has a copy of this photo or a screenshot of Bilson’s Instagram post, and that it won’t be long now before the infamous pic comes to light.
UPDATE: lol, here it is. Thanks, BuzzFeed.
