Did Lena Dunham just confirm the internet’s Lorde/Jack Antonoff conspiracy?

I can’t figure out what year we live in.

Let me be clearer. I can’t pinpoint what year. chronically online We live in a time of unprecedented technological advancement, with artificial intelligence taking over our lives and astronauts literally returning to the moon. But everywhere I turn, I see vestiges of the past: people yearning for the hipster aesthetic of the 2010s. Avatar: The Last Airbender fan cams are everywhere in my FYP. Celebrities are skeletally thin again, and Thinspo pages and eating disorder content are taking over TikTok.

But the most confusing: Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff are once again in the news.

Dunham (actor, writer and director) and Antonoff (Bleachers frontman and pop-girl collaborator) dated from 2012 to 2016. Their relationship was typical of the era. It was a bit messy. Then came “The PowerPoint”.

Responding to Swirling Rumors Following the Release of Lorde’s 2017 Hit Melodrama, a former Twitter user named @buzzkillary wrote a thesis. In his story and the accompanying 29-slide PowerPoint, Buzzkillary claims that Lorde and Antonoff were lovers and that the singer’s hit “Green Light,” among other things, was about him.

The conspiracy acted as all online conspiracies do, waiting in the dark corners of niche fandoms until a relevant Hollywood news story — like Lorde’s 2025 album. VirginAntonoff’s marriage to actress Margaret Qualley, or Dunham’s latest show about a deceived young woman – brought him out of the shadows. But then Dunham’s new memoir, Evil of fameabandoned, and everything became a little more real.

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In Evil of fameDunham describes for the first time the full fallout of his relationship with Antonoff, reveling in the intimate details of an emotionally complicated relationship he had with a certain “teenage pop star” (the Internet and PowerPoint have long assumed it was Lorde).

Dunham says this artist and her partner spent hours “together” and called her “Aunt Lena” during a period when Dunham was using a walker due to a chronic illness. One quote was particularly damning in the eyes of the Internet. She describes the star in question “slumped on our sectional couch, crying in Jack’s lap as he told her that ‘your teenagers are made for experimenting’ in such a comforting tone it almost brought tears to my eyes.” She goes on to say, “It’s been so long since he spoke to me with this kind of expansive generosity.”

Then, Dunham admits her own misstep: she cheated on Antonoff once it all became too much. The Internet, of course, has sparked many thoughts. Which cheating scandal was worse, Antonoff’s or Dunham’s? Who was the victim here?

Even Tumblr got involved.

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Some view the Dunham affair as a full-fledged confirmation of a torrid affair, thus reinforcing the knotted web described in the PowerPoint. Many felt sympathy for Dunham, who has been at the center of several controversies since the 2010s.

For some, it was a chance to visit other relationships, including Taylor Swift. Could her Are the songs actually about the Antonoff/Dunham debacle all this time, an observer and one of their closest friends?

And then there were others who, in a true throwback to the old Internet, had nothing but cruel words for the women involved in the emotional love triangle. Dunham and Lorde — who have both been targets of vitriolic comments regarding their appearance and art — were transgressors, or were pitiful, or just plain ugly. Antonoff was… there.

Lorde, who would have been in her late teens and early 20s at the height of her collaboration with Antonoff, then 32, is just one of many young pop women who have collaborated with the producer. And Antonoff wasn’t the only older Hollywood man she was associated with. As users tried to spot Antonoff/Dunham parallels in Lorde’s discography, others rightly pointed out the most likely muse, a Universal Music promotions executive named Justin Warren, who Lorde was linked to in 2015. He was 17 years older than her.

Dunham’s quote, taken in full context in Evil of fameacknowledges a larger problem: Antonoff was extremely close to many of her collaborators, and they had a bond that she was not invited to join.

These are layers that even the Internet’s most infamous PowerPoint can’t summarize.

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Amidst all the talk on the internet, I ask: What outcome would most appease the masses? Do they need a mass cancellation of Lorde? Or Antonoff or Dunham, both internet villains for years? Or is it just a big “I told you so!” time for PowerPoint truthers? Ultimately, what do we gain from theorizing about all this online?

Dunham herself admitted to the plot during the press cycle for Evil of famean honesty about her checkered past that the Internet has come to respect as she ages and embraces her cultural heritage — it’s certainly not a holdover from the old Internet. Dunham says she saw the presentation years ago and that it was “so compelling that it made me rethink events that I myself had been present at.” She even admitted to contacting the PowerPoint creator during a “moment of depression.”

Dunham, through Evil of fameis still processing what happened during the nascent years of internet rumors and cancellations, just like every other social media user who was online at the time. And we still don’t know what to take from it.

If 2016 really was “the last good year,” as many TikTok videos suggest, 2026 is really trying hard to warm up its nachos — right down to the links to Buzzfeed articles on Lena Dunham’s PowerPoint theories.