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on Tuesday night, 911 in Miami responded to an influx of concerned calls after Perez Hilton got naked on TikTok live and repeatedly cut himself with a butcher knife. And all we know now at the time that I'm filming this video, which is on Wednesday afternoon, is that Perez has been hospitalized. I believe that he is receiving both physical and mental health treatment. Pop Crave posted this and said that Perez has been transported to a hospital after he livestreamed himself naked, covered in blood from head to toe while using a knife to harm himself. Authorities said that he was transported for a psychiatric vehicle valuation. Now, in light of all of this, and obviously the story has gone mega viral, unfortunately, millions of people have seen the recordings of the TikTok Live, even though TikTok very quickly took it down, deactivated his account, all the things. But in response to this, the Internet is now split on their opinion of everything and on Perez in general. So let's just dive in. This is a really heavy story. And unfortunately, in circumstances like this, because Perez is such a polarizing, larger than life figure, there are obviously a lot of people that are sensationalizing this even more than it are already is sensational because this is a horrific story. There are a lot of people that hate him, which we're gonna talk about. And so they are just kind of running with the story anyway. It's a hard thing. And because I have experienced so many mental health crises in my own personal family, I wanna treat the subject with as much respect as I possibly can. So if you're noticing a total shift from the usual episodes, that is why, anyway, diving in here, one caveat that I wanna offer right from the jump is that I like, I'm sure many of you because I think a lot of you guys are around my age. I was about five years old in Perez Hilton's heyday. But even still, even though, you know, he was big in 2006, 2007, I still know his name. And honestly, he will probably forever be the face of celebrity gossip. Now he was at his peak between 2005 and 2009, he was receiving millions upon millions of views to his blog every single day. And this was before social media. Like, you could even argue that Perez was one of the first influencers in a way, because there was tmz, there was the paparazzi, but Perez was Perez. He was, you know, an Internet person. He had a blog. He was this investigative journalist, would take things from the paparazzi. He had the inside scoop. Like, you were not just going to a large publication. You were going to see what Perez Hilton was saying about whatever celebrity or whatever scandal was going on. And this was way before everyone and their mother had a podcast or YouTube channel, before random people online could get a scoop about a celebrity or post something in the comment sections. Like, he was celebrity gossip at the time, and he was ruthless. And honestly, saying that he was ruthless might be putting it mildly. Like, as an example, just take a look at this shirt that he sold when Heath Ledger died. The shirt reads, why couldn't it be Britney? Now, on top of that, more commonly, he would share photos like this, where he would write, I miss rehab on top of them, or walk of shame. And so a lot of people correlate him with the downfall of Britney Spears because he was tracking her every single move, especially in that 2007 period when she was, you know, going through everything, having her very public breakdowns. He also covered Lindsay Lohan and her subsequent breakdown. Michael Jackson, when he was at his lowest point. He was also infamous for outing closeted celebrities. Like, it seemed like this man had no boundaries whatsoever. There was not a line in the sand. We're gonna talk about whether that was actually real or not in just, like, five seconds. Now, one thing to say, and I do think that this is important to acknowledge here, not excusing his behavior, but I do think this is the fair thing to say, is that Perez really wasn't doing anything different from the other gossip outlets at the time. TMZ was similar with how they would portray the stories, the scoops that they would get. The paparazzi was, you know, hounding people. They were awful. Perez was just the most famous of that industry and probably the best at his job. And I think some important context here, or maybe just some perspective. And this comes from just the last 24 hours of speaking to people who know Perez, worked with him at his peak, have interacted with him over the years, is that apparently, even though the general public and the people who consumed his content thinks that he literally held nothing back and he was totally unhinged. Is that allegedly, consistently there was a lot of stuff that he chose not to release, that there were a lot of times when he chose not to go as far as he could have based on the information that he had about these celebrities. He could have ruined them even more and he chose not to. Now, one person in particular that I do know very well said that there was a lot of stuff specifically that Perez kept private about Britney, which is crazy because again, he was ruthless. A lot of