Demi Lovato has poked fun at her viral “poot” meme with some amusing cupcakes for her birthday.
On Sunday (20 August), the singer took to TikTok to share a video of the treats that she received in honour of her 31st birthday. “So, I just want to show you guys my cakes,” she said, directing her camera towards a sparkly, silver heart-shaped cake with the number 31 on it.
After describing the cake as “so gorgeous”, she then showed off a rainbow, heart-shaped cookie cake that she said was “so cute”. The video ended with Lovato zooming in on a box of cupcakes, each one decorated with the now-infamously edited photo of her from 2015.
“And this one is so Poot,” she said, zooming in her camera on one of the cupcakes.
The picture on the cupcake was a photoshopped, unflattering image of Lovato with her face clearly washed out. The photo quickly made headlines in 2015 after someone on Tumblr joked that the photo was of Lovato’s long-lost twin sister, “Poot Lovato”, who had been locked in a basement throughout her life.
The “Confident” singer continued to poke fun at the meme in the caption of her TikTok video, writing: “FREE POOT.”
In the comments of the now viral video, fans expressed their amusement over the cupcake’s reference to the infamous meme. “I’m glad your friends don’t let you forget Poot,” one wrote, while another added: “We will always love Poot.”
A third joked: “Happy birthday to you and Poot (pls let her out my god).”
The TikTok video comes one month after Lovato reflected on the popularity of the “Poot” meme. In a July video for Harper’s Bazaar, she confessed that while she wasn’t happy when the meme first went viral, she had a change of heart when she realised the photo wasn’t really of her.
“That actually sucked because I thought that was a real picture of me. And I was like, ‘Oh no, that’s a really bad angle,’” she said. “But Poot was photoshopped. Later, I felt better about it because I realised that wasn’t my face.”
She added that while it “was definitely weird when it went viral,” the meme is “still funny to look back on”.
Back in 2015, the “Stone Cold” singer first broke her silence about the meme in a since-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Cool to see a s****y angle turn into a meme that circulates the Internet to people’s amusement ha,” she wrote at the time, as reported by Mashable. She later added: “Oh and makes actual ‘headlines.’”
However, in 2017, she appeared to embrace the meme by sharing a GIF of “Poot Lovato” on her social media account. The following year, she took to X to re-share the meme and joked about her fake twin’s backstory, writing: “Poot is locked up. She’s allergic to sunlight.”
