With the right information, you can convince people to believe anything – at least that’s what the man who put together the largest Avril Lavigne conspiracy theory claimed.

Resurging on the 15th anniversary of the popstar’s hit “Complicated”, the conspiracy theory claims that the real Lavigne “died in 2003 and has been replaced by a lookalike,” reports The Rolling Stone.

As VICE says:

When Avril Lavigne released the video for the hyper-kawaii trainwreck of a track “Hello Kitty” two years ago, fans were confused. [T]he track introduced a markedly different Lavigne to the character her fans had come to know.

Where were the scarlet streaks in her hair? What happened to the “SK8R Boi”? Was that dubstep?

Where was “Complicated”?

If you aren’t familiar with the theory – which first surfaced in Portuguese in 2015 – here’s a breakdown:

The basic idea is that Lavigne, who was at the peak of her career at the time, committed suicide after her grandfather’s death in 2003. Rather than coming to terms with what had happened, Lavigne’s record company used Melissa Vandella – Lavigne’s doppleganger who was supposedly hired to pose as Lavigne for paparazzi – in her place to profit off of her celebrity.

As the story goes, Vandella then went to record “Under My Skin” as Lavigne (“From here it was no longer the real Avril,” the blog post reads, “but ‘Avril Lavigne’ under the skin of the other singer”) and left subtle hints along the way about what had really happened. That, along with pictures of how Lavigne’s face and handwriting had changed, was all the proof they needed.

But although the Brazilian who caused the original fiasco explicitly told Buzzfeed the Avril conspiracy is just a part of a broader series of conspiracies of the deaths of celebrities, the Internet took it to heart back in 2015.

It began trending again this year when it was brought up by Twitter user @givenchyass through a series of tweets:

The resurgence might have something to do with the fact that Lavigne – or is it Melissa? – announced the release of a new album soon, but I guess we will never know the real story – which you can read here. (You might need to translate the page.)

While it might all be a crock of nonsense, I suspect the real Avril wouldn’t have ended up with Chad Kroeger. Gross.

[source:vice&rollingstone&buzzfeed]