people's dislike, I would even say hatred of Perez is because of his treatment of Britney. And this person is actually saying, you don't know how far he could have gone. And he chose not to because that truly would have been cruel. Now, you can argue that what he was doing was already cruel, but I'm just putting that out there as an important caveat. Now, transparently, I don't really know how I feel about all this. I don't know the man. Again, I was not, you know, of age with a, you know, working fully formed brain when he was in his heyday. I have only seen him trashed by the public, even though they all did consume and appreciate his work at a time. But now the people who knew and know and have worked with him are all saying that it wasn't as cut and dry as the public is saying. So I just wanted to communicate all of that to you as I am learning it, because it was certainly a wrinkle in my one sided perspective of this man and again, was not old enough at the time to make up my own mind. So I will just leave it at that. And you know, maybe at the end of the day he was just a gay man that loves celebrity gossip and I think we have all fallen victim to that. But hopefully we have not taken it as far as he did. And honestly, maybe this is a crazy hot take, like maybe this is the episode that is going to get me canceled once and for all. I don't know. But as I'm looking at the things that he's done in the past and what happens on social media today, I honestly don't see his coverage back in his heyday as being that different from how thousands upon thousands of angry keyboard warriors every single day treat random people on the Internet. I mean, you go into any TikTok comment section and people are vile. The breaches of privacy that we have been speaking about on a weekly basis at this point, they are awful. And so people are sitting here pointing fingers at him and going, oh, he's so awful. Like, it's not as if everybody on the Internet in 2026 is so kind and so empathetic and so understanding. Everybody respects people's privacy. No, everybody is just terrible. So maybe Perez is just as terrible as everybody else. And this is just a culture that has been fostered. Although you then could argue that maybe he started the culture. All right, now we're just getting too far off of a tangent. We're not actually talking about what just happened. So let me get back to the point. Anyway, moving on with the story. As this whole celebrity gossip landscape changed, as the social media landscape changed, people moved away from blogs and more towards social media, I think it's fair to say that Perez became less relevant. You know, he did try to kind of segue. He moved over to focusing on social media more than his blog. He started a YouTube channel. He had a TikTok page, obviously. But it never really hit the same until last year, because last year he actually found himself back in the spotlight when he was covering the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni legal battle. Blake Lively's team thought that he was actually working with Justin Baldoni. He was lumped into that whole crowd of influencers that they were accusing. He was actually subpoenaed by her team. He represented himself in court because allegedly he did not have enough money to hire a lawyer. That's kind of telling about where his career was at at the time. And he spent an enormous, allegedly an enormous amount of money defending himself in court. And then simultaneously during all of this, his health allegedly began deteriorating. And then shit really hit the fan this year in 2026. Now, Newsweek, as they were writing about him, they said that Hilton was hospitalized in March for an ulcer that he got after taking flu medication without food and developed severe sepsis that left him hospitalized for weeks. He was then hospitalized again for deep vein thrombosis in his leg and had to have a blood clot removed. But his issues were allegedly so severe that he literally had to relearn how to walk again. After all these hospitalizations and procedures, he lost a ton of weight. He literally looked like an entirely different person. And maybe he really was. Now, before we get into the rest of the video, I wanna thank my sponsor for this episode. Quo. 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Try Quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com Brett again, that is Q U O QO.com Brett to try Quo for free and they get 20% off your first 6 months. All right, now back to the story and I promise we are getting into the current updates. The point that I am trying to make here with all of this context is that point blank, Perez Hilton on paper, has been struggling for a long time, mentally, physically, financially. And he has been open about this in his videos and on social media, and at any rate, all of this. But more specifically, his health crises apparently led him to finding God earlier this year. And he seemed to develop a deep regret for the things that he had done in his past, the way that he had treated celebrities, reported on people, and this is what he shared on social media. Again, this is just a few months ago. This was a period allegedly of big transformation. This is what he said.
