What Happened With Mia Khalifa? Porn Star Responds After Health Rumor Goes Viral

Leading Twitter’s trending tab Thursday morning — amid a slew of hashtags heralding the national weed holiday informally known as 4/20 — was Mia Khalifa, a former adult film star and social media personality. Profiled by publications that include Maxim and the Washington Post, Khalifa has managed to maintain public interest for everything from her appreciation of sports to her rumored dismissal of Drake in an Instagram exchange.

There’s any number of reasons Khalifa would surface as a trending topic on Twitter: her risqué Instagram posts, for one; a recent exchange with a “Girls Gone Wild” account on Twitter; or her appreciation of the art of cooking. But a Twitter search Thursday morning revealed none of these appeared to be the reason her name was trending. Instead, an unsubstantiated claim that she’d been diagnosed as HIV positive had morphed into a snake eating its own tail. So many users had posted about the rumor in an apparent effort to debunk it that her name had been tweeted more than 20,000 times by the time this piece was published.

Khalifa addressed the rumor in a tweet Thursday afternoon with a meme reference from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," adding, "joke's on y'all."

" Lying about a terminal illness to cut a line," asked one Twitter user. "Are you sure you want that kind of karma?"

"I'm not just sure. I'm HIV positive," replied Khalifa, borrowing a line from South Park's Eric Cartman.

To be clear: This is not the first time a rumor — or even this particular unsubstantiated claim — has appeared on Twitter. Indeed, the last time the rumor went viral was January 28 and seemed to be linked to a viral fake news item from a site called TheNoChill (we will not link to it here). The site claimed that Khalifa “is recently diagnosed with HIV Positive Infection [sic]. As the girl was shooting with 2 other people, the industry remains in a fear of an outbreak.” For context about the site’s credibility, a story currently splashed on its homepage claims rapper Kanye West is dead, while the current Kanye taking his place is an alleged Illuminati clone.

Read: Mia Khalifa-Drake Instagram Picture Rumors: Celebrity Sent Porn Star 'Cringeworthy' IG Photo

No evidence of truth regarding the Khalifa claim existed then or now. And for the record, Kanye is alive and well.