The Comment Cleanse

On May 4th, I posted a video about the AI-generated "jello diet" that's been circulating online, and I used Kathy Hilton as an example of someone who had shared it. The point of that post was to highlight how sophisticated AI-generated health misinformation has become, how convincing it looks, and how easily it can fool anyone.

But some people missed that entirely. And the comments some made about Kathy were, frankly, ugly.

"She's so dumb." "What do you expect from her?" "Not the sharpest tool in the shed." I read them. I read all of them. And I need to say this clearly: I will not tolerate that on my platforms. Not toward Kathy Hilton, not toward anyone.

Let me give you some context. Kathy and I are Instagram “friends.” We follow each other. We DM each other. We’ve never met in person. She is a real woman reading real comments written by real people who seem to forget that. But even if I had never exchanged a single message with her, my response would be exactly the same, because this isn't about whether I‘m in contact with her. It's about how we treat people.

The entire reason I made that video was to show how good AI-generated content has become at mimicking legitimate health information. It looks real. It cites fake studies that sound real. It uses medical language that sounds authoritative. Kathy Hilton is not "dumb" for believing it. She's human. Millions of people are falling for this kind of content every single day, including people with advanced degrees, including physicians, including, I guarantee you, some of the people who left those comments. The whole point of AI-generated misinformation is that it's designed to be believed. That's what makes it dangerous. If it were obviously fake, we wouldn't need to talk about it.

What pains me most is watching women tear other women down with such ease. Such speed. Such confidence in their own superiority. We do this constantly, and it is one of the most self-defeating patterns I see, not just online but in life. It actually makes me sick to my stomach. We are so quick to call another woman stupid, or vain, or out of touch, as if cruelty is a form of intelligence. It's not. It's just cruelty with a keyboard.

If we can't try to give people the benefit of the doubt, if we can't look at a situation where someone was deceived by deliberately deceptive content and respond with empathy instead of mockery, then we are screwed. I mean that. Because the same grace you refuse to extend to someone else is the grace you will desperately want when you're the one who gets fooled. And you will get fooled. We all will. That's the landscape we're living in now.

I built this platform to inform, not to humiliate. I built it to help women, not to give them a place to perform superiority at another woman's expense. If that's what you're here for, this isn't the right space for you. And for the mean women who lash out at anyone on my platforms, that rudeness will not be tolerated. (Read: you will be blocked, the very first time I notice it.) There’s enough nastiness in the world; I want my platforms to be places of support, positivity, good information, perspective, and occasionally, humor.

I will keep calling out health misinformation. I will keep naming examples when I see them. And I will keep insisting that we can do that without being rude and nasty.

We’re better than those comments. I know we are.

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