Let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning: Canadian pop star and embodiment of what it meant to be in teenager in the year 2002 Avril Lavigne is alive. Some people on the internet are saying she’s dead, but they’re either misinformed or deliberately trying to trick you.
The rumor, which my coworker Ashley Feinberg wrote about at length in 2015, is a lot like the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy theory in that it’s about a pop star dying prematurely and being replaced with a lookalike. (It’s also considerably different because I the “Avril is Dead” theory is 100 percent bullshit, and, let’s be honest, Paul really is dead!)
Basically, Lavigne is alleged to have had a friend named Melissa who looked a lot like her, sounded a lot like her, and also thought Chad Kroeger was attractive. After the death of her grandfather in 2003, she is rumored to have died by suicide, only to be replaced by Melissa. In other words, she was in mourning, girl / she said see you later world / and they replaced her with a friend.