Is Lil Tay in intensive care with a heart tumor?

On September 11, a message appeared on viral internet personality Lil Tay's X-Account sharing “devastating news” about her health. The cryptic post came about a year after a bizarre Instagram message claimed Tay and her brother had succumbed to “sudden and tragic deaths.” 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. She later accused her father and former manager of faking her death. But this time, the person who manages her social media accounts is claiming she's having a real medical emergency. Here's what we know.

Lil Tay, born Claire Eileen Qi Hope, first rose to popularity in 2018 at the age of 9 when viral videos of her wearing Gucci belts, driving a Rolls-Royce, talking in a Blaccent and getting into fights with other internet personalities such as Bhad Bhabie and Woah Vicky surfaced. Since first rising to fame with the help of her half-brother Jason, she has largely disappeared from social media, although several worrying incidents have brought her back into the public eye.

In June 2018, a few months after Tay's sudden online appearance, her Instagram account was suddenly deleted, with only a single Instagram story posted with the caption “Help me.” A few months later, graphic and racially charged images appeared on the account, followed shortly thereafter by an image of what looked like Tay's passport, which, if real, would have made her 16 at the time (and not 9, as previously believed). Then an unidentified person posted on her Instagram account accusing Tay's father, Chris Hope, of abusing her while profiting off her career. Her manager at the time, Harry Tsang, denied the allegations and claimed that Jason and her mother, Angela Tian, ​​had also hatched a plan to accuse Hope of sexually abusing his daughter. In a bizarre phone call arranged in 2019 with the Daily Beast through another representative named Charles Wong, Tay said she was in a “bad situation” with her father.

In 2020, TMZ reported that Tay's career had been stalled by a custody battle between her mother, who wanted her to continue the path she was on in 2018, and her father, who wanted her to pursue a more serious career in entertainment. Hope told the outlet that he loves his daughter and wants the best for her, citing “pending litigation” that prevented him from commenting further. More allegations surfaced in 2021 when a GoFundMe campaign organized by Jason surfaced claiming that Hope and his new wife were physically and mentally abusive to Lil Tay.

After the initial announcement that she died in 2023, media outlets were unable to verify the news of Lil Tay's death with either her family members or police in Vancouver, where she grew up before moving to LA. Several family friends also questioned the veracity of the post. One producer told the Daily Beast he was “really f***ing confused” about what happened. Her former manager, Tsang, claimed he had “a deep understanding of the family's situation” and told reporters he could “neither definitively confirm nor dismiss the legitimacy of the statement made by the family.” He also referred his TikTok followers to his psychic, who told the Daily Beast she “didn't sense a soul crossing the line to another dimension.”

Meanwhile, the New York post managed to get someone on the phone claiming to be Lil Tay's father, Chris Hope. “I have no comment at the moment,” the person said. “I'm sorry – I can't.”

Things got even stranger 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 deeply heartbroken and struggling to even find the right words.” She added that the 24 hours when everyone, including former collaborators like Woah Vicky, thought she was dead were “traumatizing” and that she was “bombarded with endless heartbreaking and tearful phone calls from loved ones while trying to sort out this mess.”

According to her statement to TMZ, Lil Tay's Instagram account was “compromised by a third party and used to spread shocking misinformation and rumors.” She added that her real name is Tay Tian and not Claire as the post suggested. TMZ did not specify how Lil Tay made her statement. At the time, the words “Help me” appeared in her YouTube bio, although it was not clear how long they had been there. In a statement to The Cut, Tsang said he was “relieved to have their security confirmed” but had some “concerns about the authenticity of the reported hacking attack.”

“It's plausible that the driving force behind these events could be an attempt to secretly solicit funds from dedicated supporters and unsuspecting viewers,” Tsang explained in his statement to us. However, a spokesperson for Meta seemed to support Lil Tay's hacking story, reportedly telling TMZ that the company worked with the influencer last week to get her account back.

Following the alleged hacking, lawyers reportedly representing Lil Tay and her mother Angela Tian told media that Tian had finally been awarded custody of her daughter and a $275,000 child support payment from Hope.

The following month, a story appeared on Lil Tay's largely defunct Instagram account claiming that her “violent, racist, misogynistic, wife-beating father” faked her death. Also in her story: a photo of what appeared to be her hand holding a U.S. passport. In response to the allegation, Hope told TMZ that “everything she says is 100 percent false.” He pointed to a “long history of absurd and untrue statements by the various people who controlled the Instagram account,” adding, “The person responsible for that Instagram post, as well as anyone who repeats the completely false and defamatory allegation contained therein, will almost certainly be defendants in a defamation lawsuit.”

Around the same time, Tay released a new song, “Sucker 4 Green,” and appeared in an Instagram Live where she played piano and guitar and talked about the death hoax, claiming her father staged it to “sabotage me.” “He was working with this other scammer who claimed to be my manager,” she said, presumably referring to Tsang, “and they had a cryptocurrency together.”

In a subsequent interview with Rolling StoneTay and her mother again blamed the death announcement on Hope and Tsang, claiming they had teamed up to promote a cryptocurrency bearing her name. (They also denied that Tsang ever officially 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 in her name, but said he suspected Tay's brother Jason was the one who set up the death announcement. Jason fired back, telling the reporter in a statement via Tay's PR that Tsang had “contacted every publication possible to claim that I hacked Tay's page to fake her death while also selling the fraudulent cryptocurrency Lil Tay.”

For a while, it seemed like everyone was ready to move on from the opaque death, and the most dramatic thing that happened to Lil Tay was a feud with JoJo Siwa. But on Wednesday, just over a year after 2023's opaque death, another bizarre social media incident began to unfold. “We have devastating news regarding Tay,” read one post on Lil Tay's X account. Another posted a few hours later said, “Tay is currently in serious condition in the ICU” 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 where 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, her absent father hacked her accounts and faked her death,” but “this time, she is in the ICU.” The ultrasound video also appears on her Instagram page, where the X-posts were shared in her stories.

The Cut has reached out to a contact who we believe is a representative for Lil Tay and will update this post if we receive a response.

This post has been updated.