No, Camila Cabello's ice purse was NOT $22,500. But the viral rumor is a sobering reminder of how the internet still lacks media literacy.
They paid $36.95 for the supplies then $1,000 to the artist who made the purse. But the $22,500 rumor spread like wild fire.
You may have seen a couple viral videos about Camila Cabello’s “$22,500” ice purse from the Met Gala last week. One TikToker named Noah Glenn, who often reports on unverified internet rumors, made a video sharing the incorrect information about the purse and got 7.9 million views at the time of writing this article.
His video caught like wild fire and leaned into the rage people were already feeling about the discrepancy between the lavish event versus the growing economic crisis in America and conflicts across the world; like in Palestine and Congo. But my spidey-senses were tingling. Where was the $22,500 number coming from? For such a highly reported on event, why couldn’t I find a reputable source with the actual number of the purse.
Noah Glenn’s viral video even warranted a response from Camila Cabello in the comments. She wrote: “The only ice I know that costs 22k is jewelry. What kind of water they drinking over there in Germany?”
A screenshot from a tweet (with the source conveniently cropped out) seems to be what sparked the rumors online.
No where in this post do they cite a reputable source for the very specific information. Whenever people begin throwing out specific numbers, without a source, it makes my marketing ears perk up.
When I worked at BuzzFeed, we learned a viral hack that titles that have an odd number in them seem to perform much better than posts without a number or even number. Why is that? I am not really sure. But tell me which video you are more likely to click on:
“17 Ways to Bake Cheese”
“A Few Ways to Bake Cheese”
The post was riddled with specific, odd-ending numbers. “$22.5k”, “0.5 carats each”. Even the mention of “water from Germany” seemed oddly specific.
The term “ice purse” was a breakout term on Google Trends last week. But I could not find any articles with a reputable source that backed up the claim that the purse was so much money. A video with 7.9 million views in less than a week and a response from the celebrity in question seems sensational enough to report on. But nothing.
So I took matters into my own hands. One of my favorite type of accounts to follow on IG are celebrity stylists. If you want to know how to trend predict, look at what they are doing. Their pages are fascinating. I had seen celebrity stylist Jared Ellner featured in Emma Chamberlain’s Met Gala video. Turns out he also styled Camila Cabello for the Met Gala and had a post on his profile about her ice purse.
I had to go directly to the source. I commented on his post to no avail.
But when I DM’d him, I surprisingly got an answer!
In it, he explains that they got the rose off Etsy for $36.95. Then they paid designer Jane Wade $1,000 for her idea and time.
According to Ellner, the purse cost a total of $1,036. Not $22,500. Camila Cabello was on a Community live last night and said she thinks the purse was around $1,500. While the numbers don’t match perfectly, that seems a closer estimation that the outlier of $22,500.
But what is the lesson from this? Question everything. Especially when the video is viral. Noah Glenn’s video got 7.9 million views on TikTok and no where did he cite a reputable source for the information. Some people will farm content online that is meant to enrage people. This was the perfect storm. An event that is already questionable when it comes to it’s relation to the world around it. Celebrities that appear out of touch, and often times are. A false, but very specific, number about the cost of an item that will be melted within the hour. But when there are real issues and stories that need to be told, false information like this can detract from the truthful information that needs to be shared. People are shouting on top of rooftops about true and important information but they are being drowned in the algorithm by people sharing fake and sensational videos.
Speaking of stories that need to be told, I have been raising money for a family of nurses and doctors in Palestine who are almost at their gofundme goal. These are the stories that deserve to be viral. You can donate to their verified gofundme at the link here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/evacuation-from-the-war-in-gaza
Thank you and share this with a friend who loves the internet as much as we do!