Who is Ava Louise? Toilet-licking TikToker behind Kanye West and Jeffree Star hook up rumor courts controversy
Let's just say that this isn't TikToker Ava Louise's first rodeo when it comes to creating controversy. Louise's latest viral Tik Tok video broke the Internet when she suggested that Kanye West has been allegedly sleeping with a male beauty influencer and this was the reason why West and Kim Kardashian were divorcing. Louise captioned the video, saying, “I can’t say who cause he’ll sue me hint hint but it’s part of the reason Kanye is so religious now, it’s his self-hatred…my source is legit.” She also added that her 'very good' source was an LA lawyer.
@realavalouiise i can’t say WHO cuz he’ll sue me hint hint but it’s part of the reason Kanye’s so religious now it’s his self hatred .... my source is legit I promiss
♬ original sound - Ava Louise
Louise also did her best to steer her followers to make guesses about who this male beauty guru could be without being liable. She liked comments that guessed it was the controversial Jeffree Star, who has a house in Wyoming. After that, the rumors took a life of their own with people waking up to the 'news' that Kanye West was hooking up with Jeffree Star. Star himself has been posting Instagram pics from Casper, Wyoming all through December. One even had the caption, "It's Mrs. Wyoming to you", which has just helped fan the rumors.
Toilet-licking and spitting on Dr. Phil
But the rumors carry Ava Louise's signature touch - of combining an aspect of breaking news into her viral videos to get people talking. If you think she looks familiar, there is a reason. Louise is the same 'influencer' who first shot to fame in March last year after licking an airplane toilet seat for the "coronavirus challenge".
The social media influencer has self-described herself as a "clout-chaser" and was mad "the corona" was getting more attention than her "viral" song at the time. The 22-year-old from Miami went viral after she posted a six-second clip of her briefly licking the toilet seat in an airplane, before flashing a victory sign and ending the stunt. "Please [retweet] this so people can know how to properly be sanitary on the airplane," she had captioned the video. Commenting on the stunt in an interview, she said she was "tired of some b***h named corona getting more publicity than ME" and insisted there was "no harm done" because "hot blondes" can recover from anything.
She later appeared on Dr Phil, who called her spoiled to which she said, "I'll cough on you."
How Ava Louise manufactures viral content
Cue the dumb blonde jokes, right? Only Louise has stage-managed every last move, parodying a persona that typifies Gen Z's supposed faults, only magnified to extreme levels. She spent four years building an audience of more than 200,000 Instagram followers by (in her words) "posting my butt" and being "Regina George IRL". Just a year before she did her toilet-licking stunt in March 2020, she had pitched herself to the 'Dr. Phil Show', anchoring a scripted episode about her Instagram addiction in February 2019. The February appearance was meant to also drive eyeballs to her first song, 'Skinny Legend Anthem', which practically any Tik Tok obsessed user will now know as well as her famous soundbite "I'm skinny, I'm winning, and all you b----es are ugly."
When the song failed to take off, the TikToker seemingly gave up. But when the song picked up traction in March 2020, she did the toilet seat licking stunt to cement herself in the annals of viral pop culture circulated on social media. All her later comments on social media and on Dr. Phil were designed to attract outrage and engagement with social media users. In the viral Influencer culture, sex tapes are the way to go, but Louise chose to lick a toilet.
In response to the criticism, she herself said that her actions were no worse than "eating a dude's a**." In some ways, she is smarter than Kim Kardashian who got her leg up via a viral sex tape.
Did Jeffree Star and Ava Louise plan this?
The other influencer who is a master of making money through controversy is Jeffree Star. Ava Louise is familiar with the beauty influencer universe because her "best friend" was beauty influencer Ethan Peters aka 'Ethan The Supreme' who passed away when he was 17 because of an apparent overdose.
Back then, Louise had thanked Star on Twitter for talking about Ethan's untimely death.
@JeffreeStar would like to thank you for your kind words on Ethan....you were his favorite person and biggest inspiration. This means so much to him I hope wherever he is he knows you did this ❤️ pic.twitter.com/wk1uLwvs71
— Ava Louise (ig @avalouiise) (@realavalouiise) September 6, 2020
So the two are familiar with each other. Whether both these masters of manipulating social media brainstormed together to find a way to break the Internet with a viral rumor like Kanye West hooking up with Jeffree Star is not out of the realm of speculation.
We will only know once we get more information about Louise's "very good" source. In short, this might just be another edition of games influencers play.