Taylor Swift’s Admirers Struggle with Rumors of a Breakup

The rumours are nasty and vicious, but honey, most of them are true, to paraphrase a line from Taylor Swift’s 1989.

After rumours from “Entertainment Tonight” and People magazine indicated the “Midnights” singer and her longtime boyfriend, the British actor Joe Alwyn, had split up, Ms. Swift’s fans spent most of the weekend trying to process the news.

In its Friday afternoon report, “ET” said simply that it had “learned” that Ms. Swift and Mr. Alwyn had divorced, without specifying how it had gotten this information. People published a same article a few hours later, again citing an unidentified source close to the couple. The separation, according to both sources, took place weeks earlier.

Without confirmation from Ms. Swift, Mr. Alwyn, or their agents, Swifties were hesitant to believe the rumours. Tree Paine, