How conspiracy theories slowly suffocated the #FreeBritney movement

The earliest post you can find on this blog is about Britney Spears’ conservatorship. Titled, “A Brief Guide to the ‘Free Britney’ Movement,” I wrote the piece in September of 2019, a few months after allegations of Britney being forced into a mental health facility began spreading across social media. Like many fans, I’d been suspicious of Britney’s conservators for years, making me eager to defend #FreeBritney as something far more reasonable than the conspiracy theory it was at the time portrayed as.

2021 was the real turning point for the movement, first in February with The New York Times Presents documentary, Framing Britney Spears, which helped legitimize fan concern through a well-respected publication’s effective endorsement, then in June with Britney’s own court testimony which confirmed her fans’ most general stance: that Britney Spears wasn’t happy under her father’s restraints. With how public opinion has shifted in just over a year, it’s incredible to realize how recently #FreeBritney escaped its conspiratorial reputation. Up until mid-2020 (right before Britney’s court-appointed attorney specifically promoted the movement in a September filing), many of the media’s most major publications–like Insider, NBC News, Vanity Fair, and CNN–were still portraying fan scrutiny of Britney’s conservatorship as uninformed. Now, the narrative’s changed. Mid-2021, sites like NPR, Slate, and The Independent began publishing articles proclaiming Britney fans were “right all along,” or some similar sentiment, as Britney’s conservatorship was finally eliminated last November.

#FreeBritney’s only gained credibility with time, and yet, as someone deeply invested in the movement and its growth for years, discourse within the Britney community seems increasingly volatile and misguided.

This internal development didn’t come out of nowhere. The #FreeBritney movement overall wasn’t a conspiracy theory, as we’ve seen, but conspiracy theories have long existed within it and the reasons for why are obvious. From 2008, when the conservatorship was put into place, until just about the end of 2021, basic knowledge of Britney Spears’ daily life was essentially inaccessible to fans–and not in a way that’s comparable to even the most private of stars. Given Britney’s overexposure in the press for the first decade of her career, it seems reasonable that her team would erect sturdier boundaries between her and the public after the infamous media frenzy of 2007; but even under the conservatorship, Britney was still embarking on hectic promotional campaigns with public appearances galore. The only thing that had changed in her very active popstar schedule was that the Britney we saw in interviews was distinctly less candid than she’d ever been as a legally free woman. Over the years, reporters frequently complained of strict conditions set by Britney’s team for meeting with the singer. Banning certain topics or giving outlets a rough idea of one’s talking points prior to meeting isn’t uncommon for celebrities of her stature, but the almost-scripted nature of Britney’s interviews was peculiar. “Even when I interviewed Michael Jackson,” Carson Daly tweeted in 2011, discussing contentious negotiations with Britney’s team. “It wasn’t anything like this.”

Alarm amongst fans increased in 2016 after multiple audience members from a taping of The Jonathan Ross Show tweeted that Britney had attempted to discuss her conservatorship and its restraints during her appearance. To Britney’s dismay, Jonathan Ross allegedly switched topics and the moment was cut from the show upon airing. One user wrote, “She really looked like she wanted to talk about it but Jonathan changed the subject cuz he couldnt talk about it.” It’s a small moment in #FreeBritney’s overall story but it’s the one that radicalized me, personally. In the years prior, it could be assumed that Britney didn’t discuss her private life because she didn’t want to. It took one interview and a couple of tweets from a live studio audience to clarify that she actually just wasn’t allowed to, prompting fans like me to wonder, what is it that Britney’s team is afraid she’s going to say?

Other suspicions about Britney’s mistreatment from her conservators and team were scattered throughout her post-2008 career. Rumors about a “second breakdown” in 2011 spread gradually as promo for the Femme Fatale album made the control exerted over the singer seem increasingly nefarious. Since her debut onto the pop scene in 1998, Britney exuded an enigmatic star-power on stage, full of energy and an evident passion for performing. In 2011, her performances were comparatively lifeless. She was still hitting all the right moves (most of the time) and executing choreography plenty of her contemporaries couldn’t perform if they tried, but her movements were just slightly more mechanical than before. Her facial expressions communicated exhaustion more than exuberance. That tired demeanor extended to interviews too, where Britney vaguely articulated rehearsed talking points in a speaking voice that was noticeably lower than it had ever been. It’s speculated that much of her changed behaviors were caused by side effects from heavy doses of an unknown medication. What medication Britney may or may not be on is none of fans’ business, but what fans saw warranted questions. If the treatment Britney is receiving is making her so noticeably drowsy, why is she being put on stage to perform? If medication is causing her throat to be so dry it’s affecting her vocal range, why is she being scheduled for interviews at all? And if this conservatorship is supposed to protect her, why is she in front of TV cameras looking like she’s about to fall over?

Over the course of eleven years, different mysteries plagued the Britney standom. Questions like, Did Britney actually want to be a judge on The X-Factor? How did Felicia Culotta get relegated to hosting backstage tours instead of remaining Britney’s assistant? Why do the lead vocals on Britney Jean sound like someone else? Shouldn’t Britney’s net worth be bigger by now if she’s accomplished so much since 2008?

Eventually, a podcast called Britney’s Gram became the catalyst for a genuine uprising. The original gimmick for the series was simple: “Each week, comedians Tess Barker and Barbara Gray discuss and dissect Britney Spears's Instagram posts,” the show’s description states. Considering how little Britney spoke candidly to the public, the fact that the #FreeBritney movement’s most breaking allegations came from an outlet over-analyzing Britney’s Instagram–seemingly, the one platform Britney had to express herself–was fitting. Tess Barker and Barbara “Babs” Gray regularly voiced suspicions of Britney’s team, especially her two conservators, Jamie Spears and Andrew Wallet. After a particularly odd announcement in 2018 for Britney’s next Las Vegas residency, Domination, discontent in the Britney standom was growing in intensity, with Tess and Babs as some of the most outspoken critics of what’s now known as Team Con (anyone in Britney’s circle who worked with or enabled her abusive conservatorship). When it was announced that Britney had checked herself into a mental health facility for treatment under questionable circumstances a few months after Domination was abruptly canceled, the Britney’s Gram girls voiced their doubts of the official story being run across sites like TMZ.

On April 16, 2019, Britney’s Gram hit upload on an episode titled “#FREEBRITNEY,” where they publicized claims from an alleged former paralegal on Britney’s team. In a voicemail to the podcast, the paralegal said something that would push the Britney fandom into absolute chaos: claiming Domination had been canceled after Britney began refusing to take medication prescribed to her, then was sent to a mental health facility against her will after being photographed driving her car. According to the alleged insider, driving was “a big no-no” for Britney; it was “a big rule that she broke.”

