{"id":2067141,"date":"2025-10-03T17:52:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T17:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2067141"},"modified":"2025-10-03T17:52:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T17:52:05","slug":"troixmoi-reveals-our-obsession-with-fake-celebrity-gossip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/troixmoi-reveals-our-obsession-with-fake-celebrity-gossip\/","title":{"rendered":"Troixmoi reveals our obsession with fake celebrity gossip"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A\u00a0few weeks ago, a celebrity gossip Instagram<\/a> account made an audacious claim: \u201cDanny Devito being pushed around in a stroller by Sir Paul McCartney at Brentwood Country Mart.\u201d\u00a0 It was just one of many \u201csightings\u201d reported to them. Another? \u201cSaw Jon Hamm swimming right off the shore of Alcatraz Island.\u201d<\/p>\n

These posts are fake, obviously. And everyone (or nearly everyone) knows it. The account that posted them, Troixmoi<\/a>, is a parody of Deuxmoi<\/a>, the popular crowd-sourced celeb gossip Instagram that posts anonymous fan sightings of celebrities in a similar format. Deuxmoi has 1.4 million followers who pore over its speculations and quotidian news of things like Martha Stewart\u2019s latte order and Jennifer Aniston\u2019s pasta preferences, and more substantial stuff like when the new Taylor Swift<\/a> album will be out or whether Miles Teller is vaccinated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Like Deuxmoi, Troixmoi accepts anonymous submissions of unverified celebrity sightings, but unlike Deuxmoi, the sightings are imaginary. Deuxmoi clarifies in their bio that it \u201cdoes not claim any information [it has] published is based in fact,\u201d but much like many tabloid musings, they tend to be anyway. Troixmoi\u2019s, considerably more ridiculous, usually are not.<\/p>\n

Troixmoi\u2019s fake news is mostly harmless, but its popularity \u2014 Andy Cohen\u2019s radio show even did a segment<\/a> where listeners had to guess which gossip was from Deuxmoi and which from Troixmoi \u2014 says something about the world we live in. Is it a sign of a post-truth media culture? Are Deuxmoi and Troixmoi any different than the gossip mags from the print era?\u00a0One big difference is that thanks to smartphones and social media: \u201ceveryone is a paparazzi now,\u201d says Andrea McDonnell, a communications professor at Providence College and author of Celebrity: A History of Fame<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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In some ways citizen paparazzi are an improvement from the aggressive celebrity stalking of the 90s<\/a> and early 2000s<\/a>. There \u201cwas really a war in the 90s and the early noughties between celebrities and paparazzi,\u201d said Drexel University communications professor Hilde Van den Bulck. Now that anyone can get pictures of celebs and celebs post \u201ccandid\u201d snaps on Instagram, paparazzi seems to be less aggressive because pictures have less value. But on the downside, celebs are now being constantly surveilled by Stasi-like fans who report their every move via text updates and photos to Deuxmoi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Troixmoi began then, as both an homage and a critique. Its creator is a television writer who followed Deuxmoi and saw posts about her famous friends that weren\u2019t true.\u00a0\u201cWe started thinking \u2018It\u2019d be so easy to just make [DeuxMoi\u2019s postings] up\u2019,\u201d said the anonymous Troixmoi founder. She began sending false sightings to Deuxmoi, who would ask who she was, to which she\u2019d say that she was \u201ca very wealthy shipping magnate\u201d who comes \u201cacross celebrities from all walks of life,\u201d she said. \u201c[Deuxmoi] clearly knew like 99% of the shit that I was sending in was fake.\u201d\u00a0The joke was soon legitimised in a parody account, which, she says, Deuxmoi\u2019s creator has been \u201ca great sport about\u201d. Deuxmoi declined to be interviewed for this article, but has called Troixmoi \u201cthe annoying little sister I never asked for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a part of [Deuxmoi] that\u2019s all in good fun, but then there\u2019s a part of it that\u2019s a little bit insidious and privacy invading,\u201d said Troixmoi\u2019s creator. Celebrities \u201chave a right to privacy and they have a right to live their lives not under a microscope.\u201d\u00a0But she counts herself a fan of Deuxmoi in a way, and it\u2019s the ambiguity of the posts that are appealing.\u00a0\u201cThe ridiculousness of Deuxmoi lives and breathes in the complete unverifiability of anything that is crowdsourced from the internet,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s all so anonymous that none of it could be true, or all of it could be true. That\u2019s the titillating part of the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she\u2019s right: part of the joy of gossip has always been figuring out what is real and what is fake. Gossip mags claim \u201cJennifer Aniston has had 20 babies and is pregnant again, and we know it\u2019s not true, right?,\u201d Hilde says. \u201cBut people still enjoy reading it. Part of gossip has always been about speculation to various degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

