Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Rise of Celebrity Clone Conspiracies w/ Will Sommer

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Why Does The Internet Think Every Famous Person Is A Clone? The Jim Carrey Clone Conspiracy ExplainedSupport my independent journalism:🙏 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/taylorlorenz     🗞��� Buy a paid subscription to my Substack: https://www.usermag.co    After his appearance at the Cesar Awards in Paris, the internet exploded with a bizarre theory: Jim Carrey had been replaced by a clone or body double. TikTok, X, and conspiracy communities are convinced something is off, from his face to his mannerisms. But it's not just him. A week after the Jim Carrey conspiracy went viral, people began claiming Benjamin Netanyahu was a clone or had a body double. Will Sommer is a reporter at The Bulwark and author of the False Flag newsletter. He joins me to break down the Jim Carrey clone conspiracy theories, the rise of celebrity clone conspiracy theories in our culture, how crowdsourced AI driven investigations are fueling them, and what exactly is making half the internet so convinced that major figures in Hollywood, media and politics are secret body doubles.  From Paul McCartney’s “Paul is dead” rumor to Avril Lavigne’s alleged double, to modern TikTok investigations we dive into:How social media fuels conspiracy theoriesWhy aging celebrities trigger these reactionsThe role of AI The psychology behind viral conspiraciesFollow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz      https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0     https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social  https://twitter.com/taylorlorenz 

Yeah, you know what, actually, like, you are right. That is wrong. That shouldn't be how the country's run. And then he goes, and then I realized it was the elites that did it. And then he joined a QAnon cult in the desert run by a guy named Baby Cue. On February 26th, one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces walked the red carpet in Paris. The actor Jim Carrey was attending the Caesar Awards in France, where he received an honorary award, which is basically the French equivalent of the Oscars.

But almost immediately after his appearance, Photos and videos of him at the event hit the internet and thousands of people on TikTok and X decided that the Jim Carrey who walked the red carpet at the Caesar Awards wasn't actually Jim Carrey. Will Somer is a reporter at the bulwark and author of the false flagged newsletter. Today he's joining me to break down the Jim Carrey clone conspiracy. Talk about the rise of celebrity clone conspiracies in culture. how crowdsourced AI investigations are fueling them? And what exactly is making half the internet so convinced that major figures in Hollywood, media, and politics

are secretly body doubles? Will, welcome to Power User. Thanks for having me. All right, so I want to unpack this Jim Carrey conspiracy because there are people in my life that would not believe it when I was telling them, guys, this was actually Jim Carrey. So let's back up and talk about, you know, kind of what he was doing in France. So Jim Carrey was showing up to the Caesar Awards, which I had never

heard of, but apparently they're like the French equivalent of the Oscars. This was a big moment for him. He has had obviously this very storied career in Hollywood, and he actually spent months practicing his acceptance speech for this award show in French, which he delivered in front of his family. But before he took the stage that night, he walked the red carpet. Yeah, I mean, he looked, I would say, a bit different. You know, I think if you showed someone a picture of this person, they'd say, oh, is that Jim Carrey? He clearly, I would say, I think it's fair to say, has had some work done.

He's kind of been out of the public eye for a little bit. And this sparked all of these conspiracy theories that it's a body double or a clone, that this isn't the Jim Carrey we know from Ace Ventura and liar, liar, that this is some kind of, you know, Jim Carrey doppelganger. I mean, his face looked a little bit fuller. He had a little bit longer hair.