As I emphasized in the post I wrote back in 2019, this event was what prompted #FreeBritney to become a trending topic on social media but it didn’t mark the creation of the movement itself. Jordan Miller of the fansite Breathe Heavy had already tried to lead a campaign against Britney’s conservators directly following the arrangement’s inception in 2008. The #FreeBritney explosion that began three years ago was precipitated by over a decade of compounding suspicions from Britney stans. When I first heard the paralegal’s allegations on Britney’s Gram, my own concerns for Britney’s welfare became impassioned, but I wasn’t actually surprised by anything that was said in the voicemail. With everything I’d witnessed for years, it all made sense. Even the claim that Britney driving her car was what prompted her forced stay in a mental health facility started connecting multiple tiny dots in my head. I remembered paparazzi photos of Britney driving her car and hitting up a fast-food drive-through circulating online stan communities in January 2019. They were basic candid shots of a famous woman going to an In-N-Out, but for some reason, they felt retro. Fans paired them in tweets with photos of Britney in drive-throughs back in 2007. Once someone who claimed to have inside knowledge of Britney’s conservatorship said driving was a “big no-no,” it suddenly clicked why those photos were so exciting to Britney stans: we’d barely seen photos of Britney driving a car after 2008. Cue a scene from the 2008 MTV documentary, Britney Spears: For the Record, where the ability to drive her car for an afternoon was given to Britney as a “surprise,” like it was a privilege that she’d earned.

One man making a few claims to a podcast hosted by two comedians wasn’t hard proof in any way, but the claims he made fit reasonably into the gaps of information propagated by Team Con for over ten years. It was like we were given small pieces to a giant puzzle we’d all been bewildered by since the late 2000s.

Barely any media outlet had covered Britney’s conservatorship by that point. There were a few stray articles here and there but nothing that significantly altered public consciousness, and yet, the deeper fans looked into the situation themselves, the more concerning information they found surrounding it until #FreeBritney activists were submitting a litany of evidence to the court of public opinion trying to prove Britney’s abuse was real and ongoing. Articles for consideration encompassed a variety of different types of data, from general knowledge about potential problems (the lack of transparency from Britney’s team, the suspicious workload of a supposedly incapacitated woman, the potential for corruption in all legal adult guardianships) to more blatant indicators of underlying hostility (a voicemail where Britney claimed her father “threatened to take [her] children away,” alleged emails exposing the misconduct of Britney’s then-business manager, reports Britney wasn’t able to hire her own attorney) to pure speculation about different participants’ involvement and supposed complicity (generally casting individuals in Britney’s life as either heroes or villains in her story).

Of course, there were aspects of the conservatorship that should have warranted investigation from more than just Britney stans, but it makes sense that the people most concerned were from the community that habitually consumed Britney content. Every time a major publication tried to explain the #FreeBritney uprising, they never got the story completely right. To some degree, you had to watch the narrative unfold slowly to understand what was so alarming about it, but the fact that trained journalists didn’t pick up the story until just last year undoubtedly did damage for how the movement operates. Tess Barker at times claimed to be an “investigative journalist” on her podcast but if you check her website, the two writing samples listed under “investigative” are “The Origins of Orgasmic Moaning” and “Your School May Be Watching Everything You Do On Social Media — And We Mean Everything.”

I’m in no position to undermine the hard work involved in any piece of writing, but it shouldn’t be controversial to say that neither of the Britney’s Gram girls had sufficient professional experience breaking a story as massive and complex as that of Britney Spears’ conservatorship. The voicemail made Tess and Babs two of #FreeBritney’s most visible leaders for some time, but they didn’t really report on the unfolding case like trained media professionals would, with careful consideration of their wording or proper oversight to ensure all their information was factual; instead, they used their platforms to spread the talking points you’d expect from die-hard stans, full of speculation fueled by parasocial attachments. Take, for example, dialogue on the episode following the breakthrough “#FREEBRITNEY” entry, where the women attempt to raise doubts over the legitimacy of an Instagram caption supposedly written by Britney in which she celebrates losing five pounds:

Tess: “If you know Britney at all, if you’re a fan even casually, you’d know that she would never write that.

Babs: “No. Never”

Tess: “She just wouldn’t. She doesn’t talk about her weight.”

Babs: “She doesn’t talk her weight and… I don’t feel like she would talk about stress in this way…”

Tess: “She wouldn’t talk about stress in this way and… that’s just not how I’ve ever seen her discuss body image... I’ve never seen her be the type of person who would even imply that losing five pounds is a good thing. In fact, you know, her lyrics and stuff like that in songs like ‘Piece of Me’ have basically been like, ‘Fuck you, don’t talk about my weight…’ I mean, that alone is a really antiquated way of viewing one’s body, I think, and I will say, it reminds me of the way someone who’s a little bit older might think, who has a really outdated view of body image.”

After a few more posts where Britney mentions her weight–in both captions and on video–the women admitted their gauge of Britney’s thoughts on body image may have been off, but this way of discussing any #FreeBritney allegation, both large and small, is representative for how much of the movement has progressed. Given the questionable control Britney had over her social media, especially with differing reports on her access to the Internet, it made sense to question the validity of captions on her Instagram. Anything we didn’t see coming directly from Britney’s mouth could have been typed by anyone, but many fans were quick to make accusations regarding individual posts’ validity without full acknowledgment that their theories were mere speculation. Tess is sure she knows what Britney would or wouldn’t write based solely off her perception of Britney’s public persona. Basing the validity of social media uploads upon what fans think their own idealized version of Britney would write opened us all up to wild speculation where many people were passing off their own interpretations of events as hard facts. Pretty soon, everyone had their own ideas of what was happening behind Team Con’s curtains, and some were reluctant to give up their perceived “knowledge” once further evidence contradicted the story they imagined.

With evidence that Britney’s speech was frequently censored by her team along with reports questioning her access to the Internet, fans took on three general perspectives in regards to Britney’s Instagram posts. The first was that Britney had no control over her account and its uploads whatsoever. Fans discovered Cassie Petrey, founder of Crowd Surf, was Britney’s hired social media manager with vague ties to the fan-hated business manager, Lou M. Taylor. Cassie must be, according to some, working at the direction of Loucifer and uploading backlogs of content in Britney’s iCloud to manipulate Britney’s image. Considering how often Britney’s Instagram account re-uploaded posts or worked through the same photoshoot over weeks of posting, it wasn’t an awful theory, but occasionally, the account did upload selfies and videos from Britney that seemed to be recent (sometimes Britney would verbally clarify in videos when certain photos were taken). Maybe those could be explained as a result of Team Con’s intimidation, coercing Britney into creating specific content that would aid their cause.

Only some fans thought Britney’s social media was all her creation, but most fell into a reasonable middle-ground. Britney was likely creating the content, we decided, but she had to get it approved by members of her management team who abided by the demands of her conservators. Especially as fans noticed trends in Britney’s uploads (for instance, her Instagram page rarely, if ever, updated on weekends), it seemed likely that she herself wasn’t physically operating the account. The notion then began a hunt to inspect every single post for potential hidden messages from Britney to fans–things that could get passed Team Con’s censorship but still communicate information about her situation. Sometimes fan theories were convincing, like the time Britney uploaded photos shot in her living room that resembled the album cover of Janet Jackson’s Control, possibly sending a message about her team’s “control” over her. Other times, fan interpretation was a stretch, like the time fans thought her eyelashes spelled out “Call 911” in a selfie.

