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From the gossip blogs that ruled the internet in the '00s to the anonymous Instagram accounts posting "blind items" these days, the internet's appetite for celebrity gossip has led to people making careers out of the attention they can get from spreading these rumors.
While some celeb gossip is virtually harmless (e.g., "So-and-so is always so nice to the staff at my restaurant"), some of it can be, well, quite hurtful. For example, throughout the years, some gossip blogs have started malicious rumors with no basis in reality, while others have leaked personal information that the people involved didn't want to share with the world. Sometimes the celebs decide to call them out on it.
Here are 14 times celebrities called out gossip bloggers:
1. Fifth Harmony member Lauren Jauregui called out notorious gossip blogger Perez Hilton for publicly outing her before she was ready by publishing photo booth pictures she took with her then-girlfriend at a private family event.
On Red Table Talk: The Estefans, she said, "I was at my uncle's wedding in New Orleans, and my aunt very innocently posted the photos from the photo booth onto her Facebook page. It was a link for the family to be able to click on, and my fans are just a little wild, and they found the picture where my girlfriend and I — we were drunk — [were] kissing ... He definitely outed me. I wasn't ready because I'm also Latina. There was that whole looming thing of, What is my community going to feel about me? Are they even going to accept me?"
2. Similarly, NSYNC member Lance Bass called out Perez and similar bloggers for bullying him into coming out before he was ready.
He told Attitude, "Because of the bloggers like him hounding me, all the other magazines started calling me and saying, 'Look, we know you’re gay. You can write the story with or without us, but we have to write it.' I decided to go with People, and I think they did a great job. I had 24 hours to decide if I was going to come out or not, and within 24 hours it was on the stands."
3. After a Twitter user allegedly caught Perez snooping around Lady Gaga's apartment building in New York, the singer begged him to stop via Twitter: "STAY AWAY FROM ME + MY FAMILY. YOU ARE SICK TRYING TO RENT AN APARTMENT IN MY BUILDING TO STALK ME. LEAVE ME ALONE!!!"
She also tweeted, "Still have the text Perez sent me of me in a wheelchair w the words KARMA written across + Madonna pointing a gun at me. Day of my accident."
4. When Perez personally asked Khloé Kardashian to make an "It Gets Better" video in support of teenagers experiencing crises, she pointed out his hypocrisy on her blog and called him her "personal bully."
In a video posted to her blog, she continued, "Forget my childhood, forget that now, as an adult, I thought, you know, bullying would be done, but in my world, it’s not done ... I live in a world where there’s magazines and blogs, and people feel like they are allowed to criticize me, and in the meanest way ... [Perez,] I’ve been around you in person, and you’re sweet, funny. I don’t know, just, sometimes you say some really hurtful things."
5. On Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, Mila Kunis said that in her career, "everything was great … until, [she] would say, the rise of Perez Hilton" because he was "the first person that created ugly news … that, like, literally just spread filth." She also said he pioneered "trolling."
She said, "[His site] was just mean, and so it allowed people to be mean."
6. On Red Table Talk: The Estefans, Gloria, Lili, and Emily Estefan confronted Perez face-to-face. Emily told him, "There were human beings on the other side of your stories ... and we have to call a spade a spade here. You said some pretty hurtful things."
Then, when Perez tried to defend himself by saying, "I would say things like, 'Well, I’m just sharing with my friends online what my friends in private talk about,'" Emily cut him off and reminded him, "They’re not your friends. They‘re the audience of these people."
7. When Perez tweeted a headline alleging that Lindsay Lohan was "on cocaine and out of control," Demi Lovato replied, "The media (not just you) don't realize when you need to stop. This isn't a headline for your readers. This is someone's life."
However, she didn't name him because "he doesn’t deserve the relevance that he doesn’t have anymore."
9. Demi also allegedly called out Sarah Moore, who's known as "Stalker Sarah," for posting pictures she'd taken with the singer and their younger sister, Madi, and captioning it as if they were friends. On Sarah's Instagram, Demi reportedly commented, "I'm not your fucking 'girl.' If I was you wouldn't be asking for pictures. You STALK PEOPLE FOR A LIVING. We are NOT FRIENDS…GET A JOB… THIS IS MY 14 YEAR OLD BABY SISTER…SHE'S NOT YOUR BABE."
10. Cardi B called out the Shade Room for posting a video of her daughter, Kulture. Though she allegedly started by trying to private-message the account on Instagram, she tweeted, "Delete my child off y’all page."
She continued, "My thing is … OK, you only post negative content bout me, cool, no biggie. Got me blocked from commenting on their page, OK, cool. But please don’t post my child …Just leave me alone."
After a heated exchange, Cardi asked TSR founder Angelica Nwandu to call her so they could handle the disagreement "like adults."
11. After a Bravo fan account shared a post from Deuxmoi alleging that The Real Housewives of Orange County star Heather Dubrow's husband, Dr. Terry Dubrow, was cheating on her, she shut down the rumor in the comments. She wrote, "This is not true, on any level."
12. After Deuxmoi posted a rumor that Hailey Bieber was pregnant, US Weekly allegedly started working on a report about it — which Hailey herself caught wind of and shut down.
Tagging US Weekly in her Instagram story, she wrote, "Since I know you guys were about to break your lil story...I'm not pregnant. So please stop writing false stories from your 'sources' and focus on what's important, a.k.a. the election."
However, it didn't end there. After doing some investigating of her own, Hailey claimed that she'd discovered the anonymous person behind Deuxmoi.
On her Instagram story, she wrote, "Today I figured out I know who runs the Deuxmoi instagram account and I must say, A. I feel like I should work for the FBI and B. I feel like I just figured out who Gossip Girl is."
13. Jesse Metcalfe called BS on a blind item Deuxmoi shared from someone claiming that their friend had hooked up with him, he wouldn't stop talking about himself, and he had drama with Hallmark and wasn't being cast by the network anymore.
On the post, he commented, "THIS IS BULLSHIT."
A week later, Deuxmoi (kind of) apologized, writing, "I would like to publicly apologize to Jesse Metcalfe for posting that 'bulls–t' email last week. I didn’t know he was a working actor nor did I know he was in Hallmark movies as I do not watch that channel so I definitely thought the email was about someone no one knew."
14. And finally, activist and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai called out a false report from Deuxmoi that claimed she was "terrified of cats (felines, not the musical)."
Sharing the post to her Instagram story, she simply wrote, "Lies."
She also added an eyeroll emoji and a sticker of Taylor Swift's character in Cats.