I am, as parasocial and insane as it might sound, starting to worry about Brooklyn Beckham.
After his now infamous statement distancing himself from his parents, Victoria and David Beckham, the fallout has landed firmly against him.
And now, the backlash has reached that particularly nasty internet stage where he can no longer do anything without it being treated as proof that he is ridiculous.
Post a heartfelt statement about your wife? Pathetic.
Stay quiet? Controlled and defeated.
Make pasta on Instagram? Mocked for boiling water.
Wear the watch your dad gave you? ‘Return daddy’s watch.’
Try to build any kind of career? Nepo baby delusion.
It’s noticeable under even the most seemingly innocent video.
In a recent post where he cooked pasta for a friend while promoting his Cloud 23 hot sauce, the comments quickly filled with people mocking his ‘basic’ skills, joking he’d simply ‘boiled some pasta’, and telling him to ‘return daddy’s watch’ as he wore the £220,000 timepiece gifted by his father.
So far, Brooklyn hasn’t acknowledged his changing status in the public eye, but nothing he does seems to be able to escape the narrative of his fallout with his parents.
Admittedly, Brooklyn’s big Instagram broadside against David and Victoria was explosive.
He accused his parents of manipulation, press control, prioritising ‘Brand Beckham’ over actual family, and making his wedding misery part of a much bigger pattern. It was messy, intimate, and impossible to take back.
But the real problem for him is that he picked a fight with two people the British public has already decided to forgive for basically everything. David and Victoria are no longer just celebrities; Brand Beckham now functions at the level of institution and therefore close to untouchable.
That makes Brooklyn’s position pretty grim, even if he may well be telling the truth about how suffocating it feels to grow up inside a family that is also a corporation.
And that suffocation is not just theoretical. As Dr Katie Barge, founder of The Nurture System, explains: ‘Adolescence is when young people are forming their identity, and that process relies on feeling safe enough to explore who they are.
‘Sustained online criticism disrupts this by making self-worth contingent on public opinion, which is often harsh, unpredictable, and impossible to control.’
Dr Barge continues, explaining how it could all end up affecting Brooklyn: ‘For those growing up in the spotlight, there’s little room to make mistakes privately. Identity can become performative, driven by external validation rather than a stable internal sense of self. Over time, this can lead to anxiety, perfectionism, and a fragile self-esteem, particularly when ridicule or scrutiny is persistent.’
But the public doesn’t really care about emotional truth when nostalgia is in the room.
And nostalgia is absolutely in the room because people do not want to believe Posh and Becks are toxic stage parents in designer knitwear. They want the bickering, lovable, Netflix-approved version; they want pancakes in the Cotswolds, not a son saying he feels managed like IP.
So Brooklyn ends up in the worst possible celebrity role: the failson who might have a point.
That is a dangerous place to be, because once the internet decides you’re a joke, everything starts getting filtered through that lens.
His cooking videos are not just cooking videos; they’re evidence of his absurdity, and his marriage is not just a marriage; it’s Stockholm syndrome with better lighting, and his lack of a clear career is not just ordinary rich-kid drift; it’s apparently proof of some deep personal uselessness.
And honestly? That would do a number on anyone.
From a behavioural perspective, that pile-on effect can be particularly damaging. As Sim Shamu explains: ‘When criticism is visible, repeated, and hard to escape, it can start to feel more constant, more personally meaningful, and more difficult to brush off.
‘Growing up in the public eye may add another layer of pressure because scrutiny becomes part of the environment during years when people are still working out who they are and how independent they feel. High levels of privilege or visibility may change the context, but they do not make repeated public mockery emotionally neutral.’
Besides, what choices does he really have? It’s not as if a person as globally recognised as Brooklyn could suddenly pivot to a career in graphic design or sales – the paparazzi would swarm the office on his first day.
Brooklyn has spent his whole life being compared to people with much bigger identities than his. First, David and Victoria, now possibly the Peltz machine, too.
Even at his own wedding, the rabbi reportedly called him David, which is almost too on-the-nose a symbol of the whole thing. Can you imagine how that would feel? Even on your own wedding day, the one day that’s supposed to be all about you, you can’t escape the sheer enormity of your father’s fame.
Brooklyn Beckham’s whole life seems to have had the same plot: standing in the middle of his own story while somehow still reading as somebody else’s extension. And now, in attempting to escape that narrative, he’s only more firmly entrenched himself in it.
That struggle for identity becomes even more complicated under constant observation. Psychotherapist Claire Law explains: ‘First, one may notice what is called external self-evaluation due to constant public feedback when an individual depends much more on external stimuli, such as comments, opinions.
‘As a consequence, the stability of self-esteem suffers considerably because identity starts becoming too dependent on outside factors.
‘In addition, one should consider the aspect of the difficulties associated with psychological separation and the process of individuation. Normally, the period of individuation involves numerous experimental attempts at various identity constructions performed under limited conditions. If the process is publicly observed, then it is unlikely that a teenager will have opportunities to try different approaches; consequently, they may become excessively cautious in the construction of their identity or even get confused.
‘Another factor to consider is the durability of exposure. While negative events in offline reality tend to be rather ephemeral, their analogues in social networks stay available forever, allowing repetition. This can affect the emotional impact of moving on from negative experiences.’
That’s why I find the whole thing less funny than a lot of people seem to. Yes, he’s wildly privileged. Yes, some of his ventures have been objectively ropey. But who among us hasn’t taken one vaguely arty photo as a teenager and briefly decided we’re a photographer? Or written a terrible poem and thought, ‘this is it, this is my thing’?
Many of us have even had massive arguments with our parents that we are certain we’ll never recover from, only to makeup a few days later. But we get to grow out of those phases in private. Brooklyn has had to do it all under a spotlight that never switches off.
Yes, his statement was dramatic. But there is also something bleak about watching someone repeatedly try on identities in public and get laughed out of every single one.
Footballer’s son. Photographer. Chef. Husband guy. Hot sauce founder. Family truth-teller. None of it quite sticks or frees him from his parents’ shadows. And every failed reinvention just hardens the joke.
Maybe he’ll be fine. Maybe he and Nicola will disappear into billionaire comfort, drink £2,000 wine, and never care what anyone thinks again. But I’m not totally convinced.
Public humiliation has a way of seeping in, even when it’s happening to someone rich enough to cushion the fall.
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