There were some photos where his eyes appeared to be a different color, which I have to tell you, I have heterochromia. And depending on the photo, my eyes look, brown or green. I don't think this is like some crazy thing. I think this is how flash photography often works. People were also claiming that, you know, oh, he's signing autographs with his right hand, but he's actually left-handed, but actually it turns out there's tons of photos online of him signing with his right hand. But still, as you mentioned, like this kind of set off this wave of conspiracies. I mean, this was all over TikTok. And I even saw people on X claiming that Jim Carrey was cloned

and killed by Satanists. Wow. Well, they got him finally at long last. The truth. which is Satan has been after Jim Carrey. I mean, I think it's an interesting situation. I mean, I feel like there's this for and we'll explore it, but there's this kind of like primal instinct, at least in our modern world, to assume someone is a clone, you know, if they look a bit different. I mean, I think the reality here is that this is kind of the power

of contemporary plastic surgery. I mean, I was reading an article, you know, speculating on what kinds of plastic surgery Jim Carrey has had recently, perhaps something with the eye reshaping, maybe an eyebrow lift, and kind of that, maybe that deep plain face. And so I think that perhaps is, you know, to me, Occam's razor would suggest plastic surgery rather than a clone. But as you said, I mean, this really took off.

I want to educate people a little bit on the rise of celebrity clone conspiracies because this is not a new thing. But I think the Jim Carrey example is a really good one in terms of sort of digging into how it's manifesting currently on the internet and kind of like what it says about politics. But even back in the 1960s, they had this sort of well-known conspiracy back then called Paul is dead. It was about Paul McCartney and there was, I guess, some sort of conspiracy theory about, you know, they had secretly replaced him. It was pretty fringe and kind of ironic. It sounds like the one that I was most familiar with being a millennial, which was came a little bit later, kind of around the early social media days was Avril Levine conspiracy. Do you remember this one? Yes, I do.

Avril estamuerta. Yes. Yeah. It claimed that she secretly died in 2003 and was replaced by a lookalike called Melissa Vandela. This conspiracy kind of got traction with the rise of early blogging. Somebody posted this on a Brazilian blog, and it kind of just spread through internet forums. And it was just an early example of, like, I think people feeding into conspiracy culture. Yeah, I mean, you know, the Averill Levine thing is interesting because it was sort of initially a, it was like very openly a hoax that someone said, you know, I'm going to create this fake conspiracy theory.

Ryan Broderick has written about this. And then it sort of spun out from there. What is it that people want to believe in clones? I'm not sure. I think it was like a meme kind of thing. Like you said, it was mostly ironic. I think there's a lot feeding these desires, like this feeling of knowing a celebrity.

Also just like there is this idea that celebrities should never age. You know, the celebrity's supposed to look the same when they start to look different. When they, you know, get old like Jim Carrey, it's like, who is this person? Is this the person that I knew for my childhood? When I really started to notice sort of deeper

proliferation of replacement conspiracies online. I feel like it was more in the late 2010s with the rise of Q&ONON. Yes. And this is where I come in. You know, as soon as you asked me to come on and talk about body doubles, I mean, I thought about Q&ON, where body doubles, I think, rhetorically, can serve a lot of uses. And in the case of Q&ON, you know, QAnon starts in October 2017. And it's big prediction. The reason it blows up initially on 4chan is Q says Hillary Clinton's going to be arrested by the end of the month. Obviously, I was about two weeks. It didn't happen. And So you might say, okay, well, QAnon's over, I guess, before it could even start because Hillary Clinton's still doing book signings or what have you. But instead, Q&M believers said, well, you know, maybe her pants leg looks a little larger because she has an ankle monitor on.

She was sent to prison. Or the one that really caught on was that this was actually clone Hillary Clinton or a body double. And the real Hillary Clinton was in Guantanamo Bay. And from there, it spun out, you know, because you might say, well, the whole point of really QAnon was that Trump would go to office and arrest all these deep state pedophiles, the cannibals. people, you know, and Tom Hanks, for example, Oprah, then, you know, frustratingly for QN unbelievers, those people were clearly still in the world. And so the clones offered them a way to rationalize that to say, yes, you know, it may look like Tom Hanks is still out and about, but in fact, that's his body double.

Yeah, the Tom Hanks one was pervasive. I think also because, like, he had had this like brother that was, that had done like stunt work for him or something. And so people were just like pulling every little bit of thread. I mean, Oprah, it was also just like every political leader. Like it kind of, I feel like gave people this idea of like there's this secret clone government maybe and like clone Hollywood where like no one is who they seem. And this does seem to kind of like arise alongside algorithmic social media platforms.