We’ll probably never have confirmation as to what theories, if any, were correct, but the constant scrutiny of any message Britney might have been trying to send us pushed fans into an instinctive hunt for hidden clues. Any time Britney’s Instagram account updated, #FreeBritney supporters ran back to Stan Twitter to offer their thoughts and interpretations of the latest posts.

As passion within the movement grew, and major publications neglected to take fan concerns seriously, convincing the world to care about the plight of Britney Spears became #FreeBritney’s main objective. Stans on Twitter often planned “trending hours,” where supporters would flood their timelines with the #FreeBritney hashtag. It didn’t matter if the tweets they wrote had anything to do with the conservatorship; many of the big stan accounts would create challenges to increase engagement on tweets within the tag. Instructions were given like, “Reply to this tweet with your favorite Britney Spears lyric and tag #FreeBritney.” If getting the message out was the movement’s biggest priority, though, then making sure all the information disseminated in our name was accurate and responsibly communicated was only ever a secondary concern.

Especially on the Internet, information spreads easiest when it’s entertaining or sensational. In order to gain public interest, talking points need to also be transformed into engaging content for entertainment, making the contributions of YouTube and TikTok creators vital to increasing the movement’s visibility. Enter what the Deep Dive YouTube channel named the “Tik Tok Revolution,” in which TikTokers created buzz around Britney’s situation by publicizing wild theories about the conservatorship’s control, largely focusing on secret meanings we could infer from Britney’s Instagram posts.

#FreeBritney TikTok was not known to be a reliable corner of the Internet for factual reporting, though. Conspiracy theories filled with excessive speculation are perfect tools for engagement because outlandish accusations prompt further interest in viewers, making the conspiracy videos favorable to TikTok and YouTube algorithms; but a few clicks around a certain tag can lead users down deep rabbit holes of misinformation with incremental increases in absurdity. Accepting the reasonable idea that Britney Spears’ abuse was enabled by the complicity of powerful individuals could eventually result in discovering TikToks that were actively trying to link Britney’s conservatorship to the sex trafficking crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

Many vocal activists were quick to excuse how out of line some of the disseminating claims were under the notion that anything which broadened the movement was a benefit to Britney. “All of the sudden, it was like Gen Z is on this, and we f— need them,” activist Megan Radford said via Deep Dive. “To see the way that they were really taking in this information, and sure some of it was more conspiracy in nature… but at the end of the day, it was getting information out there and encouraging people to learn more about the situation.” Some others were more hesitant to embrace the TikTok “revolution,” but plenty were ready to ride any new wave of popularity that came #FreeBritney’s way. “I think it really got Gen Z involved in #FreeBritney,” Kevin Wu said of TikTok’s conspiracy-centric content. “And I’m really grateful for that. And I think that, if that is someone’s way into the movement to learn about conservatorship abuse, I welcome any way to spread the message of the movement.”

Ridiculous speculation passed off as evidence didn’t just act as a gateway into #FreeBritney, though. Those who took to the conspiracy theory content that helped publicize the movement didn’t let go of their misinformed ideas once they looked into the conservatorship further, they brought the toxic thought patterns with them, and there was little to no attempt from those with larger platforms to address any of the more sensationalist talking points. Most ignored the wild speculations happening within the community–maybe because they thought all discourse on the subject was helpful for the cause or maybe because they didn’t want to bring attention to the issue or alienate other supporters–but some actively encouraged the circulation of speculative #FreeBritney theories.

Take, for example, the YouTuber and Internet personality Sl04n. Though not an obscenely large channel–his subscriber count is just below 650k–Sl04n is a popular creator within the commentary community. He began covering Britney Spears’ conservatorship early into the #FreeBritney uprising, using his channel to publicize and examine the theories circulating online. In a video from August of 2020, Sl04n looks at multiple TikToks that speculate on the hidden “messages” of Britney’s Instagram. The first one he discusses claims shadows on Britney’s face from a blurry photo are actually references to “panda eyes,” a concept with vague connections to the widely discredited “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. Sl04n says he “doesn’t understand” the allegation being made in the TikTok–probably because the TikTok doesn’t make sense–but doesn’t immediately dismiss it or recognize the claims as meritless and conspiratorial. He seems to hold the opinion that every speculation, no matter its substance or lack thereof, is worthy of consideration and distribution, correlating with his public support of a controversial Twitter user who’s become a representative for one side of a major divide in the Britney community.

“Sam antis” within the #FreeBritney movement are the fans and supporters of Britney Spears who actively oppose her relationship with fiance Sam Asghari. The unofficial leader of the faction goes by the name COCKy, with the Twitter handle @ReaICOCKy. COCKy believes Sam works for Team Con’s agenda, despite Sam publicly supporting the #FreeBritney movement multiple times and speaking out against Jamie Spears before Jamie was removed from the conservatorship. To COCKy and other antis, even though Britney’s conservatorship was officially eliminated in November, the fact that she’s still engaged to Sam indicates that she’s not yet “free.” When criticized for spreading unsubstantiated claims, advocates like Sl04n stuck by him while COCKy defended his leadership over one of #FreeBritney’s most prevalent conspiracy theories with appeals to open-mindedness and righteous intentions.

There are times in which being a responsible citizen of the world means not always being open to “different opinions,” especially when those opinions are harmful and uninformed. And there is harm in Britney’s fans propagating an attitude that puts her personal ability to make decisions under such scrutiny. Britney’s been officially freed from her conservatorship since November of last year; if she chooses to use her freedom to marry Sam Asghari, someone she’s only spoken positively of even as she lambasts members of her family and former members of her management every other day on Instagram, fans who’ve decided they’ve earned the right to present the legitimacy of her relationship as an up-for-debate topic advocate for the exact opposite goal #FreeBritney said it was working toward.

The #FreeBritney movement did a lot of good for Britney and fans deserve credit for that, but it’s increasingly apparent that some of the recognition the movement’s received for its impassioned advocacy has led a good deal of Britney’s fandom to feel entitled to speak on her life for her. Plenty have taken that entitlement further, to either profit off of her case or try to alter the direction of her life further.

A couple of advocates have started careers as content creators through their efforts to publicize Britney’s case–like the hosts for the podcast Eat, Pray, Britney who posted their first episode, “#FreeBritney,” in April of 2019 and continue to post Britney-related content today, or the YouTuber That Suprise Witness who emerged into the community as an attorney offering legal analysis of Britney’s case but now uploads regular videos discussing other high-profile legal proceedings. Then there are creators, like Sl04n, who have merely integrated #FreeBritney discussions into their prior work.

When Britney’s Gram first published their “#FREEBRITNEY” episode in April of 2019, Tess and Babs were two of the most prominent and respected voices in the movement. Not everyone liked them–there was always a divide in the Britney fandom as to how we should discuss aspects of her life publicly–but as the pair that brought the allegation of Britney’s forced medical treatment to light, there was a general trust that they were working to ensure Britney’s wellbeing. The two could be seen acting as spokesmen for the movement more so than other activists, eventually becoming subjects in the New York Times documentary, Framing Britney Spears. Questions about potentially self-serving intentions, however, progressed alongside their publicity.

