As someone who loves a good scroll on social media, I consider myself to be pretty up to date with celebrity drama and gossip, despite how embarrassing that is to say. Now, I love drama and gossip as much as the next person, especially when it doesn’t involve me in the slightest, but I fear things have gone a bit too far. 

I’ve noticed there’s been a rise in blind items culture recently that has convinced me that people truly think everything they see on the internet is 100% true. If you don’t know what blind items are, don’t worry an explanation is incoming. Blind items are celebrity gossip columns, they spill tea without telling you who the tea is about. However, the author of the blind item will leave a hint in the item so you can guess who the item is about. For example, if I described someone as “the permanent A-list Houston singer” you can almost be positive that I’m talking about Beyoncé, an A-list singer from Houston, Texas. But, there are other descriptions that could fit so many different people, so even if you think you know who the item is about, you can’t really be sure.  

The most popular platform for blind items is Crazy Days and Nights, a website that’s been around for about two decades. The platform is run by John Robert Nelson who uses the name “Enty Lawyer” when posting blind items on the site. Nelson is a lawyer who claims to be privy to information about celebrities that most others don’t know about because of his lawyer status. On his site, Nelson regularly posts blind items about celebrities and he doesn’t reveal the names of the celebrities until the news is public; however that doesn’t stop people from grossly speculating about the nameless people in the blind items.

Blind items culture has made everyone think they’re Harriet the Spy or Detective Olivia Benson and let me be the first to tell you, you’re not. No matter how much you try to “investigate” these celebrities, you will never be able to know the type of people they are and what they do in their personal lives, and that’s by design. Social media has convinced people that they know everything about the celebrities they watch and follow, but that’s quite literally not the case. Also, most of the time when people are looking to attach celebrities to blind items, they simply attach the items to celebrities they already hate for no good reason because they’re desperately looking for a reason to justify their hatred of said celebrity.  

These blind items aren’t fact checked and even when the item includes the celebrity’s name, the article they attach as evidence very rarely proves the statements claimed in the blind item. It’s all just one big mess. These items are spreading celebrity gossip, which should never really be taken seriously, but rather than reading the gossip and going on about their days, people feel the need to go the extra mile and attribute this gossip to a specific person. This leads to celebrities receiving tons of hate for things they’ve “done” that haven’t even been verified. I mean haven’t we known by now to have at least a few sources before treating something as fact? 

Guys, I can not emphasize this enough, you do not know celebrities. Despite what the gossip channels or your favorite tea-spilling Tiktoker says, you do not know who these people truly are and what goes on behind the scenes. We all grew up hearing, “don’t believe everything you see online,” but it seems like we all need a refresher course. You don’t know these people, so please be normal, I beg.