大象传媒

Celebrities are sponges for public criticism. All they have to do is exist in front of a camera and that'll be enough for someone to find them objectionable. That said, there are a few particularly unsavoury habits that pop stars seem to have picked up recently, particularly in the age of social media.

Here are 10 things we'd all like to see less of in 2017, some more urgent than others:

This isn't a complaint about the correct way to pluralise the word beef (it's beef), just a heartfelt plea to anyone involved in the business of making music who wishes to elevate their own status by having a snide dig at someone slightly higher up the ladder. Unless you're really good at the putdowns - like Zayn Malik, above - just pack it in. Drake and Meek Mill? Enough! Taylor Swift and Katy Perry? Shush! Everyone involved in the continuous, rolling grime kerfuffle that started between Tinie Tempah and Chip? Increase the peace. And that goes double for everyone in online news who would rush to call the mildest of celebrity disagreements a beef in the first place. Your mum wouldn't like it.

From to Nicki Minaj to everything Azealia Banks ever said, Twitter is sometimes too convenient a receptacle for half-formed thoughts, misunderstandings and buttons that should not be quite so easily pushed. The finest recent example of a speedy tweet that proved to be instantly regrettable arrived just after the sad news of George Michael's death began to circulate around the world. As is often the case, messages of remembrance began to appear across social media with great speed, and the actress Sarah Michelle Gellar joined in. Except she had been told it was Boy George that had died, so her tweet read: "Do you really want to hurt me? I guess you do 2016 #ripboygeorge I was truly one of your biggest fans."

Having been immediately informed of her mistake, she issued an apologetic explanation (above) and deleted the tweet, but not before it was screengrabbed and tweeted and then re-tweeted by astonished Twitter users. The sad part is Sarah then said she would no longer be offering her views online. With news outlets seizing on what was clearly an innocent mistake, she tweeted: "This is usually why I don't comment on public matters, but it all seemed so sad on Christmas. Lesson learned."

Every new generation of pop people has to face down the withering scorn of their elders, it's a rite of passage. That said, some old rockers - principally Keith Richards, David Crosby, Gene Simmons and Noel Gallagher - seem to have made it a personal mission to take a look at whoever is doing well at any given moment, and explain carefully where they are going wrong in their musical life choices, and why we shouldn't be giving them the time of day. It's one thing for Jon Bon Jovi to criticise Justin Bieber's , quite another to dismiss whole musical genres out of hand.

They may believe it makes them look like connoisseurs, but all that complaining about music that isn't even particularly aimed at them also makes them look unadventurous, as if they've only got one type of tastebud, and it's perpetually sour.

Look, everyone gets it. It must be tiresome to constantly be in demand, and to have people scream hysterically at you while you're trying to do your job (this means you, Justin Bieber). People ask for your autograph and then sell it (hi !), or want to take a selfie when you're desperate for the loo (every pop star ever).

Every time these minor indignities happen, it must be enormously frustrating. But let's face it, for a pop star, the alternative - no screams, no autograph requests, no selfies - is far worse. Just something to bear in mind the next time you don't feel like smiling between shots, Liam Payne.

Self-belief is a wonderful thing in a pop star. It's the fuel in their rocket; it's the thing that allows them to strap on a pair of for a stage costume and not say, "Hang on, are you sure I don't look like a colossal berk?" And it's the thing that pushes them onto the stage in the first place. However, it's probably best not to harp on about how big a star you feel you are, or would like to be, in any scientific detail.

Yes, you can say you want as many people to enjoy your music as possible, and you can also claim to be a perfectionist about your songs, but once you start talking about units, and beating other artists - as Ed Sheeran did recently in an interview with GQ about Adele - it starts to look like it's the winning that counts, that the music is being specifically created in order to achieve that goal.

That said, everyone indulging in the mock-horrified reaction hashtag #EdSheeranIsOverParty should probably calm down, too.

This is Lorde's toast, with a slice of cheese and a tomato on top. It's something she wanted to share with the world, because she likes the domestic bliss of making her own food in contrast to "thumbing through the room service menu in the middle of the night". In a sense this is an interesting window into the mindset of one of music's more original and thoughtful singers, and proves that she has probably not had to overly rethink the celebrity-baiting lyrics to Royals, since becoming famous.

In another, very real sense, it's a photo taken by someone who feels a need to communicate the message, "Hey everyone! Look at my breakfast," so that a million Lorde fans will supportively comment about how much they too enjoy toast.

As a general rule, any famous person who talks about their public persona using their own name comes across as self-aggrandising and slightly drunk on their own fame. And to make matters worse for anyone who'd still like to give it a try, Kanye West has already done it better than anyone could hope to, in the lyric to his song I Love Kanye.

It's a great beatless, breathless rap in which he plays with his own media profile and the kind of online comments he gets on a daily basis while mentioning his own name at the end of every single line - "I miss the sweet Kanye, chop up the beats Kanye / I gotta say, at that time I'd like to meet Kanye" - and it ends with this frankly incredible couplet: "What if Kanye made a song about Kanye called I Miss The Old Kanye? / Man, that'd be so Kanye."

Here's a cautionary tale. When Wiz Khalifa was given a Billboard award for the tender ballad See You Again in May 2016, he took to the stage with gratitude on his mind. He offered shout-outs to every other nominated artist, the fans, other artists in the room, his record label, his management, his family and his closest buddies.

In fact, the one person he didn't thank was Charlie Puth, the fellow who actually sang the key refrain in See You Again. And this is clearly someone who has thought about what he is going to say. He's already head and shoulders above every singer who just wants to wing it with a smile if things happen to go their way. The point is, yes, awards might not always be cool, but if you're nominated and you attend the ceremony, unless you're naturally sharp of wit, like Matty Healy of The 1975 (above), you can't be too cool to have prepared something to say if you win.

If pop stars are supposed to be cooler, more charismatic and more photogenic than everyone else, why must they insist on using the daft hand signals of your aggravating uncle (or Paul McCartney, if you want a musical precedent) whenever a camera is pointed in their direction? At least the complicated twisty finger hand signs of various East and West Coast rappers were intriguing to look at and ponder over.

By contrast, the all-purpose thumbs up has one purpose, to say "everything is a-OK", a redundant message in almost every context that is not the act of telling a concerned observer who believes everything is not a-OK that everything is, in fact, a-OK. This most especially applies to photographs of famous people standing up and smiling while having their picture taken. We know you're alright, pop stars, no one is worried.

Social media can be a snakepit, and everyone in the public eye knows what it is like to be told off by strangers. Sometimes the right thing to do is respond directly, but only if that person has appeared in your notification stream by aiming their remark directly at you. Any celebrity who replies to a tweet that was not linked directly to them by their social media handle is interrupting a private conversation and worse, proving that they run vanity searches on their own name. It's a lose-lose for them to even acknowledge those tweets exist and they should never, ever do it.

The only person this does not apply to is James Blunt, who has managed to turn waves of public snark into a kind of ongoing banter battle that no one could seriously be offended by. He doesn't encourage his fans to attack his critics, doesn't spark waves of vitriol and bats any insults away as if they're just a nasty spin ball at a village cricket match, on the hottest day in summer, when he's already won the match and there's an amazing cake in the club house.

• 大象传媒 Music - 6 artists who had us fooled about their pasts
• 大象传媒 Music - 9 bitter songs of revenge and the stories behind them
• 大象传媒 Music - 5 rock veterans who can't handle hip hop, and 5 who can