In June of 2021, Tess and Babs launched a new podcast, Toxic: the Britney Spears story. The series takes a more formal and focused approach for discussing Britney’s conservatorship than Britney’s Gram; it has a tighter production, the episodes are scripted and planned out, and the information within the podcast is mostly reliable and seldom speculative. Still, the rebranding didn’t sit right with everyone. Mid-episode ad reads mixed with the casual, sometimes playful tone of the show’s scripts didn’t always seem appropriate from a platform supposed to discuss Britney’s abuse. The name of the show as well implied an authoritative point of view, but was “the Britney Spears story” something anyone but Britney Spears was qualified to tell? 

Backlash increased when Tess and Babs announced that they were hosting a paid #FreeBritney livestream event in October of 2021, for which attendees could pay an additional fee to get access to a virtual meet-and-greet with their tickets for the show. They also launched their own Toxic: The Britney Spears Story merchandise, featuring the podcast’s name, which references the title of Britney Spears famous song, along with an image of a snake that’s seen on the podcast’s logo, a reference to Britney’s infamous 2001 VMA performance.

The podcast hosts and their fans have defended their monetization efforts by asserting that creators are entitled to seek compensation for their work even if their work has another, more altruistic value as well. I don’t disagree, but seeking financial and reputational gain can transition quickly into an engagement with exploitation with a situation as delicate as this. Ronan Farrow made money for his reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s crimes, sure, but he didn’t make T-Shirts out of his book on the subject, especially not ones with visual references to Weinstein’s victims. As Tess and Babs polished their professional image, creating a structured podcast with more credible reporting than before, their decision to leverage their voices to commemorate their own brand at #FreeBritney’s expense (with the meet-and-greets at #FreeBritney events and Britney-themed merchandise) did damage to their standing within the community. Despite being some of the more reasonable leaders the movement had, the Britney’s Gram girls have slowly lost their credibility to many of those that originally hailed their dedication. Their public disagreements with other #FreeBritney activists as well contributed to the movement’s divided factions, with supporters constantly struggling to know whose voice to trust.

The Toxic podcast also sparked controversy with their third episode, “Chapter 3: Boys.” Trying to elevate their research by bringing on a variety of guests–from experts in conservatorship proceedings to people who once had contact with the Spears family–Tess and Babs invited on the man that Britney Spears briefly called her husband: Jason Alexander, a former friend from Britney’s hometown that she married in 2004 before being granted an annulment 55 hours later.

Jason has long been trying to insert himself into Britney’s conservatorship battle, attending #FreeBritney rallies and doing interviews in which he claims to be in regular contact with Britney. In August of 2020, Jason told US Weekly that he’d love to “give it another shot,” in regards to their relationship. His dislike for Britney’s fiance has since become apparent along with his belief that Britney secretly wants to be with him instead of Sam. In a since-deleted (or removed) Instagram post, Jason implied Sam could never be a good husband for Britney because he’s bisexual (an unsubstantiated claim) and “only cares about gay shit.”

Outside of his obsession with Britney, Jason was arrested and charged with violation of a protective order and aggravated stalking in December of last year when he emailed and attempted to bring gifts to a woman identified in documents as Lisa. Lisa had been granted a restraining order against Jason after he allegedly threatened to snap her neck in January of 2021, then threatened to snap the neck of Lisa’s male friend in July if the friend didn’t stop texting her. In October, TMZ reports that Jason allegedly admitted to following Lisa home under the claim he was “protecting her safety.” In January of this year, he plead guilty to stalking. Then, on January 22nd, Jason live streamed himself on Instagram outside of Britney Spears’ home while she was on vacation in Hawaii–a state that some conspiracy theorists wrongfully believe Britney’s conservatorship was never terminated in.

In addition to being an alleged stalker, Jason Alexander is also a committed conspiracy theorist, attending a “protest” in Washington D.C. on January 6th, 2021–you know the one–and spreading unsubstantiated claims about the COVID-19 pandemic being a “hoax” and the Earth being flat on Facebook. About wearing a mask as a protective measure in the pandemic, he once wrote, “I’m locked and loaded ready to kill anyone or thing that trys to make me.” In a separate post, he said he would feed President Joe Biden to alligators if he ever met “[that] fucker.”

Much of this information wasn’t extremely public when Tess and Babs interviewed Jason for the Toxic podcast, but over the last few months, Jason’s proximity to #FreeBritney activism has allowed him to become somewhat of a folk hero to a select few of Britney Spears’ “fans,” who’ve encouraged his relentless pursuit of the star as they too try to separate her from her “Team Con” fiance.

Some, including COCKy and another Twitter user, @Thorsengry, have even begun directly contacting Jason to support his dangerous cause.

Sam antis don’t just like Jason because they distrust her boyfriend. Their misplaced admiration stems from the larger issue regarding Britney’s former team’s longtime concealment of information. Lack of transparency from the actual Team Con was a genuinely concerning aspect of Britney’s conservatorship during its operative years. Even now, as Britney seeks justice against her abusers, their lack of cooperation during an ongoing investigation into conservators’ and co-conspirators’ potential crimes continues to hinder Britney’s search for justice.

#FreeBritney supporters had reason to mistrust the narrative of Britney’s official team for years and thus relied on one another in the community to research the situation and report on any relevant information. Jason Alexander’s prior closeness with Britney and his knowledge of the Spears family made him seem, to many, like a reasonable source to reach out to for comment. Before awareness of his obsessive and reckless behavior became widespread, his presence at #FreeBritney rallies was celebrated by many as a win for the movement; his willingness to divulge details others wouldn’t made him seem like an immediate ally.

The quest for any and all information about Britney’s personal life has outstretched reasonable boundaries, however. In July of 2021, Jason Alexander shared a photo of a letter from legal counsel representing Britney Spears, threatening legal action if he didn’t cease and desist from sharing confidential information about Britney, citing a non-disclosure agreement Jason had previously signed. A small group of fans supported him and encouraged Jason and others to break their NDAs and #SpeakOutForBritney. The issue was, the NDA Jason posted was from 2006, before the conservatorship had been put into place. It had nothing to do with Jason speaking up about Britney’s abuse or the control of her “handlers.” Instead, the letter regarded interviews Jason had done as well as a book he was supposedly peddling, promising to “lift the lid” on his “sex life with [Britney].”

Not only do some fans feel entitled to speak on Britney’s behalf, they also feel entitled to obtain every bit of information they can about her life; but the search for truth regarding the conservatorship always blurred the lines between ensuring Britney’s wellbeing and infringing on her privacy. Responsible #FreeBritney advocates tried to respect the boundaries between fan and celebrity as much as possible, but it’s not like Britney’s conservators always made that task easy.