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With Troixmoi there is no game to play about the veracity of the info. It\u2019s all fake. Yet the creator\u2019s proximity to fame is what made the account interesting to followers of Deuxmoi in the first place. Fans noticed that celebrities were following<\/a> and commenting on the fake posts, and soon began to speculate on Deuxmoi\u2019s subreddit<\/a> about the author of Troixmoi<\/a>, as well as sending in their own sightings to the account. <\/p>\n

Does the truth matter when it comes to gossip?\u00a0 Not when it comes to the audience. \u201cWe love gossip, even if we don\u2019t think it\u2019s true, because\u2026 gossip, especially about people we don\u2019t actually know, like celebrities, allows us to bond with the people that we do know, in a way that\u2019s not risky, because we\u2019re not gonna hurt Lindsay Lohan\u2019s feelings,\u201d Andrea says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when truth and fiction get confused and gossip falsehoods hit the news cycle there can be downsides\u2013as happened with Hollywood Unlocked<\/a><\/em>\u2019s<\/a> recent report that Queen Elizabeth II had died. The site retracted their statement, claiming an intern had accidentally posted news of the Queen\u2019s death, then their editor Jason Lee said that the initial story was right and the Queen had died, Instagram labelled the news as false, and finally Lee conceded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Jason Lee and Hollywood Unlocked have apologized for breaking a false story that Queen Elizabeth II had passed away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can say my sources got this wrong and I sincerely apologize to The Queen and the Royal Family.\u201d pic.twitter.com\/XtLWIeNr1H<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Pop Base (@PopBase) February 27, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

False reports of celebrity deaths aren\u2019t uncommon, but why would anybody believe that Hollywood Unlocked<\/em> would be the first outlet to get the scoop on Liz? Perhaps it\u2019s because the media landscape has changed so much, or because it wouldn\u2019t be the first time gossip outlets have broken big stories (Deuxmoi was one of the first outlets to break the Armie Hammer story<\/a> in 2021).<\/p>\n

\u201cAudiences are super savvy. We know when we\u2019re reading an article on the New York Times<\/em> versus scrolling through the Deuxmoi Instagram, right?\u201d Andrea says. The problem, she says, is that the boundaries \u201cof celebrity news and more traditional political news have become increasingly blurred\u2026 I can go on Vogue<\/em> and watch AOC put on a fierce red lip, and then I can go and check out her legislative agenda.\u201d It\u2019s become harder to determine whether something is true because \u201ccelebrities are increasingly moving into a public sphere, and political figures are increasingly celebrities,\u201d Andrea says. \u201cIs it opinion if it\u2019s an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal? Or if it\u2019s on Deuxmoi? Do we do a perfect job as readers and media audiences making distinctions between these?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even though everything posted on Troixmoi is false, its creator says she follows some of her own ethical guidelines, like not making jokes about assault. \u201cI don\u2019t want to make light of anything that\u2019s serious, anything that would be an allegation,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to have anyone committing a crime on Troixmoi\u2026 I still want to be respectful in the fake.\u201d\u00a0Andrea says Troixmoi is \u201call well and good and fun,\u201d but it does create \u201ca little bit of a dangerous precedent in the media economy\u2026 undoubtedly, some of that false information, like the game of telephone, is gonna leak its way into people\u2019s consciousnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A lot of the time\u00a0 Troixmoi is so over the top that it\u2019s hard to believe it could be true: it features spottings of long-dead historical figures like JFK Jr (who is \u201cstill super hot but has put on some weight\u201d) and Francis Scott Key, as well as the \u201cghost of Kafka\u201d who was seen in a spin class.\u00a0\u201cIt heightens the absurdity of it where it\u2019s people you wouldn\u2019t necessarily see spoken about in a public forum,\u201d Troixmoi says. \u201cIt just it makes me laugh. It\u2019s funny to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So is reading \u2014 and enjoying \u2014 fake gossip a bad thing? Not necessarily. In a way, if people are enjoying fake gossip, it\u2019s better than real gossip: it can\u2019t harm anyone. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of escapism. It\u2019s not thinking about the war in Ukraine,\u201d Hilda says. \u201cCritics of capitalism will say that\u2019s what capitalism does, they distract you from the truth.\u201d But sometimes that distraction is just what we need.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Follow i-D on\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0TikTok<\/a>\u00a0for more on celebrity gossip and internet culture.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n