Hot subpoena summer

OnOn July 1st, Perez Hilton uploaded a YouTube video with breaking news.

“Hello everybody, it is Perez, the queen of all media, the original influencer, and allegedly, I have been subpoenaed by Blake Lively,” Hilton said, stretching out the four syllables in the word “allegedly” as far as they could go. Since the actress sued her It Ends With Us costar Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation at the end of 2024, a certain class of content creators had been eager to weigh in. In her complaint, Lively had alleged that Baldoni’s camp was planting hit pieces about her online. TMZ had just reported that Hilton was one of three influencers Lively had set her sights on. She wanted any conversations he had with Team Baldoni.

While the threat of being pulled into a lawsuit might be anxiety-inducing for most people, it seemed to invigorate Hilton, who opened his response by cackling for six seconds. “I love this,” he squealed. He read out the TMZ headline about his alleged involvement and gasped in faux horror. “But my response,” Hilton said, switching to a syrupy sweet tone, “is thank you.” Hilton laughed again with an affect that made it sound like he stole Christmas. “Nothing would make me happier than taking the witness stand and testifying!”

There was a lot to celebrate in terms of the views and attention to come. Hilton’s name is an infamous one in celebrity gossip — and, if you ask him, journalism. His pseudonym sounds suspiciously like the hotel heiress who fascinated the tabloid media chain in the early aughts, shortly before Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr. (his real name) disrupted the business by launching his own blogging empire, scrawling crude remarks over paparazzi photos, and sending rumors about A- to Z-listers into the social media stratosphere.

He has since fallen out of the center of the viral fame zeitgeist, but not much else has changed for Hilton. If anything, the rest of the world has simply bent back toward the arc of Hilton’s now decades-long career. Open TikTok or Reddit, and there are thousands of everyday people who, like him, revel in spreading news, speculation, and hate on celebrities and influencers. The gossipmonger profit model is bigger than ever, but it’s not dominated by Hilton or any one individual. Instead, the social media platforms are the stars, with algorithms that produce an infinite number of forgettable faces, among them countless news influencers talking about everything from elections to niche hobbyist drama. Increasingly, they’ve embraced the label of journalist despite actively defying journalistic norms.

“Ms. Lively’s opposition recycles rhetoric designed to brand me as an ‘influencer’ rather than acknowledge my well-established role as a journalist, but the law protects my reporting regardless of labels,” Hilton wrote in a filing of support for his motion to quash Lively’s subpoena. He represented himself in court pro se and argued that his reporting on Lively v. Baldoni was protected from legal discovery. Hilton also wrote on Reddit that he used ChatGPT “to help me with my filing [...] And, YES, I made sure there is no ghost law / hallucination / made up cases in what I just submitted to the court in Nevada.”

Lively has sought information pertaining to dozens of content creators — reportedly, more than 100 — through subpoenas, which her counsel also issued to social media platforms like X and YouTube. These subpoenas were wide-ranging. She sought communications and information from people like Hilton and Candace Owens, a right-wing commentator with nearly 7 million followers on X, as well as identifying information regarding X accounts, some with fewer than 100 followers. Owens was also one of the three creators who TMZ first reported were being subpoenaed. The thumbnail for her reaction video on YouTube features her smiling widely, hands clasped below her chin, with the caption “Dreams come true.”

“I never understood what people meant when they referred to Christmas in July until this exact moment,” said Owens, who is also being sued for defamation by the president of France for falsely claiming that his wife is transgender. “I pleaded, I begged, I demanded that I be allowed to partake in this Justin Baldoni lawsuit.”

TheThe final creator of the three, YouTuber Andy Signore, initially took a more solemn tone when addressing the TMZ article and his subpoena. But a couple weeks later, he and several content creators who have sided with Baldoni made special guest appearances at a live show in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by podcaster and frequent Lively v. Baldoni commentator Zack Peter. There, Signore pranked Peter with a fake subpoena, complete with a fake process server arriving to “serve” Peter onstage.

“It was the best prank. Andy got me so good,” Peter said in a podcast afterward.