Team Con fed into the divide between themselves and Britney fans when they began attempting intimidation tactics to stop #FreeBritney theories from spreading. In 2009, Jordan Miller claimed to have been threatened by Jamie Spears when he started uploading anti-conservatorship blog posts to his fansite, Breathe Heavy. Jamie, according to Jordan, tried to shut the website down and screamed that he would “destroy [Jordan’s] ass” during a phone call between the two. With 2019’s #FreeBritney revitalization, Jordan continued advocating for the conservatorship’s end and, like many fans, often directed specific criticisms toward Lou Taylor, Britney’s then-business manager and the alleged mastermind behind the conservatorship’s inception.

By the end of 2020, Jordan posted an “apology” to his YouTube channel after allegedly receiving a letter from Lou threatening legal action if he didn’t comply with her team’s demands. Lou was already known to have sued another #FreeBritney supporter back in July of 2019, after fan Bryan Kuchar created a parody website deeming Lou “the gay demon exorcist” due to her ties with Mercy Multiplied, a Christian residential program reported to have practiced both gay conversion therapy and supposed exorcisms in the past (it appears Britney’s conservators once moved funds from the now-closed Britney Spears Foundation into a $42,000 donation to the program).

Other fans claimed to have been threatened by Lou as well. Just this week, screenshots of messages from an apparent firm representing Lou Taylor and Tri Star Sports and Entertainment Group (the management firm Lou founded and acts as CEO for) indicate that the infamous business manager is still lobbing aggressive cease and desist letters to Britney fans via Instagram.

Far from discouraging #FreeBritney supporters, the intimidation tactics strengthened their resolve. Team Con could get mentionings of Britney’s conservatorship cut out of talk shows all they wanted for over a decade, but they couldn’t silence millions of different users across various platforms. Still, fans spotted efforts to muffle their cause every day, even when Team Con’s influence wasn’t quite as widespread as some maybe imagined.

Quickly after the “#FREEBRITNEY” episode of Britney’s Gram sent Stan Twitter into a frenzy, the #FreeBritney hashtag could be seen on the worldwide trending tab of Twitter. A little while later, supporters noticed that the hashtag had fallen off the trending list, despite having more tweets per hour than many of the topics that were trending. Folks soon started pushing the idea that #FreeBritney was blocked from trending, blaming backdoor deals between Twitter and Team Con.

To regain their spot, supporters created new hashtags, like #FreeXBritney, which then, too, began trending just to fall off the tabs shortly after. So fans made more hashtags or suggested keywords for trending topics. Most of them were eventually suspected of similarly being “blocked” by Twitter, though it likely didn’t help that everyone had different ideas for the hashtag’s successor.

There’s never been evidence of Twitter blocking any hashtags or words related to #FreeBritney from trending. The fact that the tags had large numbers of tweets per hour wasn’t proof that they should have been picked up by the algorithm. Trending topics become such through a much more complicated set of standards. For one thing, trends are expected to have a sudden surge of popularity rather than a steady progression. That’s likely why the hashtags were able to take off fairly quickly upon circulation but fell off afterward as engagement plateaued even if the amount of engagement was still relatively high. Who’s contributing to the topic is also taken into consideration; Twitter tries to avoid trends coming from select groups with niche tastes, meaning a topic is more likely to trend if the users tweeting about it are seen by the algorithm as diverse. Much of the people tweeting #FreeBritney were from the same community, with many of the same mutual followers. It then makes sense that when major outlets, like the New York Times, started picking up Britney’s story, a wider range of people–beyond just that of Stan Twitter–were discussing the conservatorship and #FreeBritney began trending pretty consistently.

Even if it were true that Twitter blocked the tags, the supposition that this was a Team Con-directed move was still a leap. Twitter employees may have wrongfully believed it was harassment or a dangerous conspiracy theory, and while that would be frustrating, it wouldn’t automatically imply there was a backdoor deal between the tech giant and Britney’s former team. After years of feeling thwarted by Jamie Spears and Co, Britney fans may have overestimated Team Con’s power and connections to the rest of the media world.

How major outlets reported on the movement perpetuated an amount of partially-justified paranoia. CNN’s release in May of 2019 was maybe the worst offender due to the network’s reputation as a primary news source for middle America. On their website, Chloe Melas penned an article entitled, “There’s no need to #FreeBritney, say people close to the singer.” The “source” quoted in the piece has never been named, but they’re mentioned as having known Britney for “more than a decade” and defended Britney’s conservatorship as necessary for her protection. With the conservatorship being in place for over a decade itself, it stands to reason that the person Chloe Melas was in contact with was someone who may have been profiting from the arrangement–as most people on Britney’s professional team at the time likely were.

In some ways, it was reasonable for #FreeBritney to be written off as a conspiracy theory since the movement was doing something conspiracy theories are known to do: question an “official story” to offer a more speculative version of events. The problem with that label was, the people with the authority to give an “official story,” a.k.a., the inside sources outlets like CNN would normally contact for comment, were the people that benefitted from obscuring the truth about Britney Spears’ abuse.

As more information has been made public corroborating #FreeBritney’s longtime claims, CNN–specifically Chloe Melas–and other outlets have adapted their reporting. The sting of watching (mostly) trusted organizations act as mouth-pieces for Team Con’s agenda, though, turned many in the movement off to what’s considered the “Mainstream Media.” Stoking distrust of that media is a primary tool of those spreading conspiratorial beliefs, and it’s effective because the media–overseen by an enormous group of human beings with their own flaws, conflicts of interest, and biases–frequently fails the public it claims to serve. Conspiracy theorists can then sharpen someone’s valid skepticism into accepting a philosophy that perhaps doesn’t make the most logical sense but is nonetheless alluring as a simple explanation for something not easily explainable, taking complex circumstances and boiling them down to a narrative with clear-cut heroes and villains.

We can see that happening for those in #FreeBritney with the development of That Surprise Witness’s YouTube videos. The channel’s creator and host, BJ Courville, entered the movement not as a fan, but as an attorney seeking to help #FreeBritney supporters investigate court documents in Britney’s case through her understanding of legal proceedings. BJ’s legal analyses earned her an influential voice within the community as a consistent participant in ongoing discourse. In November of 2020, she uploaded her last YouTube video until June of 2021. Her return video, titled “I will NOT be SILENCED. (Why I Disappeared) #FreeBritney,” acted as a trailer for her content henceforth. The piece is about six minutes long, but after a few minutes of wind-up, BJ gives her online persona a thesis statement, interspersed with dramatic, leading edits and cinematic sound effects to elevate the tension while she monologues:

“I do want eventually to tell the full story of really everything that went on and I think it’s finally going to answer a question that a lot of people, including myself at times, have asked and have continued to ask which is, ‘If this conseravtorship is so bad and if this system is really as evil and corrupt as some #FreeBritney activists believe, then why doesn’t anyone say anything? Why aren’t the professionals–why aren’t lawyers speaking out about this? What happens whenever certain lawyers, or certain types of professionals do get close to Team Con?’

I would like to tell that story, ‘cause now I know the answer.”

