There was a time when Illuminati conspiracy theories bubbled up from niche online forums and the depths of YouTube. Now you can get them straight from social media accounts of some of the highest ranking members of the United States government! Which is terrifying! You know what’s less terrifying? Celebrity conspiracy theories, because the stakes just aren’t as high. Instead of not believing facts that have an immediate impact on day-to-day life, those who subscribe to celebrity conspiracies, by and large, are just having a little fun. (Except for the Illuminati folks. They are so, so serious.)
These are the celebrity conspiracy theories you can lose hours or weeks or years exploring, the ones that have staying power for any number of reasons, whether they’re so strange you can’t shake them or so compellingly plausible. The moral of this story is that legends never die, especially if these legends are loosely based on Internet threads where naturally occurring triangles are the main form of proof.
Beyoncé was never pregnant with Blue Ivy
This one feels as old as time, but it can’t be because her daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, was then five years old. Right? Right. It all began when the singer’s belly appeared to deflate on an Australian talk show, but it got new life when she announced her pregnancy with twins on Instagram. Her whole stomach was on display in the pregnancy shoot, as if trying to head theorists off at the pass this time around. Beyoncé has been known to reference conspiracy theories about herself before, which brings us to:
Beyoncé and Jay Z and the president and anyone else who is successful, really, is in the Illuminati
Whitney Houston, Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Al Gore, the Pope, Warren Buffett, and Bono are in it, too. Beyoncé addressed this one head-on in last year’s “Formation,” with the line, “Y’all haters corny with that Illuminati mess,” but the conspiracy theory has existed since at least 1995, when rappers like Prodigy started referring to the satanic power cult in hip-hop songs.
Since then, the Illuminati theorists have taken to the Internet where videos and forums analyze every move of elite members of this secret society. Jay Z’s wild success in the late 1990s and early 2000s made him a target of most Illuminati ire. By the time Bey’s “Formation” was released in early 2016, we as a culture had crested the Illuminati mountain.
Katy Perry is JonBenét Ramsey
This one originated from a YouTube video made some years ago by a man named Dave Johnson. His evidence is weak, even by conspiracy-theory-video standards (many do a lot more with a lot less), but he claims that because Perry’s parents look a little like the Ramseys and Perry looks a little like JonBenét, the child was “sacrificed in name only” so she could become a star by the name of Katy Perry. It’s also a relatively young theory—it was discovered—and one that’s kept alive by the steady diet of JonBenét content available for watching thanks to the 20-year anniversary of her murder.
Taylor Swift and her boyfriends were never really dating, especially Tom Hiddleston
Rumors that Swift’s boyfriends were a public-relations mind trick used to curry favor with the public or drum up excitement over an album/song/tour reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2016 when she was dating actor Tom Hiddleston.
Hiddleston himself addressed the allegations in a GQ interview published last week, saying, “The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story.” This is a pretty good start to defining a conspiracy theory, and if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you would read this and respond, “That’s exactly what they want you to think.”
Stevie Wonder is not blind
Deadspin has an exhaustive report on the origins of this conspiracy theory, but the evidence mostly involves his presence court-side, because how can a blind man enjoy basketball games? O.K.!
Just last week, a TMZ reporter asked if he could actually see, and he said, “This year, I will reveal the truth.” The video is edited in such a way that who knows what he was actually referring to, but, regardless, the theory persists.
Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are in love
One Direction, the band, is on an indefinite hiatus, but the conspiracy theory involving two of the original five members will likely continue in perpetuity. It states that a homophobic management is keeping former bandmates Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson from being together despite their eternal love for one another, and it has a wide-reaching presence online, from Tumblr to Instagram and back again.
Then Louis Tomlinson started dating a woman named Briana and then had a baby with her. He was born in January 2016 . . . or was he? According to the “Babygate” timeline, the photos are fake and maybe the baby is a doll and also Briana has a twin? It’s a wild ride. Since spring, however, there hasn’t been much news on the Larry front, though it’s always percolating below the surface. Expect it to bubble up again the next time Styles is confirmed to be dating someone.
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