Katy Perry's 3-Word Response to Morbid Conspiracy Theory

Even the most casual Katy Perry listener knows that she is a bona fide California “Gurl.” But there’s also a swath of the internet that believes the 13-time Grammy nominee could be hiding a dark secret about her true identity.

The theory first originated in 2016 with The Kernel, which published a surprisingly thorough explanation of why some people believe that Perry is actually JonBenét Ramsey, the child beauty queen who was found murdered in the basement of her parents’ Boulder, Colorado home in 1996.

Related: Katy Perry Turns Heads In See-Through Dress At A Party

As HuffPost explained at the time, the main points of the theory are this: Ramsey’s murder was a hoax… and Perry and Ramsey have similar eyebrows.

OK, there’s slightly more to it than that. Namely: That the two bear some resemblance to each other, as do their parents, and that they both know the lyrics to “God Bless America” (yes, really). But the big giveaway, according to conspiracy theorists, is that Perry essentially admitted as much in her memoir. 

In discussing how she began writing her own songs when she was just a kid, Perry wrote: “Not that I was one of those stage kids. There was no JonBenét Ramsey inside of me waiting to burst out.”

How is that an admission? Well, your guess is as good as ours. But the morbid rumor has been floating around the internet for almost a decade now, so it has managed to sustain some major traction.

As the Daily Mail reports, Instagram user Peter C. Shields posted an AI video, set to Perry’s “Wide Awake,” that shows the young beauty queen morphing into the pop superstar.

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A post shared by Peter Shields (@petercshields)

Obviously, the theory has been around for years. But what makes Shields’ video such a game-changer is that Perry herself actually commented on it. It was a simple, three-word response: “wait am i”?

Perry’s response certainly got people’s attention. It received more than 5,200 likes plus hundreds of comments.

Given that the “Roar” singer didn’t outright dismiss the rumor, it will no doubt continue to persist.