About

Fake Celebrity Scam Messages refers to screenshots and photoshops of fake DMs and text messages that appear to have been sent by celebrities looking for money or a piece of personal information from the message recipient. Many of the memes feature the celebrity repeating a notable catchphrase attributed to them in a second message sent after the scam attempt as if to prove they're real. One of the earliest examples of the meme is a scam by rapper DaBaby posted to Reddit in 2021, becoming an increasingly popular format over the following years.

Origin

On March 8th, 2021, Redditor u/xXBdawg77Xx posted a screenshot to /r/scams^[1] titled "Real dababy" depicting a scam DM from someone posing as the rapper DaBaby asking for their social security number, garnering over 2,000 upvotes in three years (shown below).

Spread

Memes using a similar format became increasingly popular over the following years. On July 23rd, 2021, a similar meme about Michael Jackson was posted to iFunny,^[2] garnering over 32,000 smiles in three years. An expanded version of the same meme was posted to /r/facepalm^[3] the next day, garnering over 5,600 upvotes in the same span of time (shown below).

On October 17th, a version of the meme about Lady Gaga was posted to /r/Scams,^[4] garnering over 2,600 upvotes in three years (shown below, left). On September 19th, 2022, a version of the meme featuring a message from the deceased Queen Elizabeth II was posted to /r/facepalm.^[5] garnering over 90,000 upvotes in two years (shown below, right).

On April 21st, 2024, Instagram^[6] user neoliberalhell posted a version of the meme featuring a DM from actor Timothée Chalamet asking for money to film the next Dune movie, garnering over 4,500 likes in two weeks (shown below). That day it was reposted to /r/okbuddycinephile,^[7] garnering over 1,200 upvotes in the same span of time.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References