Let’s get this out of the way: Eminem is totally fine. There’s no evidence that he’s in any sort of danger.
But #ripeminem is trending on Twitter as of Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020, and nobody really knows why. All of the tweets with the hashtag are either 1. People who are relieved that Eminem is okay or 2. People posting pictures of non-Eminem folks (Mike Pence pops up more than once).
#ripeminem
Me & my homies making sure Eminem is safe & sound pic.twitter.com/04U5gSwns9— Axtion Am (@Axtion_Am) August 18, 2020
The actual hashtag has been in use since at least 2009, according to Who Tweeted It First, a tool that searches through Twitter’s archive to find the earliest instance of a given term. We’re not linking that first tweet here, because it’s obscene and adds nothing to the conversation (hey, sort of like Slim Shady himself, am I right fellow millennials).
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4LAXhJhw1l/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Marshall Mathers hasn’t commented on the hashtag yet, but his account tweets about once every three days on average — we doubt he’s aware, given that the rapper is famously computer illiterate. Hey, he’s the guy who rapped “I should download an audio on MP3″ back in 1999, well after people understood how MP3s worked.
#ripeminem truly an icon of the modern rap era pic.twitter.com/GkOf5VGHAO
— Will Caruso (@will_caruso_) August 18, 2020
We could find no indication that Eminem is in any sort of medical distress, either. His estranged father passed away in 2019 after suffering a heart attack, but that seems unrelated to the current #ripeminem hashtag.
So, yeah, there’s simply no reason for people to be tweeting with #ripeminem. We absolutely don’t know what’s happening. It’s likely that this is one of those times where the internet decided to do Dumb Internet Things, and it’s a great example of why you really, really shouldn’t jump to conclusions when you read about celebrities online.
Or maybe we’re reading it wrong, and it’s supposed to say #Ripe Mine M, a reference to a mine worker named “M” who smells really ripe. We really don’t know. The internet is stupid.