And like, I mean, you mentioned cosmetic surgery. Like the second half of the 2010s is also like when we're seeing people kind of alter their looks in increasingly kind of invasive ways. like, you know, Botox is becoming normalized fillers. This is like the filler boom is like happening right at the same time. And I just feel like fillers can like dramatically distort these celebrities' faces as well. But this is all like evidence of, yeah, some like sort of clone world that we're all living in. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right on about, you know, injectables, if you will.

I mean, I feel like every so often there's a celebrity, I feel like Kelly Osborne being the most recent one where people say like, you know, particularly someone who's like not in front of a TV every day or putting out three movies a year, but this person kind of disappears. they get some work done, and then they reappear, and you go, whoa, you know, or you say, who do you think this is? You know, and it's, it's not what you expect. And so I think that that feeds into the clones. I mean, I think there, the cloning is funny because, you know, with some of these conspiracy theories, they often grow from a kernel of truth. Like, for example, in the case of QAnon, obviously, Jeffrey Epstein, that was a real thing. I mean, there are, you know, or there are

powerful people who have abused children in the past, and there are networks that protect them. However, in the case of cloning, it's a funny one, because I feel like we'd have to look back to, like the man in the iron mask or something. Saddam Hussein use of body doubles. It's not one that we've really seen proven in real life. Yeah, it's also just like, I'm interested kind of like who they choose to wrap up in their conspiracies. I mean, even like it looks like Reuters had to do a fact check on Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson saying like, no, these are the real Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson's. Like these are not, you know, body doubles or whatever.

I think it's revealing kind of like which celebrities we place these conspiracies on and and who we don't. And I'm curious if you have any insight just in your own coverage and kind of like who often gets wrapped up in these narratives. You know, it's interesting. I feel like it's very, you know, in some ways I want to say almost like iconic celebrities. But maybe that's just because that's the ones people are most interested in. Like, I feel like you don't see this about like the situation from Jersey Shore, like kind of like a B tier celebrity or something. But you do see it about like Jamie Fox, for example, or Kanye West, both of whom have sort of addressed. They've said, I'm not a clone. I'm real. Which, of course, is exactly what a clone would say.

But, you know, the, we see this kind of over and over. And as you said, I mean, Paul McCartney, for example, you know, even going back decades, I mean, these kind of real, like, mega star figures. I do think you were onto something when you mentioned that it's kind of this like, perhaps a fear of our own mortality to say, you know, it's like that meme with the crying frog. And he's saying, I don't want Jim Carrey to get old, you know? I mean, it's this sense of like, well, if that's what I remember Jim Carrey in his 30s when I was a little kid, you know, watching Ace Ventura or what have you.

And now, gosh, if that, if this guy is old enough, He's in his 60s. He feels like he has to get all this work done. What does that say about me? More likely, it's a clone. I think of actually one that I saw this week that I just texted you, which is the Lenny Kravitz conspiracy. Basically, I think like along with fear of aging, it's also kind of like there are questions about how celebrities don't age. Like Chris Jenner, you know, was subject to some of this stuff too. But Lenny Kravitz was pictured with his shirt off on stage. Somebody tweeted a picture and said, how is Lenny Kravitz 61 years old and still looking like this? And somebody says, because 601, one isn't old. We're just brainwashed into believing it is. People should be in their absolute prime in their 60s. First of all, I hope we all reach our prime in our 60s. Someone replies, yes, but that's not the original Kravitz. And somebody said, looks like him, but who knows? And this woman replies, I think it's a rapid clone like President Biden, current Jim Carrey,

and thousands of others in entertainment politics and media. They can transfer the memories and even tinker with the original DNA. It's sinister. I think it's interesting because it's like in some In cases, celebrities look so bad that you're like, wait, that must be a clone. And then in this case, and in Chris Jenner's case, and in other cases, like, celebrities with all their access to wealth and anti-aging technology and plastic surgery actually look really good. And then that's also evidence that they're a clone. Yeah.

