You don’t actually have to be famous in order to experience this; it’s sufficient to be the kind of person who is easy to tell lies about. For instance, when I was in high school, other kids spread some really wild rumours about me, including that I had gotten in a fistfight with my English teacher and got away with it (without even getting detention), or that I cheated on all my tests. I did judo outside of school, and other kids apparently found that implausible enough that the majority of my school peers believed I was making it up and couldn’t possibly actually do judo. I think this rumour got started just because I was pretty bad at the sports we played in school, like netball and hockey, so people told each other I was clearly lying about being good at judo.
When I was like twelve I identified as asexual, and I remember a group telling me that they’d heard I just pretended to be asexual in order to cover up being a sex addict. As far as I can tell, this just happened because other kids didn’t think twelve was old enough to know my identity was asexual (and apparently they found the sex addict thing more plausible somehow). I assure you I was not famous, neither was that rumour true (I was twelve).
I really don’t have a good model of why that happens. Being famous will definitely increase the amount that false things are said about someone, but being autistic seems to cause lots of this too. Being unusual or weird in many ways makes it easy to misrepresent you, since the truth can feel less plausible than the fiction. This happens a lot to me in social contexts where I’m very weird, and a lot less in social contexts where I fit in better.
But also, we have to be very careful about how we extrapolate these anecdotes to sexual ethics. As an adult, someone tried to spread the rumour that I was deeply in debt and lost my job for financial crimes (I’ve never taken out a substantial loan in my life, let alone not paid it back, and I’ve certainly never committed any major financial crimes). I know why they did it (I refused to sell them something that they wanted after a long and frustrating negotiation) and I also know that nothing bad happened to them due to spreading this untrue rumour, and there was no cost to doing so. It makes sense as to why they’d lie. Similarly, when people lied about me fistfighting my English teacher, there was basically no drawbacks; at worst somebody might decide that they’re an unreliable source of juicy gossip. There’s no reason not to repeat a funny or exciting rumour if you just want to be a popular kid. I think that’s a very very different thing from when a woman comes forward with a personal firsthand allegation of sexual misconduct against a man in a position of power, since often she faces massive harassment and professional consequences for doing so. I think that means that those kinds of allegations are much less likely to be lies, and definitely much less likely to be passed around as the “fun” kind of gossip.
You don’t actually have to be famous in order to experience this; it’s sufficient to be the kind of person who is easy to tell lies about. For instance, when I was in high school, other kids spread some really wild rumours about me, including that I had gotten in a fistfight with my English teacher and got away with it (without even getting detention), or that I cheated on all my tests. I did judo outside of school, and other kids apparently found that implausible enough that the majority of my school peers believed I was making it up and couldn’t possibly actually do judo. I think this rumour got started just because I was pretty bad at the sports we played in school, like netball and hockey, so people told each other I was clearly lying about being good at judo.
When I was like twelve I identified as asexual, and I remember a group telling me that they’d heard I just pretended to be asexual in order to cover up being a sex addict. As far as I can tell, this just happened because other kids didn’t think twelve was old enough to know my identity was asexual (and apparently they found the sex addict thing more plausible somehow). I assure you I was not famous, neither was that rumour true (I was twelve).
I really don’t have a good model of why that happens. Being famous will definitely increase the amount that false things are said about someone, but being autistic seems to cause lots of this too. Being unusual or weird in many ways makes it easy to misrepresent you, since the truth can feel less plausible than the fiction. This happens a lot to me in social contexts where I’m very weird, and a lot less in social contexts where I fit in better.
But also, we have to be very careful about how we extrapolate these anecdotes to sexual ethics. As an adult, someone tried to spread the rumour that I was deeply in debt and lost my job for financial crimes (I’ve never taken out a substantial loan in my life, let alone not paid it back, and I’ve certainly never committed any major financial crimes). I know why they did it (I refused to sell them something that they wanted after a long and frustrating negotiation) and I also know that nothing bad happened to them due to spreading this untrue rumour, and there was no cost to doing so. It makes sense as to why they’d lie. Similarly, when people lied about me fistfighting my English teacher, there was basically no drawbacks; at worst somebody might decide that they’re an unreliable source of juicy gossip. There’s no reason not to repeat a funny or exciting rumour if you just want to be a popular kid. I think that’s a very very different thing from when a woman comes forward with a personal firsthand allegation of sexual misconduct against a man in a position of power, since often she faces massive harassment and professional consequences for doing so. I think that means that those kinds of allegations are much less likely to be lies, and definitely much less likely to be passed around as the “fun” kind of gossip.