Perez Hilton, the gossip blogger whose internet skills made him one of the most powerful voices in Hollywood in the early 2000s — before social media undercut his ability to gatekeep the news — recently suffered a terrible mental health crisis.To the horror of those watching, Hilton livestreamed his own shocking deterioration.His sister, Barbara Lavandeira, told the New York Post that on Aug. 4 she opened the door to her brother’s bathroom and found him “naked, cut up, covered in blood, with a box cutter in his hand.”According to many traumatized viewers who saw what was happening in real time and called police, Hilton, 48, had been broadcasting from his Miami home for at least 15 minutes before TikTok took down his account.On the Perez Hilton website, his family has written that he is in serious but stable condition and faces a long road to recovery.I’ve followed Hilton over the years since I profiled him in 2006, when he was well on his way to becoming the most feared blogger in Hollywood. Mockery, cruelty and clickbait were his calling cards. “I’ve built my brand on being a bitch,” he told me in 2009. “So what?”I’ve written stories about his copyright fights with paparazzi agencies, about his once-vast multimedia empire, about his well-known decision to tone down the snark.Whatever else you think of him, Hilton, a Cuban-American whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, was an internet pioneer and for a few years a true sensation. At his peak in the mid-aughts, Hilton singlehandedly ran one of the most visited entertainment blogs on the internet. The site generated about eight million page views a day.He was a force to be reckoned with. And he was often far too reckless with that power.When Hilton began his blog a little more than 20 years ago, he worked at a table in the back of a Sunset Boulevard coffee shop, where the Wi-Fi was free. Posting at a mad clip, Hilton dished on, mocked and criticized the era’s most famous pop culture icons. His site was originally called PageSixSixSix until the New York Post sued him for trademark dilution, and he changed it to a play on the era’s most famous rich girl.With little concern for the human toll, Hilton merrily outed closeted entertainers such as Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight. He purloined photos from paparazzi agencies, then drew mucus trails, drool and penises on the faces of stars and claimed he was engaging in legally protected fair comment. He gave stars puerile nicknames like Jennifer “Maniston” and Mushy Fartone (Mischa Barton). He was vicious to the children of celebrities, like Rumer Willis, who he called “Potato Head,” and then-11-year-old Ireland Baldwin, whose parents, actors Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, were in a bitter custody battle. Hilton and his newborn son, Mario Armando Lavandeira III, in 2013. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) Hilton wrote endless mocking posts about Britney Spears’ meltdowns and Lindsay Lohan’s struggles. He had constant online feuds, dueling lawsuits and literal fistfights (after Hilton launched a gay slur at will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas’ touring manager punched Hilton in the head).At times, Hilton could be embarrassingly wrong. In 2007, he falsely reported that Fidel Castro had died. In 2009, he cast doubt on Michael Jackson’s death, speculating that the singer was faking cardiac arrest or pulling a publicity stunt.But Hilton could also be a force for good, promoting musicians who would go on to be stars: Lady Gaga, Adele and Katy Perry, among them. Warner Bros. briefly gave Hilton his own music label. At his peak, he was on the radio, he was on TV, he had multiple websites and he dubbed himself the “Queen of All Media.”And then, in 2010, he had a stinging moment of moral clarity. After contributing to sex columnist Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” suicide prevention campaign, Hilton was blown away by accusations of his own hypocrisy. The man who had helped invent cyberbullying was now telling young gay people how to deal with bullies? Khloé Kardashian, a frequent target, accused him of being her “personal bully” for scrawling “t—–” and “fugly” on her photos.“I don’t have to give people nasty nicknames anymore,” Hilton told me in 2013. As we spoke, he cradled the 2-week-old son he’d had by surrogate. (He has since had two more children by surrogate.) “I don’t have to say people are stupid, or people are fat, or people are ugly. I can be sassy and fun and still do my job.”Alas, not entirely.In 2020, Hilton took on the world’s most popular TikTok streamer, Charli D’Amelio, who was then 15 years old and had 100 million followers. He criticized her for dancing in a bikini (on a beach), then chastised her parents for allowing it. Her massive fan base rose up against him; TikTok banned him for violating its community guidelines.Hilton tearfully took to YouTube to apologize and begged D’Amelio’s family to intercede with TikTok. In April, nearly six years later, his account was restored. But his heyday had long since passed. The rise of social media sites such as Twitter (now X), Instagram and TikTok meant that stars could take control of their own narratives, and share breaking news instantly, which made Hilton’s blog seem stale and less necessary. Also, the rise of TMZ, with its fully staffed newsroom, eclipsed Hilton’s one-man operation. His traffic, and income, had plummeted.On the day of his horrific livestream, Hilton was still recovering physically and financially from a life-threatening bout of sepsis that had landed him in a hospital for three weeks last spring.While hospitalized, he had a religious epiphany: “God is real,” he told his viewers.But he was struggling.“Your boy is in hustle mode,” Hilton said as he hawked a new line of merch — images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Jesus Christ on T-shirts and mugs.“He was going through a lot,” Hilton’s weekly podcast partner, Chris Booker, said last week. “But he’s a survivor. You can knock him down, he’ll get right up.”Let’s hope so.Bluesky: @rabcarianThreads: @rabcarian