I mean, when things are packaged in, like, I guess, like a TikTok video, I feel like this stuff has really thrived in the world of short-worm video. You know, it reminds me of when people would say Stevie Wonder isn't blind, right? And then you see a video where he appears to see the mic stands falling in catch it. Now, look, I can't explain that. It's a little intriguing to me. How did he do that? But, you know, I feel like these things that when you package them and just say, look, look at the short video, go, okay, maybe. You know, I mean, I feel like it's the kind of thing people can make a compelling case for. Yeah, I wrote a piece last week for Vanity Fair, actually, about the Epstein conspiracy on

TikTok and how it's become so compelling to people because it's this sort of like broad, crowdsourced participatory kind of investigation that everyone can kind of like comb through images and videos and, like, you know, create their own kind of narratives around. And to me, these clone conspiracies are kind of like that, where there just needs to be a spark, right? It just needs to be someone posting, hey, Lenny Kravitz, I think he's a clone. Or Jim Carrey, I think he's a clone. And it also, it sort of like sets into motion this, like, machine of like crowdsourced investigators on like pop culture, TikTok and Twitter, et cetera, that just like immediately start combing through, you know, through sort of through old archival footage,

like photos, et cetera. And I think it's interesting. you mentioned that it's primarily like boomer people like these are celebrities that honestly only boomers know about or not only boomers but like jim carey it's like he is this he's from the 90s right and i i wonder if that's because most of them are kind of elusive and because there isn't sort of like definitive proof otherwise like i mean with somebody like ariana grande or something right like she's so documented and she's so current and she's so kind of present that these clone conspiracies don't arise like the switch never happens i guess but like with these other people it's like they're going away for a while, they're coming back.

They're not, oh, you know, they're A-Lister's. They're inherently a little bit more reclusive than, like, young social media stars and internet stars that have to be online all day. Yeah, I mean, I think there is something to the fact that, like, life is long, but it seems like entertainment careers, even for A-Lister, someone like Jim Carrey, I mean, when was last time you made a movie? I think people have trouble matching the fact that, like, if you're really famous in the 90s, like, Jim Carrey was, like, the biggest star there was.

That doesn't necessarily mean you'll make movies forever. And so then when these people kind of fade away and are just, like, living rich Hollywood lives, people go, maybe they got cloned. What have they been up to? You know, it, why am I not seeing this person? In particular, you know, I think you kind of hit on this. It is a time where the celebrities who are hot, we see constantly. We see they're posting on Instagram. They're getting pap. I mean, they are more available and more, the content is more present than ever. Whereas these other celebrities who kind of pass their prime, we aren't seeing as much. And I think that that opens up people to say, well, why don't we see them as much? Oh, it can't

be that, you know, this is the lifespan. This is mortality. You know, you know, you know, And nothing is permanent. It must be the cloning factory. Well, also it's like, I thought it was, you know, interesting the way that Jim Carrey responded. Like he responded with a statement through his publicist instead of just like hopping on Instagram or whatever. And so this, of course, like just sort of validates a lot of these people's delusions.

You know, I think that this reply by this one woman that I was mentioning before, you know, talking about Jim Carrey, letting Kravitz, et cetera. I think it's interesting she mentions that it's sort of like entertainment, politics, and media people that are all being cloned. And I think maybe of with that. the Epstein stuff too. Really, this is something that Trump gave rise to is this idea of, like, the deep state and the idea that there is this access of power in entertainment, politics, and media, which is true, right? These are major centers of power in America, but the idea that

they're all kind of like working together and that they can like take out anyone they want as that's like a dissenter and kind of like immediately, you know, replace them with a clone or steal they're doing DNA and plant their memories, et cetera. Well, we all know, you know, the center of the deep state is the Caesar Awards in Paris. That's where they show. go off their power and they unveil their clones. I mean, you know, you hit on something here with politics, which is I think often this clone stuff can emerge when a public figure sort of takes a very oppositional stance to how they were once viewed.