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I made a lot of mistakes in my past. We all have. Nobody's perfect. But my mistakes are very public. The Internet is forever. Receipts are forever. I carry with me deep shame and regret. I'm sorry. I will continue to apologize. I have also reached out to make amends. I've apologized publicly and privately to dozens of people. I also saw recently that Kristen Johnson, Kristen Johnson of a third rock from the sun, that I hurt her back in the day and I'm sorry. I'm sorry to her. I'm sorry to her. I will send this to her and apologize privately as well. And for the majority of my career because I was so selfish, because I didn't care who I hurt. I just cared about the views, the attention, the money. People hated me. Some people enjoyed it, but it felt like most people hated me. And the last week since I've been home, I haven't been getting as much hate. And I've been getting love and prayers and the Hate doesn't bother me. And on the flip side, part of me thinks that the love shouldn't. Shouldn't matter either, because support and praise can be a false God.
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Now, I picked that moment specifically because I thought it was really interesting that he's talking about how he had been hated for so much of his career. And it's interesting because he was so famous, People loved him, but he was infamous. Like, celebrities hated him. People knew that he was doing all of these ruthless things, the way that he spoke about people, but people still consumed all of his content. It's like they loved to hate him. And now that he was in this really vulnerable position, he was going through these health crises, he had lost all this weight. He was not able to walk. People began sending love. And I wonder how that shifted for him, because maybe he saw how he could be received on the Internet. And so I'm only saying that to say, you know, you always hope that people are genuine on the Internet, that they have experienced, experience a transformation. But because he has been somebody that has chased fame, cliques, whatever, I think people are right, understandably, to question whether this was truly authentic or whether after years of being hated, this just felt good. And he saw an opportunity to publicly do a change, to finally get in the public's good favor. Again, I'm just speculating, but that's why I wanted to include that, because that is something that has been talked about. Now, from there, after he got back from the hospital, he kept making content. He kept covering pop culture a little more softly these days, but he would also update people on his faith. He was growing closer to God. He decided. He was raised Catholic head straight away. So he has these three kids. He wants to raise them in the Catholic Church. He was enrolling them in Catholic school. You know, he talked about the struggles that he was facing, and to a lot of people, it really felt like a new Perez. Then kind of like what happened when Russell Brand became very openly a Christian. People looked at him and said, oh, this is great. You're going to inspire so many people. We hope that you steward it well. But I see the two as kind of being similar.
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I don't really know if we have found a new Perez because fast forward to last night. He is on TikTok Live and genuinely guys, it is a horrifying video. I'm shocked the TikTok was not notified of it sooner or did not take it down sooner. I don't know what was going on with their flagging system. Like it is worse than you can imagine. Fully nude. I'm covered in blood. Like think the scene in Carrie. Think Ariana Grande's latest music video where she's covered in blood. That is what you're seeing. A man holding a ginormous butcher's knife. And the other thing is he's not on this live stream alone. There's other people that he's been talking with and communicating with and they are all watching in horror as well as millions of people in the comment section. And it is, you know, so unfortun that now millions of people have been subjected to this as it is being re shared on TikTok and on X and all the different places. And in my personal opinion as I was watching those clips, unfortunately it does feel like a very cut and dry psychotic break. Now we do not know whether he was on drugs or not. I think that that is a fair question to ask considering how he was acting in that video, the fact that the cuts didn't really seem to hurt him, he was just like totally not there. But either way, something in Perez cracked and by and large people on the Internet do not have any sympathy and they are open about why. These are some of the comments that are circulating on X. One woman said, I have zero sympathy for him. He built his entire personality and career tearing celebrities down at their weakest. It took some time, but karma came to serve. This one's for Brittany. Another guy said the same price who spent years dragging Brittany, Lindsay and anybody else having a public breakdown is now in the exact position he used to mock. Karma doesn't miss the same guy said, I'm not celebrating anybody's mental health crisis, but I'm also not going to pretend the guy who sold why couldn't it have been Britney shirts after Heath Ledger died suddenly deserves ultimate sympathy. The replies under this post prove a lot of people feel the same. And then the last one this guy said after he tormented so many young women in the 2000s Brittany Misha Christina and then posted fake nudes of Miley when she was still underage. I love when bad Things happen to horrible men. In addition to that being a large part of the discourse, it has also turned into political fodder. Per usual, people on the right have begun to use this tragedy as an anti gay adoption and anti gay surrogacy talking point. Like this woman