Anonymous Gossip Is Keeping Celebrity Culture Alive—for Better or Worse

As silly as it might sound to some people who don’t know the industry and might see entertainment journalists as glorified paparazzi, I actually went to school for this. No, not to write about entertainment or lifestyle or go off about Star Wars. But I did go to school to learn how to write about news, craft a headline, conduct an engaging interview, and all that jazz.

Entertainment journalism, specifically, is a bit of a different beast, one that not many people understand. While you have tabloids full of made-up rumors and wild gossip, well-respected news sources like People, Rolling Stone, and, yes, The Daily Beast don’t print things that haven’t been fact-checked or that they can’t confirm with multiple sources. But those “sources” are often from right inside a celebrity’s PR team, making most of what we read on magazine shelves or our TV screens massive PR campaigns, creating the image of the celebrity that we know and love (or hate) today.

This is why celebrity blind items are such a soothing balm to people like me, someone who knows that the public image of a celebrity is so fluffed up and manufactured the majority of the time. These pieces of gossip, which are posted online completely anonymously, give nicknames and hints to which celebrities they’re talking about; it’s up to the reader to piece the clues together as to what the blind item is trying to say. They give us a peek at the salacious underbelly of celebrities, stories that their PR team would hate for us to know. These unverified, unsourced rumors are just so juicy, sharing them has become a whole industry. Perez Hilton made a name for himself by posting such rumors in the early 2000s, and independent gossip sites like Crazy Days and Nights and Lainey Gossip have published user-submitted blind items for nearly two decades.

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Since the advent of Deuxmoi, the Instagram page that’s become modern-day celebrities’ Gossip Girl, podcasts and TikTok accounts based around discussing blind items—such as Fluently Forward and Beyond The Blinds—have gained quite an audience. Entire communities have erupted around these gossip mongers, creating official and unaffiliated subreddits to speculate on and share further rumors. The account holders themselves have also become popular; Deuxmoi even has a podcast, a book, and an HBO TV deal now. And as the Los Angeles Times reported last March, the popularity of blind items has also led to further transparency of what’s behind the veil of the celebrity PR machine.

To answer what you’re probably already thinking, yeah, anyone can send an anonymous “tip” to Deuxmoi or any other rumor mill, even if it’s a flagrant fabrication. These blind items are, by the posters’ own admissions, almost never investigated. But celebrity blind items that reappear for years or present a consistent narrative about a celebrity give us an (alleged, highly presumptive) idea of what they’re really like (allegedly). For instance, there are widely circulated pieces of gossip that insinuate that some actors act completely differently than their Hollywood persona, like how Tom Hanks might be the complete opposite of what we think of him. There are other blind items that just seem to affirm who we already assumed to be Grade-A jerks, like Lea Michele’s reported on-set antics. (Those rumors became so large that Michele even released an apologetic statement about them.) And don’t even get me started on the blind items about entire casts, like the stories of the absolute tomfoolery that went on behind the scenes of the original Gossip Girl.

There have been several instances where my jaw has hit the floor while listening to the most rotten episodes of Beyond the Blinds, and I even started paying for their Patreon because I. Need. More. Celebrity blinds provide me with an entertaining way into who the heck these famous people really are, even if they’re dramatized or imagined (but based on what we know of the gritty Hollywood machine, the wild happenings these blind items discuss very well could be true). It really helps me gain a deeper perspective, so that I can answer the age-old question: “Which celeb would you like to have dinner with?” (As of right now, for me, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow.)

But so many people are lapping up what the legitimate news sites are saying, unable to appreciate how exhilarating celeb blind items can be to read. Take the recent reports of Taylor Swift’s breakup with Joe Alwyn. Entertainment Tonight and People confirmed accounts from a “source close to the pair” that they were done, after six years of dating. But fans just could not handle the news. That’s understandable; we’ve all watched a favorite celebrity couple split, making our world feel like it was falling apart. (The “Robsten” breakup was mine, so I’m not poking fun at anyone behaving like that with Swift’s news.) However, as someone on the backend of how this type of news goes out, it was hard to watch fans so hellbent on not accepting the truth, taking to social media to post things like, “Taylor would tell us,” or urging others to hold out hope that the couple remained intact. Rumors are, you know, just rumors.

But the Swift/Alwyn breakup news wasn’t a rumor or even an anonymously tagged blind item. It was reported by outlets with reputations to protect. Words matter to publications like the ones that broke the Swift/Alwyn breakup news. When it doesn’t include “allegedly,” “rumor has it,” or even “unconfirmed reports,” and instead uses definitive language, a publication has confirmed the news. The sources “close to the matter” are often the celebrity’s own publicity team.

Thanks to TMZ, the public believes the narrative that paparazzi are constantly hounding celebrities when they don’t want them there. This is true in TMZ’s case; they pay tons of money for celebrity secrets, death confirmations, and inside photos. And this is also the case for the most popular actors and musicians. But if you’ve ever seen a reality star (especially a C-lister or lower) or a Kardashian papped, a celebrity with brand names clearly visible, or an actor that had an unsuccessful project released recently, you can bet that they’ve likely alerted the paparazzi to their location.

While those stories are a bit more shameless, Swift’s breakup—or anything else you read from trusted publications—is of a similar kind. What we’re seeing from these outlets is the carefully curated facade that a celebrity’s PR team wants us to see. That’s not to say the stories and images served to us in tabloids are always far from the real thing. But more often than not, reported sightings or anonymously sourced gossip have been vetted by the people cultivating a famous person’s persona—which means we have to be honest with ourselves that the Taylor we know is one her team has so perfectly created for us to know. Just look at how Swift is doing her hot-single-girl strut and dinners through New York City. Just like how you want your ex to see you thriving and looking better than ever post-breakup, the “Anti-Hero” singer is sending a message through being papped.

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Yes, there are also uncensored, unplanned moments from very outrageous celebrities that make it public, like Justin Bieber peeing in a mop bucket, Ariana Grande’s donut-licking video, or anything from Lindsay Lohan’s party years. But even when at their worst, the chances of a celeb rising from the ashes after a major flub is only as good as their PR team, and any celebrity “comeback” or apology after a fall from grace likely comes from the minds of their publicist. This is why it came as such a shock when Jonathan Majors’ management and PR team both dropped the actor. When publicists’ sole job is to make their clients look good, a celebrity without management or PR in the wake of brutal allegations is a tacit confirmation that their image is too far gone to be saved.

When your favorite celebrity couple reportedly breaks up, or a rumor starts going around about them in the press, remain skeptical, but also remain vigilant: odds are that the celebrity’s team is the one spreading those sourced rumors. That’s why the anonymous stuff is always nice to go back to and really invest in. Turning to blind items might feel sleazy at first, but it really does blow your mind and conception of certain celebrities. And that’s both the point and allure of them.

Maybe “refreshing” is the wrong word to use when describing celebrity blind items, but at least they give a real look at celebrities and tear back the curtain that is carefully placed to give the public a highly-produced persona. And while some are definitely unfounded or not true, they can usually be a hell of a lot more fun—and even believable—than edited quotes or statements you’ll read about in a magazine.