And so Kanye West, for example, when he started saying, I love Trump or in particular when he's like, I love Hitler, that was kind of fueled a lot of the clone stuff. Or in the case of John Federman, this Pennsylvania senator who has faced a lot of clone allegations. I mean, he had the stroke. You know, he suddenly starts maybe dressing differently. He starts, you know, being this very conservative guy. He had to come out and say, I'm not a clone. And so I think we see, I just love saying the word clone.

Isn't that fun? I feel like it just is like Klondike bar. It just hits so good. I think also one of the most prominent body double conspiracy theories catching hold today is also the Melania Trump body double conspiracy. Yeah, I mean, this is kind of like maybe one of the biggest ones out there, this idea that this dates back to, you know, the first Trump administration, that Melania, when we see here at public events, particularly with Trump, that it's a clone or it's a clone or it's

body double. And I will say, you know, she hasn't done much to dispel it because often, you know, she dresses like someone who's trying to dress up as someone else, right? She wears giant sunglasses, like a big hat, you know, and, you know, there are somewhere you kind of look at and you go, you know, I'm sure it's not a body devil, but you look at it and you go, that can't really be Melania. You know, that looks like a totally different person. And I think, you know, if we get to the bottom of it, what is the desire here? Perhaps for Democrats, it's the sense of like, you know, Trump can't be all bad if someone loves him or what have you. But if you assume that Melania is refusing to appear with Trump or whatever and he's got to

bring out this body double, I think it's kind of flattering to your politics. Yes. It is very kind of like, blue and on. Like, I don't know, like people just being like, yeah, like there's no way that Trump has this wife. Like it's, yeah, she's she, she's secretly resisting him. She's a secret sort of resistor. And it's like, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, it kind of like, like pictures of her like giving Trump the side eye or somebody. people like, oh, she hates them. Yeah, they wish. It's so interesting to see kind of, yeah, who gets hit with the clone allegations.

I think it's also just like there is this like fear about the sort of tech elite in this country in Silicon Valley. I mean, I've covered, we both have a lot of these people's weird beliefs. People like Peter Thiel are, you know, I guess implanting plasma or blood, you know, from his teenage son. You also have people like Brian Johnson that are doing these sort of body experiments and a lot of them have spoken about up their minds to AI and like, you know, living in the cloud forever, et cetera. And so I feel like this technology, it's being positioned as inevitable or like sort of something Silicon Valley is all working towards. And so people see it and they kind of think, well,

maybe the elites already have access to this, right? Like these technologies, especially with the rise of AI, like seem closer than ever. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, on one hand, I've been meaning to say, you know, this is sort of a time where if you really believe in this clone stuff, are you like just totally divorced from reality? On the other hand, as you say, I mean, there is all this kind of crazy biotech stuff. There is this sense. particularly among the elite, which I think the celebrities we're talking about would be included in. There's the sense that they are like playing with God or trying to do a singularity thing where they become, you know, put their personalities and robots or what have you. So I think perhaps that's why it seems more possible than before.

It is true that celebrities have access to better, you know, anti-aging tools, plastic surgery, medicine, et cetera. And I mean, some of these conspiracies are very intertwined with that as well. It's like, how is this person living so long? How does this person look so good? I'm sure you're familiar with like the medbed conspiracy. Well, you know, last year Donald Trump promised, you know, he posted a video saying he's going to open medbed hospitals across the country. So med beds are this kind of fictional idea that basically there's going to be like a tanning

bed, maybe of alien origin, that you get in and it'll cure all your ailments. And so this is popular with Q&on people. It's kind of, you know, you figures into various conspiracy theories. But it's kind of this idea of this technology that maybe only the rich have access to that Basically, if you're old, if you're sick, it's going to resolve it. And it's being held back by the cabal. And so that kind of plays into things like Q&M. I mean, it kind of feeds into like the clone stuff too.

