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November 13, 2022
Way back at the beginning of the year, people knew the now public girlfriend, existed in the world of the superhero. It is not a new development. I wrote about it way back then. Now, did she get close to him because she knew about his sugar daddy account and what his preferences are? Perhaps. She certainly has played up the fact that she loves Lolita and Leon.
Alba Baptista/Chris Evans
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This permanent A list actor/director/icon is on his death bed.
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I am kind of shocked that this thirsty significant other who never will have her thirst quenched, and is someone all of you know, didn't...
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I found yet another barely there celebrity offspring who has slept with her stepdad. This one wants to be a model.
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This married A list mostly movie actor who has starred in two movie franchises, but no superhero universes is cheating on his wife with a wo...
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Apparently a gardener has come forward with new information about the death of an A list singer from a group, at the singer's home. A lo...
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With all the things 70's making a return to the forefront, this long running sitcom from that time era which was a spinoff of a truly ic...
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Blind Items Revealed #5 - Anniversary Month
Look at what happens when I go digging back through the unrevealed blinds from years ago. This gem that happened long before he got busted f...
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Today's Blind Items - Lady Love
I suppose the title could have several meanings. In this case, it is what this permanent A list celebrity called her long time girlfriend. A...
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October 4, 2022 The ex of the royal pedophile thought they would be getting remarried once the mom died. Is she in for a surprise. Will she ...
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This former A++ lister lost 95% of his wealth this past week. It doesn't appear that even his wife knows.
Blind Items: What are they and why are they popular?
Celebrity gossip posts known as ‘blind items’ continue to emerge on social media.
BY MIA ROBERTSON
Celebrity gossip posts known as ‘blind items’ have been making a comeback on social media, but there are still many out there who are yet to know exactly what they are.
When TikTok creator Shannon McNammara's video on blind items blew up last July, she was initially shocked at the confused reaction she received from her viewers.
“People were like ‘what is a ‘blind item? I’ve never even heard of that phrase before'," Ms McNammara said.
“I kind of assumed everyone else had heard of them.”
Initially gaining traction in the early days of the internet, ‘blind items’ are often websites containing celebrity gossip tidbits that reveal scandalous celebrity rumours.
The premise of a ‘blind item’ is usually a riddled, or coded, post that prompts readers to speculate rumours about the targeted celebrity - which are often later revealed.
Ms McNammara’s TikTok account, @FluentlyFoward, has now accumulated more than 300,000 followers since her first viral video last year due to high requests for content centreing on revealing popular blind items on various celebrities.
“Of course they want to know about celebrities,” she said.
However, Ms McNammara said she often faced criticism about how gossip and rumour were being promoted in the form of these ‘blind items’.
“But then they also want to know how do you not get sued, who writes this, how do you find this information out,” she said.
“Things like that.
“It is a little bit of a shameful hobby to have… no one's proud of celebrity gossip, but I think you should be caring because these people have so much influence.”
More recently, ‘blind items’ have been moving from websites to social media platforms, such as Instagram.
One of these is DeuxMoi, which is run anonymously and often posts content that include celebrity sightings contributed by followers among the typical riddled style blinds across Instagram, Reddit and their podcast.
“Most ‘blind items’ websites are websites online, on the html, Deuxmoi is the only one who's taken to Instagram,” Ms McNammara said.
“Overall it’s doing a good thing. I think the more people talk about ‘blinds’ and openly share information, like, I think it's cool to make those networks happen no matter who's doing it.”
However, Deuxmoi has often been accused of being less trustworthy than original ‘blind item’ anonymously-run websites like CrazyDaysandNights. That site is well-known for its range of speculation posts such as Taylor Swift’s alleged hidden relationship to Karlie Kloss.
Many have dismissed blind items in the past for being falsehoods or unverified rumour, frequently placing them in the same realm as conspiracy theories.
On her podcast @FluentlyFoward, Ms McNammara has discussed popular celebrity ‘blind items’ and conspiracy theories in more detail, but has always acknowledged that these should not be taken as a fact.
In the context of celebrity and entertainment journalism, these 'blind items' have continually been seen as separate to the mainstream media.
However, Ms McNammara said ‘blind items’ have the potential to play a large role in celebrity news within the mainstream media space and that journalists should dig deeper to find the truth to these rumours.
“Right now, these are all unverified and the job of the journalist is to verify them.”
Ultimately, creators like @FluentlyFoward and @Duexmoi have helped in the resurgence of ‘blind items’ in the presence of mainstream social media.
Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash Celebrities can use a gossip blog or website to their advantage by strategically releasing information about themselves. They can use…
Lady Gaga and Taylor Kinney's split came as a shock to many this week. For those who follow blind items, however, it's been a long time coming. The website Crazy Days And Nights, one of the leading blind item publishers, alluded to trouble behind closed doors as far back as January.
A blind item is essentially Hollywood gossip told through code. Details of stories are shared, but the identities of those involved remain anonymous until a certain point when the author reveals them—usually months after the original publishing date. They cover everything from drinking habits, adultery, and antics on set to do-gooder things, like unreported community service or someone paying for the funeral of a homeless man who used to sit outside a coffee shop. A disclaimer on Crazy Days And Nights says the content published on its pages is "rumors, conjecture, and fiction. In addition to accurately reported information, certain situations, characters and events are portrayed in the blog are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously." Like Reddit's subreddit /r/nosleep, assume everything you read on a blind item site is true but know there's a good chance it's not.
Regardless, blind item sites cull a rabid audience—one that's more in tune with the worshipful aspects of celebrity culture rather than the more exploitative nature of TMZ and grocery store tabloids. They generate long threads of comments beneath unrevealed blinds (the insider term for blind items), all trying to figure out who's who, and, oftentimes, referencing older blinds and other insider gossip. "Blind items are my guilty pleasure," a journalist in New York City, who prefers to remain anonymous, tells us. They consider blind items to be "the entertainment magazine for entertainment reporters" and "a breath of juicy, fresh air we need between writing the same bullshit about the same celebrities all the time." If you've ever had to generate daily content about Jennifer Lawrence and all her cool girl ways during The Hunger Games, you know this journalist's pain. Somehow reading maybe true but definitely fascinating bits of gossip makes up for all the other water cooler fodder we're otherwise consuming daily. Here, the question of why comes into play; you'd think since we're already so embedded within the celebrity sphere, we would shy away from partaking in even more gossip.
But blind items aren't simply surface-level gossip. The creator of Crazy Days And Nights believes blind items are popular because they're real dirt. "Most of the tabloids like to pretend they are selling you gossip, but what they are selling is banal, vanilla, PR-regurgitated crap," the anonymous voice known as Enty Lawyer says. "Think about how often your mouth drops when you see the cover of a tabloid. It is rare. That jaw-dropping is good gossip. That is a blind item." Indeed, that type of jaw-dropping plays into the notion of schadenfreude aka deriving joy from someone else's misfortune. Miriam Korn, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice, cites the connection between envy and celebrity that suggests our collective jealousy of celebrities leads to our collective pleasure from reading naughty bits of gossip about them. Blinds create a false sense of intimacy between the reader and celebrity too. "If you know this embarrassing thing about whoever it is, you're on the inside track with them," Korn says. "It seems to totally satisfy the love/hate dialectic we feel about people in the spotlight, much like learning something embarrassing about a popular person in high school that humanizes them and makes you feel cool for knowing it."
Of course, learning something about the popular person in high school and learning something about a high-profile celebrity is different. Had blind items been focused on your regular Jane and Joe, most people wouldn't care because gossip only resonates when both parties are familiar with those being gossiped about; otherwise, the words fall on deaf ears. But because blinds involve public figures that most people know and have some sort of idea about, their content galvanizes. Enty Lawyer describes his audience as a "group of people who like solving puzzles." For him, blind items are crossword puzzles: "There are only so many two-letter words. A pro crossword puzzle player knows them and flies through them with ease." Korn connects this to the Zeigarnik Effect phenomenon, which suggests it's human nature to feel dissonance when information isn't complete. "We have a need to 'close the loop,'" Korn says, "so when a vital fact is missing—for example, who the celebrity is—the story persists in memory." You know when you can't think of something you know you know and it drives you crazy until you get it? That's the Zeigarnik Effect, and it's a huge motivation behind the blind item community.
In a figurative sense, blind items are the equivalent of being flies on the wall at a party to which you know you'll never get invited. They quell some vague sense of FOMO. "As a reporter, I would never use one as a valid source," our anonymous journalist says, "but I do take pleasure in reading the things I can never write about." The nature of blind items, even if they prove to be true, shrouds the information in a questionable cloud that many lawyers would consider to be liable. Just don't say you didn't see a certain piece of celebrity news, such as a breakup, coming because chances are this small but devoted community of sleuths knew about it months ago. After all, Enty Lawyer says "there are only so many descriptions available for Rita Ora" and clever minds will put two and two together before the rest of us do.