A story has gone viral on social media in recent days claiming the NFL is considering a “ban” that would keep music star Taylor Swift from attending the Super Bowl on February 11. Swift is expected to attend the game to watch her boyfriend, Travis Kelce with the Kansas City Chiefs, as they take on the San Francisco 49ers. But the story is completely fake.
“NFL Reportedly Considering Banning Taylor Swift from Super Bowl, ‘We’re Tired of Her’,” reads the headline that’s spreading far and wide on Facebook.
But the headline is a screenshot from a website called Esspots, which labels its articles as “satire.” An account called SpaceX Fanclub has gotten over 19,000 comments on the fake article, with most people not realizing it’s a joke.
A satirical story about Taylor Swift being banned from the Super Bowl that’s being shared on social … [+]
“Ridiculous! She is an extremely successful, young, kind, generous, talented business woman, just trying to live her life. Stop with the hate!!” on defender of Swift’s honor wrote on Facebook.
“She is a US citizen and has every right to be there if she chooses. That is discrimination at its best!!!” another Swift defender wrote, believing the story is real.
But not everyone was so supportive of Swift.
“Amen, I’m tired of her too !!” wrote one rare dissenter on Facebook.
Swift has become an unusual lightning rod for controversy in recent years, with some conspiracy theorists online floating the idea that the musician is a “psy-op” who only became popular due to artificial boosting from the U.S. intelligence community. Fox News has run multiple segments providing oxygen to the baseless conspiracy theory, even suggesting Joe Biden was also behind some kind of nefarious plot to indoctrinate young people into voting for Democrats.
“Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” Fox News host Jesse Watters asked viewers about Swift on January 9.
Watters played a heavily edited clip from a 2019 NATO conference where a civilian academic who studies how information spreads on the internet gave Swift as an example of an influential person. Anyone who watches the full presentation online can see the presenter was merely floating Swift in a hypothetical scenario, not suggesting that NATO was actually using Swift to influence American opinions.
“The first one, and the most common [example of influence], is working with famous people or influencers to share information of a particular message. I include Taylor Swift in here because she’s a fairly influential online person, I don’t know if you’ve heard of her,” the presenter said jokingly.
But conspiracy theorists, including Watters, insisted this presentation was evidence of something nefarious.
“The Pentagon psy-op unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset,” Watters told his viewers.
While Swift did endorse Biden in the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Biden, she’s largely steered clear of making bold political statements. And, again, there’s absolutely no evidence that Swift is some kind of “psy-op” for the CIA or any other shadowy government entity.
The Super Bowl is just over a week away, and Swift is expected to be there at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to support Kelce. There are even extensive social media posts examining how quickly Swift will need to leave her last concert in Japan to get back to the U.S. for the game in time. And that’s not fake news.
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