Word on the ’gram is that Lambe Turah, the long-reigning king of Indonesian celebrity gossip, is no longer serving us the juiciest and most salacious exposés.

Think TMZ but operating solely on social media, Lambe Turah was a popular Instagram account, with the handle @lambe_turah, that dished out all the latest goss related to the Indonesian entertainment industry.

The identities of the people behind Lambe Turah were better guarded than an under-maintenance ATM. Known collectively by the nickname “minceu”  (basically gossiping ladies’ slang for “admin”), the account operators appeared to be so well-connected that Lambe Turah was often the first to break the biggest celebrity gossip stories with paparazzi-style photos, videos, and even legal documents.

Below is one of the biggest stories that Lambe Turah posted in its heyday, back in 2017. In it, actress Jeniffer Dunn, who is also known by her nickname JDunn, was spotted at a maternity ward in Jakarta. This post was especially salacious because, at the time, JDunn was the other woman in an affair involving renowned businessman Faisal Haris. While she was not actually pregnant then, Faisal did eventually divorce his wife and married JDunn after she got out of prison for illegal narcotics consumption. Scandalous, indeed. 

“WITH THE POWER OF HENGPONG JADUL (OLD PHONE) SNAP SNAP UPLOAD. From Mommynceu’s hotel, I went to the Pondok Indah Hospital, didn’t expect to see Mbak Jennifer Dunn on the third floor. Ehh, third floor is the floor for midwifery and OB-GYN. What happened to Mbak JDunn?” Lambe Turah asked its followers in a post from November 2017.

If you didn’t get the impression from the drivel of a post above, the name Lambe Turah is Javanese for either “gossiping too much” or “a lot of mouths spreading gossip.” The account, which first appeared in 2015, became so prominent that it helped shape contemporary colloquial speak in Indonesia. 

In the last couple of years, you may have been guilty of saying “unch unch” to congratulate a new couple. Or, you’d perhaps utter the word “valakor,” which is a term derived from Valak, the demon in the 2018 horror flick The Nun, and a play on the word pelakor, an Indonesian portmanteau for perebut laki orang (the stealer of one’s man) to deride a side chick. Both words were popularized by Lambe Turah, and we might even go out on a limb by saying — at the risk of upsetting Indonesian slang etymologists — that they were created by the account, as the two words, and many more, weren’t part of our diction before Lambe Turah came along.

Beside being a cultural phenomenon, Lambe Turah was also a highly lucrative business. An investigation by Tirto published last year found that Lambe Turah charged between IDR4-5 million (US$283-354) per Instagram post to promote products.

But the gossipmonger’s figurative mouth is now sealed.

Turah’s last hurrah

In late September, Lambe Turah disappeared off of Instagram to the shock of more than the 7 million followers it had amassed by then. A Facebook user going by the name Achmad Furqon claimed that he set the ball rolling on Lambe Turah being removed from Instagram after he reported the account for spreading malice and bringing shame to celebrities to whet netizens’ appetite for gossip. 

While Achmad’s claim has not been verified, a lawyer named Nanda Persada, who claims to be the spokesperson for the gossip account, hinted in a recent post on his personal Instagram account that Lambe Turah is likely to be gone for good. He also took the opportunity to defend the account’s reporting of celebrity gossip and its role as a “social control”. 

“Actually, public figures didn’t have to be worried if they weren’t involved in any scandals or if they didn’t misbehave, because we usually wouldn’t post about them either. If they wish to carry out questionable behavior then they shouldn’t have done it in public because this is the era of social media with gadgets (mobile phones) everywhere. [Lambe Turah acted as] a social control,” Nanda wrote.

Nanda also pointed out that Lambe Turah used its fame to promote charities and support local SMEs — usually through paid posts.

“Even though this account was no longer just a gossip account, it still had a negative stigma, even more so than [tabloid media], right? What’s the difference between this account and any other media? The ones that were even sharper, sadistic, and able to ‘take cover’ under the umbrella of journalism? The difference is [on Lambe Turah] everyone, including public figures, were able to see comments from the public as they were, without manipulation,” Nanda continued, ending the caption with the hashtag #pamit (farewell).

The successors/pretenders

Even before Lambe Turah’s demise, there were already numerous copycat accounts using slight variations of the OG’s Instagram handle. 

Some with official-sounding names that remain active to this day are @lambeturah_official, which claims to sell the official merchandise by the real Lambe Turah, and @lambeturah, which spreads the words of the Islamic God instead of gossip.

Others like @lambetrurah, @lambe_turahtv, and @lambe_turaaaaah are also still active, seemingly able to capitalize on the OG’s fame as they have followers ranging in number from 22 thousand to 200 thousand.

Lambe Turah wasn’t the only prominent Indonesian celebrity gossip account on Instagram, as it clearly inspired the likes of Lambe Nyinyir (@lambenyinyir — meaning “nosy mouth”), which came after it. Boasting 2 million followers, Lambe Nyinyir appears to be the spiritual successor to Lambe Turah, even though the former’s social commentary is generally less provocative than the latter.

This is evident in a recent post by Lambe Nyinyir, which conveyed positive messages in support of model Kimmy Jayanti, who said she was body shamed after giving birth.

“Another mom shaming, as recently experienced by Mbak Kimmy. But Mbak Kim said she’s happy and doesn’t have any problem with her weight gain ever since giving birth to her son three months ago,” Lambe Nyinyir wrote in the caption in Indonesian.

Another prominent account is Makrumpita (@makrumpita), which has over 900 thousand followers. That is even more impressive considering that the account has always been set to private — just like Lambe Turah in its early days — possibly to avoid accusations of libel from the celebrities they gossip about.

With Lambe Turah gone, many of its former followers turn to those accounts and others for their daily celeb gossip fix. Alfiana Prima, a 29-year-old employee of a private company, currently follows three accounts, namely @makrumpita, @mimi.julid, and @tehnyinyir. She said she thought Lambe Turah’s content had declined drastically before its demise.

“I used to think they were the most up-to-date account, because they were the first one to publish news compared to others. But lately, since many celebrities deliberately made up scandals [to be posted on Lambe Turah], I felt it wasn’t as credible as it used to be,” she said.

Alfiana’s gripe with Lambe Turah losing its credibility — well, as much credibility a gossip account can have — stems from a growing public suspicion that several celebrities manufactured scandals and paid the account to gain exposure. Those celebrities appeared in Lambe Turah posts with more regularity up until the account’s disappearance.

At any rate, some believe that, ultimately, it’s the quality of gossip that matters, not the messenger, and that the Lambe Turah void has already been filled.

Sakinah Haniy and Pratiwi Purworini, both 27-year-old office employees, also currently only follow @lambenyinyir for gossip. When they spoke to Coconuts, Sakinah said she didn’t even realize that Lambe Turah does not exist anymore, while Pratiwi said she thought Lambe Turah is replaceable.

“I only followed Lambe Turah and Lambe Nyinyir, but I didn’t realize that one of them isn’t active anymore because their content pretty much resembles each other. All this time, I didn’t know if I was reading Lambe Turah or Lambe Nyinyir because I don’t go to their respective profile [pages],” Sakinah said, adding that she generally consumes celebrity goss as it appears on her Instagram feed.

“[Lambe Turah’s disappearance] didn’t feel like a huge loss for me because there are other gossip accounts,” Pratiwi said.

Lambe Turah may not be missed by some, but its legacy, for better or worse, undoubtedly lives on in Indonesia.

Read more feature stories from Coconuts Jakarta.