My heart has not known joy since 2016, when One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson revealed he became a father and fans reacted by starting a conspiracy that baby Freddie Tomlinson, mostly obscured in photographs, was fake. That’s right: rather than celebrate the birth of a child who could very well join a boy band himself someday, or face the reality that Louis is not and has never actually dated Harry Styles, they chose to drop #Babygate on the world. Now that Fred’s three years old, the conspiracy has slowed to a halt, but man, am I happy to see SoundCloud rapper Lil Xan pick up where #Babygate left off. According to BuzzFeed, fans think he and his girlfriend Annie Smith are faking a pregnancy.
Smith, who since partnering with Xan moonlights as a YouTuber, posted a video to her brand new channel titled “FIRST BABY PICTURES!!” In it, she shows her phone to the camera and says, “This is the baby at nine weeks,” swiping through grain-y black and white images. Xan, real name Nicholas Diego Leanos, is seen examining the photos and saying, “Where his dick at?”
Fans have noticed that the ultrasound captures on the phone shown in the YouTube video are exactly the same as those that appear when you Google phrases similar to “9 week ultrasound,” leading many to believe that either a) they are not real ultrasound pictures or b) the pregnancy itself is fake.
Tangential to the conspiracy but hilarious nonetheless: The baby talk in the video is interrupted when Smith starts giving a makeup tutorial halfway through? I don’t know:
I’m not sure why anyone would want to use false ultrasound images—or that they believe they wouldn’t get caught, like, immediately—but content is king on YouTube, and maybe they did it for the vlog?
Smith addressed the rumors (this “negative thing”) to E!:
“When i posted my YouTube video with my ultrasound pictures, a girl (i’m not going to comment on who) photoshopped them with another persons name, year, birthday etc, and uploaded them to Google. I’m honestly really disappointed that we announced it and now this is the rumor floating around...
I’m traveling and stressed at the moment so i think for the baby and myself it’s best to stay in a positive environment. I really am just staying off the internet for the time being because it’s really sad for me to see these things. In my opinion it doesn’t matter what anyone else says it’s a special time between my fiancé and i and like i said we are very happy that’s all that matters.”
She added, “People always give us advice whether we ask for it or not, but we kind of want to figure this out on our own. We’re excited to kind of be able to do it our own style.”
It’s much too early to tell if this will go the same way as the Tomlinson #Babygate, but you better believe I’m invested. The truth is out there.