Sometimes people will be like, oh, the clone is out because the real so-and-so is getting treatment somewhere. You know, he's, yeah, he's going through his medbed regiment or he's going, who knows, you know, getting upgraded his mind. Adrenachrome. Right, right, exactly. And adrenachrome was, was that the stuff they were harvesting from babies? Yeah, you scare a child.

Well, people may recall this is also the plot of Monsters Inc. But basically, you know, they believe that, you know, in Q&ON that if you, you know, abuse a child in like a satanic ritual, like Huma Abidon and Hillary Clinton at Pizza Gate or whatever, that then it produces the substance called adrenachrome, you drink it, and you stay alive for a longer. So I do think this all kind of ties into like biotech body conspiracy theories. And so, you know, we're talking about COVID, Tom Hanks. I mean, when these celebrities kind of receded from public life at kind of like high COVID,

People would say, you know, oh, they're looking worse. Ellen looks bad because she's, you know, not getting her adrener chrome COVID disrupted the supply. Well, perhaps it's because she doesn't have a team of makeup artists or something to do her show. But, I mean, there is like a lot. It all kind of operates in this kind of hazy world. Yeah, I forgot about that when it was like early pandemic. And these celebrities had to go on Instagram and stuff. And people were like, oh, it is a clone.

It's a, yeah, it's a, yeah, she missed her adrenochrome shot. And not it's like, no, she just doesn't have her, you know, hair and makeup person. Speaking of makeup artists, we had one toxic makeup artist and drag queen enter into the fray with the Jim Carrey conspiracy, Alexis Stone, who is a really famous makeup artist and drag queen, who's very well known for impersonating famous figures, so he'll do himself up to look like,

people like Miranda Priestley or others. He posted a photo of a prosphetic face that sort of resembled Jim Carrey and captioned it Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey at the Caesar Awards. And basically, he was suggesting on his Instagram stories, that actually it was him at the Caesar Awards, and he had created this prosthetic face and, you know,

fake teeth, et cetera, to look like him. A lot of people were like, hey, this looks kind of AI. And he kind of liked some of the comments, acknowledging that some of it might have been AI. But even like celebrities were getting involved. Megan Fox commented, I can't handle any more stress right now. I need to know if this is real Lisa Renowadeen. And some of them were also like feeding the idea

that Alexis was Jim Carrey. And to me, this is just an example of like, once these conspiracy theories, spread because they're generating so much viral attention, you immediately have people kind of like hopping on to validate the conspiracy theories or insert themselves into the clone conspiracies, really just to kind of siphon off some of that viral, you know, attention. Oh, totally. I mean, you know, whenever there's sort of something in the news and this is something we see recurrently, it'll be someone who's saying, you know, oh, I was actually DMing with that person

or, you know, whatever. And then, you know, by the way, here's a link to my, my only fans or, you know, there are these various people who kind of try to hop onto it. I'll tell you what, that Alexis Stone thing. I thought that was pretty convincing. I was kind of scrolling and I saw that for a second. I thought, really? You know, and I thought actually Jim Carrey might want to consider this because that would be a pretty funny gag to send a body double at this point. Yeah.

And to me, like, it made me so sad when I heard about like just the way that Jim Carrey also had prepared for this speech for so long. And like you said, he doesn't really do a lot of public appearances. And it's like, imagine you just like, you know, you did a lot of great movies. You're living at home. You're chilling. You're having a great life with your family. You know, you venture out for this one award show that you prepared for months that you're really honored. And then the entire internet is just like dragging your appearance and you have some makeup artists like clout chasing you, you know, claiming that you're not real.

Like it just, I don't know, it broke my heart for him a little bit. Yeah, I think from a personal point of view, kind of looking at him, I mean, he's clearly like, I think if we assume he had some plastic surgery, he's probably been kind of recuperating. And now it's like, now it's time to debut my new face. And it's going great. And he's talking to the press. And he's like, they're loving. Meanwhile, everyone's saying, that's a clone. That's a clone right there.