said, surrogacy for gay men, especially single gay men, should be illegal. Who let Perez Hilton buy these children? Others have also been talking about him being possessed or facing spiritual warfare, especially as he was coming to Christ. So that is a big talking point. And then those on the left are using it as an argument for free health care. So this is an example of that. One woman said Perez made himself sick earlier this year, which almost cost him his life. He was in the hospital for 21 days and declared that he was born again and that Jesus saved his life, vowed that he will take his kids to church every Sunday his first day home, and now he can't afford the medical bill. So he has been trying to use his newfound Christianity to hawk merch, but it isn't working. Pretty sure religious folks are going to use this as proof of Satan, while the rest of us see a real need for universal health care for all Americans. And of course, there are political angles to everything. Like, I don't want to sit here and say, this is not a political issue. Everything in the world is political. You can take any story online, I often do, and try to look at it through a political lens, because that is how the world operates these days. Because politics really is about values. You're going to look at a story, consume it, you know, come to an opinion about it because of your values that connects to your politics. So I understand that people are going to see what they want to see. But personally, what I care about right now is that there is a man out there who has clearly, karma or not, lost his mind. And his three young children, I believe they are all under, like 13 years old. Their lives are being turned completely upside down once again. I mean, I cannot even fathom what they have experienced from their father being hospitalized for over a month to now. And the entire world has watched this transpire. And I do think we can also use the story to talk about what creates and builds and sustains a good, stable life. Because, I mean, Perez said it himself, he has been chasing money and fame and clicks and views for decades. He has essentially also always been on the run because he is an infamous person. He's not somebody that has received lots of love. He has received hate on hate on hate and has tried to rebuild Himself time and time again. And he's literally been on the run. He's moved just in the last few years, I think, from LA to New York City to Vegas now to Miami. People that know him that I've spoken to have said that not only has he never been married, but he's never even had a stable, serious boyfriend. Like, that is not a stable, healthy life at all. That is a life, in my opinion, that you should not bring children into. Like, objectively, that is not a stable life. I think that maybe the good things that he does have going on are that his mother lives with him and helps raise the children. He supports her. His sister is close to him. I think she actually works for him, maybe even lives with him as well. So there is some sort of family structure there. Even though I'm sure it's weird that they all rely on him and work for him. If his return to faith was genuine, hopefully it was then. Hopefully that was helping. But clearly those things were not good enough. This is a man that clearly has some real demons. He was already fragile. He was making himself more vulnerable thanks to his life choices, possible drug use. So, unfortunately, I am not surprised that he possibly has lost his mind now. Something that my mom has always said, especially in light of my brother's schizophrenia, as we've kind of walked this journey with him and we saw, you know, the brother that I knew growing up who felt totally normal, and now the brother that I know today, that is totally different, and it just essentially happened overnight. The thing that she always says is that everyone, every single one of us, is a single tragedy away from losing our minds. Like your entire life, your entire brain can change in an instant. Our brains are so resilient, but they are also incredibly fragile. If you hit the wrong thing, and you never know what could make one individual just crack, especially after years of deterioration and trauma, possible drug use, whatever it is, the more that you make yourself vulnerable and unstable, the more likely it is that something like this could happen the next time that you experience some kind of tragedy or traumatic event. And for Perez, and honestly, for all of us, you know, we can't go back in time. We can't change the past. And so I do not expect people online to suddenly feel so sympathetic for a man that they have been hating for two decades. So I'm not going to pretend to be shocked by the comments and the discourse online. And again, truly, I am apathetic on him. I don't think he is the world's greatest person, but I do pray for him. I hope that his transformation is genuine, and I'm sorry that he's going through this, but I guess what I would say is that I do hope for everybody online, regardless of whether you hate him or like him or sympathetic, whatever, I do hope that it is a lesson for people as they evaluate their own lives and their own ment. I think the questions that I would take from this are, you know, are you in a position where you could be vulnerable to this kind of cracking or some kind of break, whether it's psychotic or not? Are you chasing things that truly matter in your life, that are going to bring stability and true joy and fulfillment? Or is it all about material things or clicks and likes or cheap thrills? Are you protecting yourself so that you do not hurt or endanger the people around you who most, if you have children, rely on you? And at least from the outside looking in, I do not think that Perez was doing those things. And so, in my opinion, that is what we should take from this story.