WON’T LET GO
Avril Lavigne is the face of a hoax that people won’t let die,
It’s the death hoax that refuses to die.
Poor Avril Lavigne. For about a third of her life, she’s been dealing with rumours of her demise. And so it was this weekend when an old conspiracy theory was dusted off and repackaged for the most gullible elements on Twitter.
“Avril Lavigne is dead & was replaced by a look alike,” stated user @givenchyass, who then posted a video “comparing an avril song from 2002 to an avril song from 2014.”
I know what you’re thinking: what do millennials have against capitalization? Must we really inhabit a world without punctuation and grammar, a world in which emoji replace persuasive arguments and acronyms ride roughshod over language?
So the spliced video, which has Zapruder aspirations but the gravitas of an MTV interstitial, is supposed to stimulate the part of your brain that can kind of, sort of, maybe see how the moon landing was faked or 9/11 was an inside job: “Wait a minute. Avril looked different when she was a teenager. Now she also bops differently, almost like she’s possessed by a Pogo champ. This can only mean . . . WE ARE DEALING WITH AN IMPOSTOR.”
But why would someone pretend to be Ms. Lavigne?
I’m glad you asked. Avril, as the conspiracy theorist explains in lowercase exposition, used to lead a normal life. Then she got famous. She couldn’t handle the paparazzi. So she hired a doppelganger, someone who could secretly share the burden of public strutting and posing.
It’s actually not a bad idea, especially in Hollywood where there is no shortage of body doubles. Man, I wish I had a body double, a fake-me who could attend the occasional school concert or go antiquing with my wife. I would pay my body double top dollar to wait in line at the passport office or pick up embarrassing prescriptions.
So now it’s 2003 and Avril’s grandfather has died, leaving her severely “distraught.” She can’t go on. What does she do? She hangs herself (WTF?) and the look-alike assumes her identity (OMG) under the guidance of treacherous studio execs (SMH).
Enter the second visual exhibit: side-by-side photos of the real Avril before her alleged suicide and fake Avril, who is identified as one “Melissa Vandella.”
By Monday, as the original tweet was retweeted more than 100,000 times, others dove face-first into this pop conspiracy, sharing suspicious photos, analyzing handwriting samples, pointing to voice anomalies, scrutinizing birthmarks and, generally speaking, adding to the overwhelming evidence the world is bonkers.
If all of this sounds vaguely famil- iar — and if it does, you may be spending too much time on the Internet — that’s because BuzzFeed covered the “Avril Lavigne is dead” hoax two years ago when reporter Ryan Broderick wrote about a visit to Brazil where he discovered a local blog that was “comparing old photos of Avril Lavigne with new photos of Avril Lavigne.”
That blog theorized that “at some point between 2002 and now, Avril Lavigne killed herself and was replaced by an actress.” The new Avril might even be tipping off fans with not-so-subtle clues in her lyrics: “The day you slipped away/ Was the day I found it won’t be the same.”
Here’s the rub: that Brazilian blog was an “inside joke.” It was a deliberate hoax, one that was created “to show how conspiracy theories can look true.”
But instead of serving as a cautionary tale, BuzzFeed’s story generated new stories and investigations as people searched for proof Avril was dead. The conspiracy theory never really went away and now, two years later, it’s back with a vengeance.
None of this makes sense. I mean, if a doppelganger really was pretending to be Avril for the last 14 years — and this person could blow the whistle if she didn’t get exactly what she wanted — would she really marry Chad Kroeger after the charade begins and subject herself to endless Nickelback?
I doubt it. But what this old-new conspiracy does prove is that people are finding it easier to believe just about anything.
Within the taxonomy of fake news, the celebrity death hoax is not new (see Charlie Chaplin or Paul McCartney). But it has become a psychological lubricant that has primed and helped more serious hoaxes glide toward intended targets.
The fake news line between, say, “Adam Sandler killed himself” and “this pizzeria is ground zero for a child sex ring run by the Democratic Party” is not as blurry as it may seem at first. Put it this way: the president of the United States is now a leading consumer and spreader of conspiracies.
The real conspiracy is that this death hoax holds Avril in incredibly high regard, implying as it does that a career on life support a few years ago is still somehow crucial to the health of the music business.
Why her? Why not hire doppelgangers for Prince, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain or any bona fide superstar who is gone. We can live without them but not without the kid from Napanee?
Life has turned into a Nickelback song. vmenon@thestar.ca