India, Dec. 23 -- Brookly Beckham's relationship with his parents, David and Victoria Beckham, has slid into the kind of public glare most families dread: it's now visible in plain sight on social media. Over the past few days, observers have noticed that the accounts appeared to be no longer following each other, a detail that instantly fuelled unfollow headlines and revived the wider family feud narrative.

But the most concrete public intervention came from inside the family. Brooklyn's brother Cruz publicly disputed the idea that their parents had chosen to unfollow Brooklyn, stating ut was not true and adding that they woke up blocked and that he was blocked as well. In other words, what looked like a deliberate unfollow from David a...