Cut to a brief montage of BJ inspecting various documents with an action movie trailer soundtrack and on-screen text announcing the new era of That Surprise Witness to be “Coming Soon” with the help of Deep Dive’s co-creator, JakeyonceTV. The trailer marked That Suprise Witness’s official emergence as a platform for all content related to Britney Spears, rather than just a channel for BJ’s loose-format legal analyses. She was partnering professionally with other #FreeBritney content creators and positioning herself as a martyr for the cause, revealing in later videos that she left her job at a law firm due to the intimidation tactics of Lou Taylor. According to BJ, Lou became a client at BJ’s firm in an attempt to silence her from making further videos about the conservatorship.

Likely due to her experiences with Lou, BJ’s willingness to see persecution and deception in situations surrounding her and the #FreeBritney movement amplified. In her videos, you can hear her frequently use the phrase “Mainstream Media” like it’s a dirty word dripping with perversion. Incidental injustices are treated with assumptions of intentionality. In a video talking about an interview she and other #FreeBritney activists did with Chloe Melas of CNN, BJ depicts those within the media as having a discrete and sinister agenda. She opens, “My purpose for this video is to provide transparency to the general American public about how you’re literally being lied to by your media.”

BJ goes on to discuss her experience being “blackballed” by the Mainstream Media. Her description of this apparent blackballing doesn’t sound like anything other than the typical production process. Discussing interviews she’d done under the impression they’d be featured in various TV specials, she complains about leading questions and an obvious tonal slant in interviews. It’s not a necessarily villainous procedure for a producer to have an idea of what talking points they want captured on film to later edit into their project. It’s also not uncommon for subjects’ footage to be cut if it doesn’t fit into the overall arch of a piece. Subjects would be reasonable to find this process frustrating, but BJ takes a bit of mental leap when implying the only reason this could be the case for footage of her is that the Mainstream Media is afraid of the truth she’s spilling. “I am talking about things,” she says. “That would upset the courts, the state. It would implicate very powerful, rich, and important people.” She states that she’s sat for “about a dozen” interviews that media creators don’t use the footage for, however, if you check the bottom right corner of the video, you can see a disclaimer that reads “*at the time of this recording” (I assume this means footage featuring BJ was used in media content later on). She goes on to complain that Chloe Melas was trying to reach other #FreeBritney supporters, specifically those that were featured in the New York Times documentary. “Whoever Chloe was taking her orders from,” she says. “They did not want whatever message I was saying to get out into the public.”

There’s a running theme throughout the video portraying Chloe as a “co-conspirator” and “accomplice” of Team Con. BJ has absolutely no proof of this, except for when Chloe stated that the claim she’s working for Jamie Spears (something everyone who’s ever been vaguely pro-conservatorship or even just not firmly anti-conservatorship has been accused of by hardcore #FreeBritney supporters) is untrue, and the idea that she wants Britney to remain in the conservatorship is a misconception of her reporting. That’s exactly what a member of Team Con would say! appears to be BJ’s retort. She edits footage of Chloe defending Jamie Spears on The Wendy Williams Show around clips of Chloe saying she isn’t on Jamie’s payroll, but Chloe being gullible to Team Con’s talking points doesn’t make her a member of their operation, it just makes her wrong.

I don’t say any of this to defend Chloe Melas. As a reporter for one of the largest news outlets in the country, Chloe should have done more research into the allegations surrounding the conservatorship and treated the word of “sources close” to Britney Spears with more skepticism considering the circumstances. She overlooked a huge conflict of interest when promoting the statements of those likely benefitting from the situation and, for that, she deserves all the fair criticism that’s been lobbied against her. She doesn’t deserve, however, the targetted harassment that a small group of fans inflicted onto her to deflect their larger resentment toward Team Con, or accusations from platforms like That Surprise Witness saying Chloe has a “fake news agenda” and “knows the truth” but is “lying” anyway.

At one point in BJ’s video, a reference to “Daddy Mainstream Media” is superimposed with a photo of Vivian Thoreen, Jamie Spears’ then-attorney. Most conspiratorial perspectives operate from this kind of logical fallacy–taking a broader, more nuanced problem and over-simplifying it into a conception of an easily-definable organized conspiracy. Vivian Thoreen and others working for Jamie Spears had contacts in the media and perceived authority as “insiders” on the case, which gave them opportunities to spread their talking points with greater ease than Britney Spears under her restrictions or the average #FreeBritney supporter with, at best, a moderately-sized platform on social media. That doesn’t mean anyone on Team Con was in league with anyone at CNN or other outlets (if they were that powerful, let’s be honest, they would have used a more influential talking head than Chloe Melas). But over-estimating the scope of corruption in Britney’s case is what all major #FreeBritney conspiracy theories are based on, and this misconception has been weaponized by leaders of more prominent, and dangerous, conspiracy theories as well.

QAnon has officially infiltrated #FreeBritney. BJ Courville was the entry point, collaborating with famed QAnon leader Liz Crokin, the woman who got Marjorie Taylor Greene into following the QAnon theory that a cabal of Satanic elitists sexually abuse and cannibalize children for their global sex trafficking trade to produce a psychoactive drug called adrenochrome (I am not making this up, that is what they believe).

Like BJ, who claims to have been targetted by Lou Taylor for her #FreeBritney activism, Liz feels she’s been similarly prosecuted for spreading her own righteous truth. For instance, Twitter removed Liz’s blue check verification after she accused John Legend and Chrissy Teigen of trafficking their own child in a Washington D.C. pedophile ring. She’s since been banned from pretty much every social media platform for regularly spreading misinformation–usually involving other celebrities and false claims of sex trafficking operations, or propagating the idea that Hillary Clinton eats babies. One time, her dog got diarrhea and she became convinced that her enemies were casting evil spells on her.

On That Surprise Witness’s YouTube channel, BJ invites Liz to be a guest on the video “The TRUTH About Lou Taylor.” Liz praises BJ and the #FreeBritney movement as truth-tellers, appealing to the frustration many in the community have felt after years of being dismissed as ignorant. BJ immediately takes to the praise and describes Liz’s appreciation as “validating.”

The video was uploaded around the time that the Slave Princess documentary premiered, an hour-long film produced and narrated by Liz Crokin and featuring BJ Courville as a representative for the #FreeBritney movement. Slave Princess begins as a movie about Britney Spears’ corrupt conservatorship but progresses quickly into linking Britney’s abuse with wider QAnon theories of Hollywood sex trafficking. Liz endorses suspicions from the #FreeBritney community, including the accusation that social media companies were censoring activists and their talking points to prevent public awareness of the conservatorship’s abuse. “This shows there was not only coordination with Britney’s team and the Mainstream Media,” Liz says. “But also with Big Tech to silence her supporters.”

Fans who felt frustrated that outlets like CNN seemed to be trusting Team Con’s account instead of investigating the movement’s credible arguments, or who believed that activists’ statements should have had an easier time getting a spotlight on social media platforms, can easily take to the idea that Team Con had operatives within the media to propagate #FreeBritney’s suppression. It’s unlikely that anyone in Team Con had that strong of connections with that powerful of people, but considering how much Jamie and Co did try to suppress any opposition to the conservatorship, it isn’t a stretch to think that they would certainly attempt to silence any activist they could. If you get on board with the claim that the Mainstream Media and Big Tech were behind fan silencing, then Liz can lead her audience to expand the #FreeBritney mythos–switching Jamie Spears from being the leader of Team Con to being a mere puppet in a grander plot of oppression and control. Surely we don’t think that James Parnell Spears was the mastermind behind that level of organization right?

