If you happened to stop by Twitter recently, you may have nearly had a heart attack when you stumbled upon the trending hashtag #RIPEllen.
But fear not, Ellen DeGeneres is alive and well, living her best quarantine life inside of her $24 million California mansion, remotely interviewing celebs for The Ellen Show .
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But for a split second, we were all panicking. The good news is that the hoax has left behind a trail of hilarious memes!
Hey, so, good news: Ellen DeGeneres is *not* dead.
I repeat, Ellen DeGeneres is fully alive and well. But based on a recent trending hashtag, #RIPEllen, you may have been under the impression that that was not the case.
Thankfully, the whole thing was a hoax!
To save you the hassle of investigating the furthest reaches of Twitter, trying to find an explanation for this whole mess, I’ve done it for you!
Long story short, according to the New York Post , the hashtag originated from the rumor that The Ellen Show is being cancelled.
Things have sort of spiralled for Ellen since she declared her friendship with George W. Bush, and awkwardly got called out by Dakota Johnson for missing her birthday party.
Evidently, the last 365 days haven’t been great for Ellen’s reputation.
In October 2019, if you happened to be watching a certain Dallas Cowboys vs. Greenbay Packers game, you may have spotted Ellen and her wife sitting right next to former president, George W. Bush and his wife.
For obvious reasons, this was not a sight anyone expected to see.
Unfortunately, for Ellen, this resulted in an overwhelming amount of backlash.
For the most part, fans seemed frustrated that she could seem so friendly with somebody she knowingly has such different values than.
It’s no secret that their political views are deeply divided.
The backlash from fans did not go unnoticed and it didn’t take long for Ellen to address the complaints on her show.
“So, I want to talk about something that happened this weekend,” she began . “This weekend I went to Dallas for the Cowboys game.”
“It may not seem like a big deal for a celebrity to attend a football game — but uh — I never leave my house, so, it is a big deal,” she joked.
“So, there were 100,000 people in this stadium — beautiful stadium by the way. Portia and I were invited by Charlotte Jones. She is the daughter of Jerry Jones, who owns the Dallas Cowboys. “
“So anyway, we get to sit in this very fancy suite, ’cause you know, he owns the whole place. His suite is fancy and he’s got fancy friends.”
“I took a video of who was next to me,” she said before playing a clip of George Bush smiling in the seat next to her. “When we were invited, I was aware that I was going to be surrounded by people with very different views and beliefs. “
“During the game, they showed a shot of George and me laughing together, and uh — people were upset,” she continued.
“They thought ‘Why is a gay Hollywood liberal sitting next to a conservative republican president?’ Here’s the thing,” she went on. “I’m friends with George Bush. In fact, I’m friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs that I have.”
“We’re all different and I think that we’ve forgotten that that’s okay — that we’re all different .”
“But just because I don’t agree with someone on everything doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be friends with them,” she concluded.
Fans and fellow celebrities alike did not respond well to Ellen’s statement . Quite frankly, I’m surprised cancel-culture didn’t come for her over this.
Things got worse for Ellen when rumors started circulating that she isn’t as friendly IRL as she is on her show after Dakota Johnson called her out for knowingly ditching her birthday party and then pretending like she never got an invitation.
The clip went viral and fans quickly sided with Dakota.
ANYWAYS, all that to say, there was some speculation that *The Ellen Show* might be cancelled, and thus the #RIPEllen hashtag was born.
It didn’t take long before the hashtag was twisted out of context and taken quite literally, however.
Fans really thought she might be dead.
The hoax was quickly debunked, and instead, replaced with hilarious memes of people who (somewhat) resemble Ellen, with jokingly heartfelt messages — acting as though she did die.
This person shared a photo of Niall Horan, asking if the year 2020 could be any worse.
I just choked. This is too funny.
Another person shared these two photos of Pete Davidson from back when he had bleached his hair.
The era of his and Ariana Grande’s love. (Lowkey, I kind of miss them together).
What a time to be alive.
So, there you have it. Ellen is alive, there are rumors her show may be cancelled, and everyone seems to think that Niall Horan kinda looks like her.
Let us know what you think of the latest hoax, suggesting that Ellen Degeneres died, in the comments below!