No, Hilary Duff is Not a Sex Trafficker, You Lunatics

I swear to god conspiracy theories used to be fun. I used to be really interested in them; things like Sasquatch, Nessie, black helicopters, the Illuminati, Roswell, faking the moon landing, they were fun. I never really believed them, there can’t be a large unknown creature in Loch Ness and there are provably man-made objects on the moon out there by astronauts, after all. It was always a bit of fun harmless fun to read about them and use them as the basis for a story or a game; that’s how we got Men in Black after all.

The conspiracy theories we have today in 2020, however, are much less fun. Most of them revolve around QAnon, a conspiracy that says Donald Trump is secretly bringing an international pedophile ring to justice.

There is a hint of truth because there are some powerful and famous pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein, someone with ties to Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and other powerful people. And there have been a number of high-profile Hollywood executives who have abused their positions for sex, like Harvey Weinstein that had influence with politicians.

At the end of the day, however, there isn’t a cabal of pedophiles that every powerful or influential person is involved with, and Donald Trump certainly isn’t secretly bringing them to justice.

The latest permutation of this conspiracy is accusing Hilary Duff, of all people, of being a sex trafficker. The basis for this allegation is she once showed a bunch of pictures of her son and one of them was a baby picture of him without his diaper on. You know, a completely normal and non-sexual thing parents do so they have something to embarrass their kids with when they bring the people they’re dating to meet their parents.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins explained on Twitter that this was trending because people were playing the algorithms Twitter and YouTube use to promote content.

QAnon's latest celebrity they're randomly accusing child trafficking is Hilary Duff, based on a 2017 Instagram post.

Her name's trending on Twitter. When you search her name on YouTube, you get a video from "Q News Corner."

Standard algorithm hacking of Twitter and YouTube. pic.twitter.com/R6Y4KSXKU9

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) May 23, 2020

The main reason Duff was trending on Twitter appeared to be people responding to how insane the entire conspiracy is, and Duff herself tweeted about it.

Everyone bored af right now I know..but this is actually disgusting….. whoever dreamed this one up and put this garbage into the universe should take a break from their damn phone. Maybe get a hobby

— Hilary Duff (@HilaryDuff) May 23, 2020

The reason these conspiracies aren’t fun like the old ones were fun, and are, as mentioned by Ben Collins, reminiscent of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, is that people take them seriously and do stupid things. More than one parent in a custody dispute has used these conspiracy theorists as armed muscle to kidnap their children, among other incidents.

I miss the days of David Icke, when people would be claiming Hilary Duff was a lizard person from another dimension. That was some conspiracy theorizing we could all have a good laugh at.