Emma Chamberlain says she isn't looking to slide into anyone's DMs for a price.
The content creator recently turned heads when allegations surfaced online that claim she was selling personalized DMs to fans for $10,000 on her merch website. On March 18, an alleged screenshot of the DMs for sale was posted to Twitter with the caption, "why is emma chamberlain charging 10K for an instagram DM this is wild."
Now, Emma is "eager to set the story straight," she said in an exclusive statement to E! News on March 21.
"A few days I started seeing comments asking why I was selling a DM for $10k. I assumed this was an online scam, as I had never offered to sell a DM for any amount of money, let alone $10k," Emma says in her statement. "People were saying this was for sale on my merch site, so I checked the site to see if it had been hacked and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary."
After doing her own digging, Emma says that she reached out to the company behind her merch website to look deeper into the matter: "I immediately got in touch with my merch company Cozack who further investigated and put the site under construction while looking into the issue."
As for what their investigation has found? Cozack issued a statement explaining that they made content on Emma's website years ago for testing purposes only. The fashion branding company said that the content was never intended to be seen by shoppers.
"There have been false and inaccurate claims that Emma Chamberlain was offering DM's in exchange for $10k," Cozack's statement shared to Emma's website reads. "As background in 2018, Cozack (Emma's merch company) was testing a prospective reward program related to Emma's Merch without her knowledge. In testing they created an outrageous, never activated reward level that was not intended to be active or purchased. These reward ideas were never run by Emma since they were not meant to be available for sale or reward, but simply intended for internal testing purposes."
Despite plans for this feature to remain unseen, the company has an idea on how it got found.
"What we suspect is that data was activated ... discovered by an individual who then began spreading false information to press outlets," the statement continued. "This was never made public, and certainly was never planned to be sold or purchased. The test program was never discoverable on the main page or product listing site, which is another reason that Emma had no knowledge of this."
Cozack's statement added, "With the internet's tendency to create false narratives around sensationalized stories we wanted to provide you with the truth firsthand and from the source."
While Emma's merch website is currently under construction, other career ventures from the entrepreneur are open for enjoyment. Emma has been on the grind with her beverage business Chamberlain Coffee and her podcast Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain.
Earlier this month, the 21-year-old exclusively shared how she views her own podcast as a space for serious conversation.
"I think recently on Anything Goes, I've been really excited to talk about more complicated topics," she told E! News at the time. "I'm growing up. I'm becoming an adult. I'm excited to dig in to deeper topics, whether it's morality or philosophical stuff or just sharing my opinion or my hypothesis on things that are maybe more serious. What I use Anything Goes as is a place to discuss what's on my mind at a given moment."