Paris Hilton debunks the infamous ‘stop being poor’ meme, saying image was edited

Paris Hilton has debunked the meme featuring her in a top that says “stop being poor”, explaining how the image in question was edited.

The photo shows Hilton in 2005 at a party at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas wearing a pink ombre maxi skirt (in typical noughties fashion) and a vest, bearing the slogan.

The image is regularly used as a meme, often as a sarcastic response to political policies which are seen to disproportionately affect those on lower incomes. Shortly after the image was circulated online, Amazon began selling a replica of the vest.

The 40-year-old has now described to her 4.2 million followers that someone had edited the image online and that her top actually said “stop being desperate.”

She said: “So there’s this photo online of me, I’m sure you’ve seen it. I never wore that shirt. This was completely Photoshopped. Everyone thinks it’s real, but that’s not the truth.”

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She then shared another photo from the same night, which showed her posing with a friend in the top that she says is the original.

“This is what it really said,” she added “Don’t believe everything you read.”

Hilton captioned the video: “Debunking the #STOPBEINGPOOR myth. 🙅🏼‍♀️😹 Don’t believe everything you read. 😏”.

It has previously been reported that the image was edited online, but fans were still stunned by Hilton’s explanation.

The TikTok now has more than 3.5 million views, 828,000 likes and thousands of comments.

One person wrote: “Once u pointed it out u can clearly see how how photoshopped it is too!!”

“As a poor person I kinda dig the photoshopped one tbh,” another person said and many agreed with over 80,000 people liking this comment.

A third person replied: “Are u sh*tting me Paris...I’ve been quoting this my whole life, so basically my life’s a lie?!!🙄”

“WHAT I NEVER KNEW THIS,” someone else commented.

Another person joked: “Bestie it’s perfect either way. That photoshopped photo actually brought the US out of the recession.”

It seems that most of her fans were disappointed to find this information out and still think the photoshopped image is still as iconic as it was back then.