All of Usher’s old tweets recently disappeared, fueling rampant speculation that the mass deletion related to his friend and fellow music industry mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs’s arrest on sex trafficking charges
Diddy’s arrest revived right-wing, QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories that the elites in politics and Hollywood are secretly engaged in a massive sex trafficking ring. Right-wingers online have theorized that everyone from Kim Kardashian to Michelle Obama will be taken down alongside Diddy.
What are the Diddy Tapes?
Usher is another top namencirculating, both because of the erasure of his old posts on X and his past ties to Diddy.
Conspiracy theorists made similar claims about singer Pink and actress Megan Fox deleting posts.
“Usher just deleted all of his tweets,” claimed one right-wing poster. “The Diddy tapes are about to send hundreds of celebrities to prison.”
“Usher ‘randomly’ deleting all his tweets a few days after Diddy got arrested,” echoed someone else.
“deleting all yo tweets won’t save you Usher,” wrote another person.
As numerous allegations arose around Diddy this year, culminating in his arrest, an old Usher interview recirculated.
“I got a chance to see some things,” Usher said about his time living with Diddy when he was 13. “I went there to see the lifestyle—and I saw it … I don’t know if I could indulge and understand what I was even looking at. It was pretty wild.”
It does not appear that Diddy’s arrest is related to the disappearance of Usher’s tweets.
“Account got hacked and damn y’all ran with it” Usher wrote Sunday evening, adding that he’d see fans at his Inglewood show that night.
Indeed, Usher’s old posts have begun reappearing, consistent with what happens when X restores a hacked account to its intended owner.
As of Monday morning, over 6,800 posts were once again available on his profile.
Older screenshots and posts indicate the account had been hacked days before Diddy’s arrest on Sept. 16.
According to DailyCoin, the hack involved promoting a fraudulent celebrity memecoin called $USHER.
“Usher’s account was hacked,” wrote one prominent cryptocurrency scam sleuth on Sept. 13, who included a screenshot of the hacker bragging about scamming someone after offering the username for 2 ETH (equivalent to about $4,700).
But the explanation behind the missing posts has done little to quell the conspiracy.
“Nobody’s buying that dude,” reads the top reply to Usher’s post stating he was hacked. “You better find yourself a nice non-extradition island to go to and stay there for a while.”
“Sooooo Usher got ‘hacked’ with 7,100 Tweets. Regained his account two days later with 6,800 Tweets,” wrote someone else. “Yup. Nothing to see here.”
“Usher wants us to believe his account got hacked that’s all the ‘hacker’ did was delete his tweets,” concluded another user. “This is how stupid these ‘stars’ think their fans are. They literally think you’re sheep.”
As for the others, Pink has not been on the platform since February. The accusation prompted even some right-wingers to jump in and defend her.
“Pink deleted all her posts on X in February and left a couple of retweets up that she probably forgot because she was big mad at Elon Musk,” wrote Ian Miles Cheong. “She didn’t just delete them now and it has nothing to do with Diddy.”
Likewise, Fox did not wipe her account in the wake of Diddy’s arrest. Fox left Twitter/X in 2013 and later deleted her Instagram account in May 2024.
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