No, Emma Chamberlain is not charging $10,000 for an Instagram DM

A screenshot from Emma Chamberlain’s personal website surfaced over the weekend. It’s claimed that the multi-hyphenate (fashion buff, coffee connoisseur, YouTube creator, podcaster… the list goes on) asked for $10,000 for “a personal thank you letter… in Instagram DM.”

The screenshot, shared on Twitter and Reddit, was widely derided for its absurdity, with most citing the price and the option to pay for the listing in $902 installments through ShopPay.

The tweet may have been deleted
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This afternoon, Cozack, Inc., the company behind Chamberlain’s Merch, posted this statement on shopemmachamberlain.com(Opens in a new tab)which you have requested Mashable print in its entirety:

“There have been false and inaccurate claims that Emma Chamberlain offered DMs in exchange for $10,000. As background in 2018, without her knowledge, Cozack (Emma’s merch company) was testing a potential rewards program related to Emma’s merch outrageous never-activated reward level that was not intended to be active or purchased. These bounty ideas were never operated by Emma as they were not intended to be available for sale or bounty, just for internal testing purposes. What we suspect is that the data was activated and crawled by Google’s SEO indexing system and discovered by an individual who then began disseminating false information to press outlets. This was never released and was certainly never intended to be sold or bought. The test program was never found on the main page or website with product listings, which is another reason Emma was unaware of it, with the internet’s tendency to create false narratives around sensations, we wanted to bring you the truth first hand and from the source .

The website is currently unavailable due to internal review.”

While the site was still live over the weekend, a Reddit user came forward(Opens in a new tab) pointed out that the $10,000 list was not accessible through the site’s home page and only through the direct link “shopemmachamberlain.com/products/personal-thank-you-note-from-emma-in-instagram-dm” could be reached.(Opens in a new tab)

Other(Opens in a new tab) user(Opens in a new tab) noted that the offer could be added to their cart and would earn $1,025 in taxes at checkout.

It looks like the listing has existed since at least December 4, 2022, when a Twitter user wrote, “Why did Emma Chamberlain’s merch site have a ‘personalized thank you’ message via Instagram dm that’s for $10,000 is listed?”.

The tweet may have been deleted
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Mashable has reached out to the screenshot’s original poster to discuss how they accessed it, but have yet to receive a response.

This is an evolving story.