If you check out the Breathe Heavy thread in which fans first discussed the release of Slave Princess, there’s a divide between those who quickly recognized the QAnon agenda and those who praised the film for focusing on the #FreeBritney central villain often left out of major outlets’ coverage of the case: Lou M. Taylor, the gay demon exorcist herself. “My dream has come true,” one user writes. “[A] documentary dedicated to Lou Taylor!” Another says, “Wow it was actually good, happy 666th birthday Loucifer, enjoy! Who’s she gonna sue next, God???”

Lou Taylor may be the #FreeBritney community’s most vilified member of Team Con, even more so than Jamie Spears, and for good reason. Lou is an actual villain who’s not only been accused by multiple people (including Britney Spears herself) of creating the plan to place Britney into a conservatorship, it also appears that Lou may have strategically leveraged her forced business relationship with Britney to expand her own company. We should mention that Lou’s been accused of trying to get other celebrities into conservatorships as well, including Courtney Love and Lindsay Lohan.

Up until recently, Lou’s alleged involvement in the conservatorship escaped investigation by major news outlets, so when someone outside the movement–i.e., Liz Crokin who feigned credibility to fans by exaggerating her experience as a journalist–decided to make Lou a central figure in her documentary about #FreeBritney, many fans felt like they were finally being vindicated. I can’t claim to know what’s happening inside Liz Crokin’s head (I wouldn’t want to be in there), but after watching Slave Princess and “The TRUTH about Lou Taylor,” I don’t see much evidence that Liz actually cares to investigate Lou that heavily. She doesn’t say anything about Lou that wasn’t already a major talking point within the movement. She spends more time deriding the corrupt media that enabled Britney’s abuse along with the abuse of others (we can assume she means the made-up babies she believes democrat politicians eat in Satanic rituals) and complimenting #FreeBritney supporters as true grassroots activists.

Exposing Lou Taylor isn’t really the point; the point is identifying the #FreeBritney equivalent to QAnon’s big bad: Hillary Clinton. Both women inspire legitimate criticism, and while Lou Taylor might be legitimately evil, both are frequently demonized in a way that exaggerates their conceivable power. Whether or not Lou was the ultimate mastermind behind the conservatorship’s enaction and operation, fans often attribute her influence to anything surrounding Britney Spears and anyone associated with her. People get cast as bad actors in the #FreeBritney narrative just for knowing Lou or having some vague business connection to her company. Jordan Miller, the fan threatened by both Lou Taylor and Jamie Spears, has been accused of working for Lou just because he floated the idea that Bobby Campbell (who works with Lady Gaga) would be a good manager for Britney, but Bobby, according to some, is “close friends” with Lou. The reason people think Bobby and Lou are friends is because Bobby followed Lou on Instagram in August of 2020 and sometimes Lou comments positive things on Bobby’s posts.

Lou Taylor is a business manager for many big-name celebrities, like Jennifer Lopez, Travis Scott, and basically the entire Kardashian family. She has business connections to a lot of people, but having vague associations, or even just following or being followed by Lou on social media, is enough to be considered a Tri Star co-conspirator.

It’s like Lou Taylor has cooties and anyone she’s ever touched becomes Team Con. No one knows this better than Cassie Petrey, Britney’s social media manager who was hired under the conservatorship and, as far as we’re aware, is still working with Britney today. Like anyone who survived the conservatorship’s termination and didn’t lose their job on Britney’s professional team, Cassie is looked at with intense skepticism among #FreeBritney supporters. Considering the scrutiny Britney’s Instagram’s received for the last three years, it makes sense to look at Cassie’s involvement with some suspicion. We don’t know, though, what awareness Cassie had of the conservatorship’s abuse or Britney’s control of the situation. She’s publicly stated that she had very little contact with Lou Taylor and was misled by members of Team Con herself. In a DM to a fan, Cassie claimed to have only “crossed paths with [Lou] at work occasionally,” but her basic business association with Tri Star, and the fact that she apparently attended a barbeque at Jamie Spears’ house once, has been enough to get her labeled as a “bestie” and “prodigy” of Lou Taylor.

It seems Lou was the person to propose the idea of Britney’s conservatorship to her father, but she wasn’t the only person that’s overseen or participated in Britney’s abuse. Edan Yemini of Black Box Security and Robin Greenhill of Tri Star Sports and Entertainment have both been named as two of the primary agents exerting power over Britney on a daily basis, but their names haven’t been given the same radioactive power within the #FreeBritney movement that Lou Taylor’s has. As a right-wing movement, QAnon portrays Hillary Clinton as the leader of a fictitious ring of sex traffickers because Hillary Clinton is a powerful woman who, at least publicly, supports mostly liberal principles. She’s a representation of things they fear. Even if our mistrust is better founded, there’s a similarity there with how #FreeBritney activists view Lou Taylor. It’s almost poetic that Britney Spears, a star with a massive LGBTQ following, was held hostage by a woman who so openly claims fundamentalist Christian values and financially supports gay conversion therapy. Britney’s oppressor represents the qualities that plenty of her fanbase have also been oppressed by, making Lou the perfect bad guy.

Britney’s fanbase may skew left politically, but those who support the ideas presented in Slave Princess are supporting a film with an insidiously right-wing agenda. Liz Crokin wasn’t the first one to try exploiting #FreeBritney’s distrust of the media to serve their own political aspirations. U.S. representative and QAnon hero Matt Gaetz spoke out against Britney’s conservatorship as early as March of 2021. He was later given a microphone to speak at a #FreeBritney rally to some backlash. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Matt Gaetz is under investigation following credible accusations regarding his alleged participation in the sex trafficking of an underage girl. In Slave Princess, Liz Crokin implies that the allegations against Gaetz were actually a part of an extortion scheme to cover up Britney’s abuse after Gaetz began speaking publicly about it. Britney Spears has since been invited by all of congress to speak about her experience as a victim of conservatorship abuse, but I’ve yet to hear any news about every senator and representative being similarly accused of sex trafficking (maybe Q has some insight into when this might happen).

After being permanently banned from Twitter, it seems Liz Crokin has made her return with her #FreeBritney allegiance. The operator of the Slave Princess Twitter account is unknown, but the talking points are in clear favor of Liz and the greater QAnon movement. On social media, the group now labeled as “BAnon” is hailing the collaboration of Liz Crokin and BJ Courville as a win for bipartisanship, while Slave Princess actively tries to recruit more QAnon members from the Britney fandom.

Slave Princess is utilizing another platform as well, writing posts on the instant messaging app Telegram, where #FreeBritney theories and QAnon theories are fully enmeshed. A recent Instagram post from Britney is decoded as a message about sex trafficking in Australia. In the comments, you can see fans praising Britney along with right-wing conspiracy theorists denouncing vaccines and promoting other telegram accounts with up-to-date news about Donald Trump.

