What do John Major and Instagram have in common? An unlikely question with a surprising answer: both are responsible for announcing the break-up of a generation.
The announcement made by Love Island stars Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury on the social network that they were to split after five years sent Gen Z into a tailspin.
The break-up has been described as the Charles and Diana moment of its time – in the same way as many reeled at the Prime Minister’s announcement to the House of Commons that the royal couple were breaking up at the end of 1992.
That may be where the similarities end: there is little in common between the future King and Fury, a professional boxer; nor Diana and Molly-Mae, an influencer documenting every crumb of her aspirational life for 8.1million Instagram fans.
That hasn’t stopped sobbing Gen-Zers from labelling her the ‘People’s Princess’ of a new generation – after watching her romance with the boxer unfold from behind an unflinching camera lens.
Molly-Mae Hague and fiancé Tommy Fury have broken up five years after meeting on ITV2’s Love Island
Gen Z has vowed to rally round Molly-Mae Hague after she and boxer Tommy Fury split up after five years
TikTok has exploded with reactions to Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury splitting up (left). Others shared their ‘insights’ on the split (right)
The split has been compared to the separation of Charles and Diana, who broke up at the end of 1992
Reaction on TikTok to the news has taken on a level of grief normally reserved for a national tragedy
Legions of teens and early-twenty-somethings have obsessed over the couple ever since they met on the 2019 series of Love Island.
They finished as the runner-up couple after pairing up at the start of the series and becoming unshakably entwined – outlasting the winners of that series, who split five weeks after returning from Majorca.
The couple were then pictured everywhere – loved-up on the streets of London weeks after Love Island wrapped; at New York Fashion Week; supporting one another at Fury’s latest bout or Molly-Mae’s latest PrettyLittleThing showcase after she was signed by the fast fashion label as ‘creative director’.
Millions cooed at every facet of their life as it played out on social media and in the press, as Fury sparred with influencer Jake Paul while Molly-Mae showed off her latest flash car or latest addition to her cavernous walk-in wardrobe on YouTube (1.9million subscribers).
There was the pregnancy announcement in September 2022, the arrival of little Bambi the following January, their engagement – played out as a black and white, slow motion video on, of course, Instagram.
But on Wednesday, tragedy: Molly-Mae took to the same social network that had fed her career to make the announcement that shattered a million young hearts.
‘Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have to write this… I am extremely upset to announce that mine and Tommy’s relationship has come to an end,’ she wrote.
‘Whilst I attempt to navigate the coming days and weeks, please kindly respect my privacy,’ she added to her 8.1million followers.
The internet broke. YouTubers shared their ‘genuine’ reactions to reading the news, handily captured on camera; TikTokers videoed themselves wide-eyed to sad music, their background green-screened to include the sombre, white-on-black statement.
For a short time, search interest for Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury on Google outstripped the single most powerful figure in the world, Taylor Swift.
Their love story had been written in plain sight, across scores of adoring social media posts – how could this have happened?
Then the rumour mill churned into life.
The pair met on ITV2’s Love Island – and since leaving the show as runners-up they have never left the camera’s gaze
The loved-up couple were seen together from the moment they arrived back in the UK after filming wrapped on the show in 2019
Since then the pair have supported one another very publicly – in front of the cameras and on social media
The couple were engaged a year ago after having daughter Bambi together – the entire proposal captured on social media
For a brief time, search interest in Molly-Mae and Tommy overtook that of Taylor Swift at the time the break-up was announced
Molly-Mae and Tommy Fury pictured in 2021 at a boxing event in Telford
There was the earlier video of Fury in a nightclub in Dubai with another woman, where he also partied with Chris Brown.
Allegations that he cheated on the influencer float around TikTok, Instagram and X – allegations the boxer strenuously denies.
‘Tommy is horrified by the false allegations of cheating being circulated by the media and he’s consulting his lawyers,’ his spokesperson said today.
Nevertheless social media sleuths pored over every one of the 142 words that made up her statement: how she referred to ‘my’ daughter; how she never imaged the story would end ‘this way’; how Bambi was ‘my’ priority for her but ‘our’ priority in Fury’s later statement.
Fury’s Instagram comments are a minefield of vaguely unprintable comments, with many asking: ‘What did you do?’ Another adds: ‘The fury of Molly Mae girlies coming onto you in 3, 2, 1…’
If there’s something Gen Z loves more than reacting to a major news event, it’s investigating it for themselves – or at least speculating about it in publicly available social media videos.
The UK’s defamation laws are not ready to address how amateur detectives have laid out their theories for the break-up.
But Molly-Mae’s social media accounts are littered with comments expressing the kind of grief reserved for a national tragedy.
‘These two were the only reason I believed in love,’ one sobbed, while another wailed: ‘Don’t know what I’m doing with life anymore.’
‘Girls we ride at dawn. This man has hurt the People’s princess,’ one TikToker wrote over a video of herself staring down the camera, soundtracked by a clip of Molly-Mae speaking about her loved-up life with the boxer.
Why has Gen Z taken the news so hard? Some have laughed at the notion that Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury are this generation’s Charles and Diana – and while the similarities between the people are only skin-deep, how their relationship has played out is remarkably similar.
Charles and Diana’s courtship played out in the public eye, endearing her to millions who watched her.
She curated a clever, knowing relationship with both broadcast journalists and newspaper reporters to ensure she was looked upon favourably by the British public.
Molly-Mae and Tommy appeared in Netflix’s At Home With The Furys, which focused on his brother and fellow boxer Tyson
Tommy also appeared in Molly-Mae’s monthly YouTube vlogs, shared with 1.9million subscribers
Molly-Mae was criticised for a podcast interview in which she appeared to suggest people who weren’t successful weren’t working hard enough
In the influencer era, Molly-Mae has managed much the same – curating her social feed with aspirational images of Bentley SUVs, daily designer outfits, and ‘candid’ photographs of her home life, never out of the consciousness of her legions of fans.
‘My nana struggles to understand my job because it’s something she’d never in her lifetime experienced,’ she told a newspaper in 2022, adding that she was on holiday in California with Fury at the time.
The holiday, inevitably, was plastered all over social media, with pictures of the pair walking the streets of Los Angeles and visiting the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park.
A parasocial relationship has been established between the one-time couple and their fans, then – one that seems to hint at being invited to share in their life while, in reality, having nothing of the sort.
But it didn’t stop fans running to defend Molly-Mae after she appeared on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast – the audio equivalent of the world’s worst LinkedIn feed – and appeared to suggest poor people just weren’t girlbossing enough.
The reality show contestant told the podcast that she was ‘technically correct’ in claiming people ‘all have the same 24 hours in a day’ to succeed in life.
She was speaking to Bartlett about her appointment as PrettyLittleThing’s creative director, for which she was reportedly paid half-a-million pounds – just short of the Office for National Statistics’ estimated lifetime income for the average working Brit.
She said: ‘When I’ve spoken about that in the past, I have been slammed a little bit, with people saying, “It’s easy for you to say that, you’ve not grown in poverty, you’ve not grown up with major money struggles, so for you to sit there and say that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, it’s not correct.
‘And I’m like, but technically what I’m saying is correct. We do… I do think if you want something enough, you can achieve it.’
She failed to win over admirers with a PR sticking plaster video issued weeks later showing her at the PrettyLittleThing warehouse – in which she was seen at the suggestion of working a 12-hour shift packing clothes.
What comes next for the pair is not certain. Only two things are known: whatever happens will play out on Instagram, and Gen-Z will be standing by, ready to react.