You know, that guy doesn't look like that. Yeah. And I hate to see it because like some of it is funny and ironic. Like there's a lot of, in addition to clone conspiracies, kind of replacement conspiracies, people believe that like, you know, XYZ celebrity who, you know, supposedly died is actually taking on a different celebrity's identity. And the one that went pretty viral recently was that Rush Limbaugh is actually generally, you know, is actually Jim Morrison. Yes.

What do you make of this? I mean, there is some resemblance there. Well, yeah. So the original viral tweet, which has almost five million views, was posted by an account called Deep Web Slinger. And it's a right-wing account that identifies as a father and a Patriot, has an eagle, you know, avatar. Any posts, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Who really was Rush Limbaugh? Rush Limbaugh suddenly gained significant attention in 1984 as a talk radio. host on KFBK in Sacramento. Jim Morrison, the iconic lead singer of the doors, supposedly died in Paris on July 3rd, 1971 at age 27 with the official cause listed as heart failure. His body supposedly was discovered in a bathtub. No autopsy was performed, fueling all kinds of speculation. Witness protection, you tell me.

And then there's just like all of these like side by side images, you know, of Russia. Limbaugh and Jim Morrison. And I guess like in one instance, it honestly looks like Rush Limbaugh has like a Zit on his face in one photo. And that is kind of being used as evidence because Jim Morrison, I guess, had like a birth mark there. And so they're like, yeah. And they're, you know, when you put it side by side, I guess it kind of, yeah, they look

similar. I mean, I don't know. This is also like an account, by the way that tweets about Barack Obama being a Satan worshipping freemason gay scumbag. And they believe that Michelle Obama. is, you know, a secret man from Africa. So, I mean, this is not some sort of reputable account, but this really took off. You know, it's an interesting theory that Jim Morrison sort of at the height of his fame

would say, you know, I'd like to become Rush Limbaugh. You know, I was famous yet. Who wasn't famous yet? Oh, good. Well, yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. I want to become, you know, this, this like, kind of like local talk radio host. You know, I was a big Rush fan as a kid, big ditto head.

And so I feel like I never caught the sense that it was Jim Morris. But you know what? This isn't the only talk radio, you know, replacement theory. Famously, people believe that Alex Jones was comedian Bill Hicks and sort of transitioned into that role. And, you know, that one, I got to say this Rush one, I feel like the pictures I don't find super convincing. But, you know, this Alex, Bill Hicks one, it kind of is kind of like, okay, like chubby white guy, you know. Like, so, you know, there is a match, though. You know, that one seems a little more believable. Yeah. It's interesting, too, to see this account like tripled down.

And also just other people in the comments kind of believing it immediately. There's one reply that has almost 20,000 views where this person says, there's no argument you can make that can withstand the enormous amount of cognitive dissonance. They will throw out you whenever you try to explain. Basically, they're being like, this is true. This is true. Right. And they say, by saying this, you're saying that no one disappears.

No one goes into hiding. No one's put into witness protection and no one changes identities. Do you even understand what cognitive dissonance is? That's kind of a classic, you know, kind of conspiracy theory defense is to say, you know, let's say QAnon. Okay, so you're saying that, you know, there is no child abuse, something like that. And then, you know, well, you know, it's, I'm not saying that really. But, I mean, there is sort of a, it's a classic, you know, arguing tactic. It's so ridiculous.

And, like, part of me is, like, is this person trolling? It's so hard to tell with the Q&ON crazy accounts because you're like, this must be a bit. Like, this has to be a bit. But then, like, some of the stuff they're posting is so racist that I'm like, okay, I think they're for real. And, you know, it's interesting because, like, like, I've also been watching Bride of Charlie, the Candace Owens conspiracy series on Erica Kirk. And it's interesting to like how much like power people ascribe to elites to kind of like replace or clone or designate someone as, as, you know, like the next, the next powerful, you know, like, you know, we're going to we're going to sort of like put Erica Kirk at this school at this right time to make sure that she eventually meets Charlie and that's going to put her in this position of power, X, Y, Z, whatever. Or like her mother did that or whatever.

