Not everyone is willing to be charitable as Perez Hilton endures a public crisis

By CNN Newsource

Published August 7, 2026 9:39 am

By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN

(CNN) — It was easier to forget Perez Hilton’s past until this week, when what a statement from his family described as a “severe mental health crisis” played out live on TikTok. That landed the once-prominent celebrity gossip blogger in the kind of headlines he made a career out of publishing himself.

As his family asks for the kind of privacy he’s rarely afforded others, his participation in — and creation of — the cruel celebrity culture of the early aughts is on people’s minds.

Hilton rose to fame in the early 2000s after launching an eponymous blog as famous for its bubblegum pink motif as it was its crude tone and lack of anything resembling journalistic ethics. Celebrities who became his fodder were shamed, assigned insulting nicknames and at times had their photos altered, with Microsoft Paint-style drawings of penises placed near their faces. Starlets like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan were among his frequent targets at the height of their own troubles, including as they went through their own very public mental health crises. Hilton, who is gay, at times also made a sport out of speculating about people’s sexuality, including some that later came out publicly.

It was foul but influential, one of the most widely read celebrity gossip blogs, peaking around 2009 when it reportedly garnered 14 million pageviews on Oscar night alone.

It was the exact ugly brand of tabloid culture that essentially took a whole online generation to dismantle, even if its spirit hasn’t completely gone away and has resurfaced in other forms.

Ireland Baldwin, daughter of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, this week joined the polarized chorus of people who recognize Hilton’s present-day struggle while being unwilling to forget the past.

“Perez Hilton has publicly humiliated my family for years, sexualized me from a young age, commented on my weight and body (as a child),” Baldwin said on Instagram on Wednesday, saying that he has “always been a despicable human being.”

“His children deserve better and a healthy father,” she added. (A representative for the actress did not return CNN’s request for further comment.)

Perez and his ‘regrets’

Hilton’s public-facing persona took a turn after he became a father in 2013, several years after his website’s peak.

The rise of social media and a changing internet culture around the early 2010s began the downturn of Hilton’s brand of insult gossip. Around the same time, he faced backlash for voicing support for the It Gets Better movement, which was started after multiple teenagers took their own lives that year after being bullied for their sexuality, with his skeptics calling out the hypocrisy of his support.

His blog being markedly less relevant spurred Hilton into a rebrand of sorts. In 2010, he said on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” that he was going to do things differently than he had in the past.

“I’m not going to call people nasty nicknames. I’m not going to go the mean route. I’m going to force myself to be funnier or smarter…not out people,” he said.

By August of 2013, the site reportedly drew just over 4 million unique visitors in just one month.

He again expressed regret for the “cruel” nicknames and for “outing” celebrities in his 2020 biography “TMI: My Life in Scandal,” writing that he no longer believed in those actions.

Hilton seemed in recent months to be grappling with how much he’d hurt people, saying again during an interview this summer that he had a “lot of regrets” and had made attempts to make amends with some of his targets like Spears and Neil Patrick Harris.

“I realized what I was doing was wrong,” Hilton said on Sean Hannity’s “Hang Out” podcast, released after his hospitalization but recorded weeks prior. “And that I could still be fun but I don’t have to be so cheap and I don’t have to be so cruel. It was cruel and that’s something that I carry with me.”

“It’s like my scarlet letter,” he said. “It’s very heavy baggage.”

He’s also gone through personal trials. In March, he said he was hospitalized for 21 days after an ulcer led to severe sepsis. He was later re-admitted to the hospital with a blood clot.

He’d recently relocated to Florida to be closer to his family, he said.

Then, on Tuesday, alarm was raised when police confirmed to CNN they had responded to the incident after multiple calls about the graphic scene taking place in very public fashion.

The video was later taken down and his TikTok account banned.

Adrianne Curry-Rhode, who won the first season of “America’s Next Top Model” in 2003, on Thursday had words of grace to offer Hilton, whom, she reminded her followers, had previously “targeted” and “harassed” her.

“I think, sometimes, that’s what it takes — not your friends rallying around you, but people who should hate you saying, ‘Hey, your life has value. Don’t do this,’” she said.

Hilton’s family has released statements on his website since he was hospitalized. In their latest communication, they said that Hilton’s three children, niece and sister were all in his home at the time of the ordeal and that they “immediately fled to protect the children from witnessing any further trauma.”

“For the children’s safety, privacy, and well-being, we respectfully ask members of the media, paparazzi, content creators, and the public to leave the area surrounding the family’s home and not return,” the statement said. “Please allow his children the privacy and space they need during this unimaginably difficult time.”