Is Lil Tay in ICU with heart tumor?

On Sept. 11, a message appeared on viral internet personality Lil Tay’s X account, announcing that there was “devastating news” about her well-being. The cryptic post comes about a year after a bizarre Instagram message claimed that Tay and her brother had succumbed to a “sudden and tragic passing.” That post turned out to be a hoax: The next day, Lil Tay told TMZ that she and her brother were fine and that her Instagram account had been hacked — and then accused her father and former manager of faking her death. But this time, whoever is handling her social media accounts is claiming that she’s having an actual health emergency. Here’s what we know.

Born Claire Eileen Qi Hope, Lil Tay rose to fame in 2018, when she was 9 years old, with viral videos of herself sporting Gucci belts, driving a Rolls-Royce, talking in a Blaccent, and feuding with other internet personalities like Bhad Bhabie and Woah Vicky. Since rising to fame with the guidance of her half-brother, Jason, she has largely disappeared from social media, though several troubling incidents have brought her back into the public eye.

In June 2018, within months of Tay’s sudden explosion on the internet, her Instagram account was suddenly deleted, with a single Instagram Story posted that read “help me.” A few months later, graphic, racially charged images appeared on the account, followed shortly by an image of what appeared to be Tay’s passport, which, if real, would have made her 16 at the time (not, as previously believed, 9). An unidentified person then posted on her Instagram account accusing Tay’s father, Chris Hope, of abusing her while profiting off her career. Her then-manager, Harry Tsang, denied the allegations, claiming that Jason and her mother, Angela Tian, ​​had also hatched a scheme to accuse Hope of sexually assaulting their daughter. In a bizarre phone conversation arranged with the Daily Beast through a different representative named Charles Wong, in 2019, Tay said she was in a “bad situation” with her father.

In 2020, TMZ reported that Tay’s career had stalled due to a custody battle between her mother, who wanted her to return to the path she was on in 2018, and her father, who wanted her to pursue a more legitimate career in showbiz. Hope told the outlet that she loves and wants the best for her daughter, referring to “pending legal matters” that prevented her from offering further comment. More allegations surfaced in 2021, when a GoFundMe organized by Jason surfaced that claimed Hope and his new wife were physically and mentally abusing Lil Tay.

Following the initial announcement that she had died in 2023, outlets were unable to verify the news of Lil Tay’s death with her relatives or police in Vancouver, where she grew up before moving to Los Angeles. Several family friends also questioned whether or not the post was accurate, with one producer telling the Daily Beast he was “really confused” about what had happened. Her former manager, Tsang, claimed to have “intimate knowledge of the family’s situation” and told reporters that he “cannot definitively confirm or rule out the legitimacy of the statement released by the family.” She also referred her TikTok followers to her psychic, who told the Daily Beast that she did not “feel any soul cross the line into another dimension.”

Meanwhile, the New York Mail I managed to get someone on the phone who claimed to be Lil Tay’s father, Chris Hope. “I don’t have any comment to make right now,” the person said. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Things got even weirder when TMZ claimed to have contacted Lil Tay herself, who appeared to be very much alive.

“I want to make it clear that my brother and I are safe and alive,” Lil Tay reportedly told TMZ, “but I am completely heartbroken and struggling to find the right words to say.” She added that the 24 hours during which everyone, including former collaborators like Woah Vicky, thought she was dead was “traumatizing,” and that she was “bombarded with endless heartbreaking, tearful phone calls from loved ones as I tried to sort through this mess.”

According to her explanation to TMZ, Lil Tay’s Instagram was “hacked by a third party and used to spread misinformation and outrageous rumors.” She added that her legal name is Tay Tian — not, as the post suggested, Claire. TMZ did not specify how Lil Tay provided her statement. At the time, the words “help me” appeared in her YouTube bio, though it was unclear how long they had been there. In a statement to The Cut, Tsang said he found “relief in the confirmation of his safety,” but had some “reservations regarding the authenticity of the reported hacking incident.”

“It’s plausible that the driving force behind these events may revolve around an attempt to surreptitiously solicit funds from dedicated supporters and unsuspecting bystanders,” Tsang explained in her statement to US. However, a Meta spokesperson appeared to back up Lil Tay’s hacking story, reportedly telling TMZ that the company worked with the influencer to get her account back up last week.

In the wake of the alleged hack, attorneys claiming to represent Lil Tay and her mother, Angela Tian, ​​told outlets that Tian had ultimately been granted custody of her daughter along with a $275,000 payment from Hope in child support.

The following month, a story appeared on Lil Tay’s largely-defunct Instagram account claiming that her “abusive, racist, misogynistic, beating father” had faked her death. Also featured on her story was a photo of what appeared to be her hand, holding a US passport. In response to the allegation, Hope told TMZ that “everything being said is 100 percent false.” Referring to a “long history of absurd and false statements made by the various people who have controlled the Instagram account,” she added, “The person responsible for that Instagram post, as well as anyone who repeats the completely false and slanderous allegation within it, are virtually certain to become defendants in a defamation lawsuit.”

Around the same time, Tay released a new song, “Sucker 4 Green,” and appeared on an Instagram Live in which he played piano and guitar and spoke about the death hoax, claiming his father set it up in an attempt to “sabotage” me. “I was working with this other scammer who claimed to be my manager,” he said, presumably referring to Tsang, “and they had a cryptocurrency together.”

In a later interview with Rolling StoneTay and her mother again blamed Hope and Tsang for the death hoax, claiming that they teamed up in an attempt to promote a cryptocurrency coin using her name. (They also denied that Tsang had formally managed Tay’s career.) Hope again denied the allegation, and Tsang claimed to have been in contact with Tay’s team to promote a cryptocurrency coin on her behalf, but said she suspects Tay’s brother Jason was the one who engineered the death hoax. Jason fired back, telling the reporter in a statement via Tay’s PR that Tsang “went to every publication possible to allege that I hacked Tay’s page to fake her death while also selling the fraudulent Lil Tay cryptocurrency.”

For a while, it seemed like everyone was ready to move on from the death hoax, with the most dramatic thing going on with Lil Tay being a feud with JoJo Siwa. But on Wednesday, just over a year after the 2023 death hoax, another bizarre incident began to unfold on social media. “We have devastating news regarding Tay,” read one post on Lil Tay’s X account. Another, posted a few hours later, read, “Tay is currently in ICU in serious condition,” and was accompanied by a photo taken in a hospital hallway. In two more posts, one of which included a video of an ultrasound screen on which a doctor can be heard speaking, the account announced that “Tay has been diagnosed with a life-threatening heart tumor” and clarified that “last time, it was her absent father who hacked her accounts and faked his death,” but “this time, she’s in ICU.” The ultrasound video also appears on her Instagram page, where X’s posts have been broadcast on her stories.

The Cut has reached out to a contact we believe to be Lil Tay’s representative and will update this post if we hear back.

This post has been updated.