You know, like, there's all, again, I don't want to like go too deep into that lore. But I feel like the through line throughout all of these clone conspiracies, replacement conspiracies, you know, the Erica Kirk stuff is this like distrust of power and institutions and media politics in Hollywood. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think often in the United States, people, they can diagnose, like, actual problems. And then their solutions or their explanations of them are just totally crazy. Like, when I talk to people who were into conspiracy theories, they're all, like, it was often someone who, you know, had, like, crushing medical debt or something like that.

Like I talked to a guy, oh, I got laid up because I had this like crazy disease, but I couldn't get disability payments or whatever. And it's like, yeah, you know what? Actually, like, you are right. That is wrong. That shouldn't be how the country's run. And then he goes. And then I realized it was the elites that did it.

And then he joined a QAnon cult in the desert run by a guy named Baby Q. And so, I mean, that like, and, you know, there's often a real thing and it just really veers off. Yeah. And I guess that kind of, I'm like, well, what is the problem with Jim Carrey? Like, is it just that like, we don't trust celebrities? and Hollywood and entertainment, is it like those fears of Silicon Valley and aging and biotech? Or is it just like sadness and like nostalgia for their, you know, their own youth?

Let me throw a theory out for you. So maybe, you know, people talk about how we don't have movie stars anymore. We have these kind of pale limitations. We have Glenn Powell, Sydney, Sweeney, but we don't have, where's the new George Clooney? Where's the new Jim Carrey? And so perhaps people are nostalgic for that. And they have to make stuff up about the old stars of your because we aren't really getting it from this new crop.

Okay. I like that. I think that's an interesting one because you're right. I haven't seen any Sydney Sweeney clone conspiracies, right? Like, I mean, this just goes back to like, why you don't see the influencer conspiracy theories either. I think also just with the rise of AI and generative AI technology, all of this stuff is just going to get so much worse. And not because I think that there's going to be like tons of AI generated deep fakes and stuff. And I do think that like AI image altering, like that'll probably exacerbate this thing.

But I'm talking more for research where it used to take like so much time to go through. through and find, for instance, all the photos of Jim Carrey, you know, signing something with his right hand or left hand or, you know, eye color, whatever. And now people can use AI and these, like, really easy large language models to do huge amounts of like research and analysis. But of course, they have no background in journalism or reporting or data analysis. And so it's just sort of like schizo, you know, searching through documents. But I don't know, it's something I'm noticing with like the Epstein files. And I feel like we could start to see it with these like celebrity investigations. Oh, totally. I think that's really, you know, right on. I mean, when people put

these videos together and they're saying, oh, look, you know, look what Jim Carrey, look, his eyes changed or what have you. I mean, all you could say is just like, you know, hey, AI, like generate a picture of Jim Carrey with blue eyes or whatever you would want. And you just need like a frame or two of that put in with real footage and people totally believe it. Also, like, AI is so good at replicating old footage and like surveillance camera footage, but also like old VHS footage because it's a little bit blurry because it looks a little bit. I saw this. with Michael Jackson where there was some video on Twitter a while ago that was like, I think it's been taken down and I can't remember, but it was obviously like AI generated. It never

happened, but it because it looked so real and old and because people don't always remember stuff that happened. Like, you know, people were like, what is this? What is this? And I saw somebody replying with like the picture of him holding the baby above the balcony and people were like, oh, wait, like, is that AI? And I was like, wait, that's a really famous event. But I guess if you're a zoomer, you don't know. So I don't know. This celebrity news ecosystem, I think, is kind of the bellwether for the broader news ecosystem. And I think as we see these like various ways, it's being polluted, it's like it's only a matter of time.

Yeah, before it comes for like all of politics and yeah, our elections. Yeah, I believe it. I think this stuff is only going to get crazier. Well, Will, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. And thanks to all the regular people and clones for listening. All right. That's it for the show.

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