Quick: What was the first time you ever heard the name "Paris Hilton"?

Unless you were into tabloids and/or the wealthy New York party scene in the early 2000s, then odds are it was the whole sex tape "controversy." In 2004, the people who knew Paris Hilton broke down like this:

Before that she was a local New York socialite, far from a national star. She did turn up in the odd magazine (often with a famous boyfriend) and so Fox cast Paris in a reality show called The Simple Life.

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This could be her breakthrough, she thought, the chance at worldwide fame she thought she so badly deserved. But why the hell would anybody care about yet another Fox reality show, particularly one starring two mildly retarded women middle America had never heard of?

The Publicity Stunt:

One week before the show was to debut, a publicity bombshell dropped. A video of Paris fucking a guy.



It's green because of the night vision. Her eyes really do look like that, though. No camera tricks there.

The famous home video of Paris and Rick Soloman "leaked" onto the Internet and within days the entire world went from barely knowing who Paris Hilton was to obsessively talking about her fornicating skills and camera work.

And since fame can create its own momentum, that's all it took. All of the news outlets in New York, who were more than familiar with Paris, went apeshit over the video. "Tonight there is a firestorm of controversy as clips emerged of Paris Hilton in a sex video! Wow!"

America heard this, and across the country the same conversation took place over and over:

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"Wow! Paris Hilton! Naked, and in a sex video! Holy shit!"

"Wow! Wait, who's Paris Hilton?"

"I just told you! She's that lady in the sex video!"

Why it Was Bullshit:

Follow the timeline here. First, rumors came out in the tabloids that the video existed. Paris took to the airwaves and declared that there was no such tape, anywhere. But how does that reaction make sense, when she knew the tape was out there (it was not a hidden camera, and in fact Paris is actually doing the filming in some scenes). Why acknowledge the rumors at all?

Then, sure enough, clips emerge onto the Internet (it turned out it was Soloman, the dude in the video, who released it). Paris's response was to file lawsuits, which:

1) Verified authenticity

2) Drew more attention to the video and to her and kept the story in the headlines.

Then the Hilton family hilariously told the press that no one should watch the video, because Paris was "under age" at the time. Yeah, that'll scare the Internet off. "Please, we beg you, our daughter was merely a nubile, young, wild teen at the time she performed her extensive fellatio on this video that you can download for free, right now, but shouldn't."

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A skinny teenager? And she's naked? No thank you."

Then Paris went on Saturday Night Live and did a sketch, parodying the whole thing.

So was Paris in on the initial "leak" of the video, or was it a happy accident that she parlayed it into tens of millions of dollars of free publicity? There's no official legal answer, since the lawsuits were settled out of court.

But if Paris was really an innocent victim, would she have demanded that the settlement include a cut of the profits from sales of the DVD? Making it even harder to buy that there was anything accidental about her very public run-in with Rick Salomon's boner, is the fact what most people tend to learn from accidents, rather than repeating them enthusiastically over and over again.