Anyone that’s ever argued with conspiracy theorists like QAnon or BAnon supporters knows it’s useless to challenge the logic of their beliefs. People don’t come to these irrational conclusions because they were convinced to by evidence alone; they invent evidence to believe whatever conclusion they want to believe. There’s no compelling reason to think Hillary Clinton is the leader of a Satanic, cannibalistic cabal, but if you truly hate Hillary Clinton and her supporters, affiliating her with an objectively evil operation justifies any subsequent act of retaliation against her. Why, though, would Britney fans want to believe the things they do, like Brintey isn’t really free from her conservatorship or her fiance is actually a co-conspirator of her abusers?

For a select group of people, there may be some straight-up racial bias contaminating their opinions of Sam Asghari. There have certainly been comments from fans on social media deriding Sam for his ethnicity as an Iranian. Jason Alexander, as well, said on a live stream that Sam should “go back to [his] country” and went on an Islamaphobic rant claiming Muslims enslave women while applying that idea to Sam’s relationship with Britney (Sam’s never publicly discussed his religious affiliation and I hope I don’t need to explain why the other stuff Jason said was wrong).

Beyond that, there is something exciting about the idea that Britney’s conservatorship was a part of a larger, more dangerous conspiracy. The #FreeBritney movement already did something enormous with their unflinching rebuke against Team Con’s abuse. We still don’t know how large that operation was, but some might be flattered by the idea that the fight they engaged in involved the entire Mainstream Media industry along with Big Tech and, depending how far down the rabbit hole you fall, possibly even the White House and, by extension, the U.S. government. BJ Courville produced action trailers based on her advocacy after an indirect encounter with Lou Taylor, then implied any producers that don’t use her interview footage in their TV specials are just afraid of the truth she’s exposing, because it feels empowering to see yourself as a worthy opponent of antagonists you perceive as exceptionally powerful.

Seeing persecution everywhere can almost help your self-esteem by allowing you to never hold yourself accountable for your potentially harmful beliefs and behaviors. Most people who’ve been in #FreeBritney for a long time and actively participate in discourse within the community have, at some point, been labeled by another activist as secretly being Team Con. Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is a bad actor means you never have to engage with the idea that you’re wrong.

Wanting to excuse incorrect assumptions in the past can also lead someone to deny reality under the claim that whatever’s being currently presented to them is actually a lie. Many fans demonized Sam Ashgari and Cassie Petrey before the conservatorship was terminated and loudly declared that both would be out of Britney’s life once she was a free woman. When freedom came and Sam and Cassie remained, fans deciding that Britney just wasn’t actually free yet meant they never had to acknowledge their ignorance. They could carry on advocating for #FreeBritney as before.

Throughout the movement, fans insisted that Britney’s Instagram captions weren’t written by her. People made fun of the way she typed, or just mocked the content of her posts altogether, pointing out when her eyeshadow wasn’t neatly applied or her hair wasn’t perfectly brushed. Blaming Team Con and believing that Britney’s social media output would change radically once she was free preserved an image they had of her as a polished popstar. Everyone had their own idea of what would happen and what Britney would do once she escaped the conservatorship. If your idea of Britney didn’t align with what happened after November of 2021, what would you rather do? Accept that you never really knew Britney Spears the way you thought you did, or believe that the real Britney, the one you imagined, is still trapped and only you can help her get out? Plenty of people, it seems, would rather do the latter.

Many conspiracy theories are also influenced by what’s called a “proportionality bias,” explaining the phenomenon in which people assume an event that had a significant outcome must have also had a significant cause. People will always doubt the official story of Princess Diana’s death because it was an event that shook the entire world; we don’t want to believe that it was caused by a simple car crash.

In a kind of reversed way, the same might apply to #FreeBritney. Supporters spent over three years after April of 2019 actively fighting the conservatorship and trying to publicize the allegations of abuse we were all so horrified by. Those who’ve been concerned about Britney’s private turmoil since before 2019 may have been questioning the conservatorship’s control for over a decade. At times, the war against Team Con was extremely intense, with fans battling lawsuits, biased media outlets, and an entire world that seemingly refused to take us seriously. Maybe there was an expectation after all that, that Britney’s official freedom would bring an immediate and climactic end to the #FreeBritney saga. We’d suddenly get interviews or Instagram lives where Britney would explain every detail of the last 14 years and we’d watch Jamie Spears, Lou Taylor, and all their co-horts be put into handcuffs and sentenced to decades in prison for all the pain their greed inflicted. When none of that happened, the ending to this absurd story we’ve been living through just didn’t *feel* right.

The #FreeBritney story has yet to be tied up in a neat, little bow the way we hoped it would. Even the simple task of identifying our heroes and villains remains unfulfilled. Sam antis will point out that Sam Asghari at least appeared to be complicit with some of Team Con’s schemes throughout the years–especially when he told paparazzi Britney was “doing amazing” while in a mental health facility she now says traumatized her. We still don’t have the full story on everyone’s private actions during that time, but it’s not ridiculous to assume that within the circumstances of Team Con’s authority, there may have been many compromises made between those who cared about Britney and those who controlled her. Navigating that situation likely wasn’t easy and, at times, individual actions may have gotten a bit morally ambiguous, but some on-lookers might find it easier to just assume that anyone who ever bent to the will of Jamie and Co was automatically an unmistakable ally for the conservatorship’s agenda.

Conspiracy theories are alluring because they simplify things that are too complex to fully grasp. As more is revealed, there will probably be even less clear-cut villains than most fans originally perceived because real life has very few clear-cut anything. The more we investigate, the more we’ll likely discover people who did things in regards to this situation that they’re not proud of, but didn’t necessarily do those things because they’re evil. We’re already seeing it with people like Chloe Melas, who ignorantly bought into the bullshit that Team Con presented her. We’re also seeing that some peoples’ reaction to flawed human beings like Chloe is that of over-simplified paranoia and vilification–inflicting a perceived intentionality onto Chloe that allows one to dismiss the more intellectually-demanding nuance of the situation.

Because of all that, the community might never truly be rid of these conspiracy theorists because the theories will always have appeal. Content creators will lean into what people want, as is already happening with YouTuber’s like Sl04n producing ill-informed and downright toxic videos claiming Britney Spears isn’t really free and her attorney is making deals with–you guessed it–Lou Taylor. Sl04n’s now-infamous video on the subject is stuffed with half-truths, mischaracterizations, and baseless speculation, but much of his audience doesn’t care. It’s just as entertaining and absurd as the TikTok conspiracy theories that have been credited for “revolutionizing” the #FreeBritney movement.

It’ll also be hard for a lot of people to ever take anyone on Britney’s team for their word again, even if she’s in legal control of her life. Once enough doubt has been cast over a person, organization, or situation, it can become almost impossible for those involved to fully regain trust, especially once “skeptics” of an official story start to create their own communities and echo chambers.

I fear we may never be done over-analyzing Britney Spears’ Instagram.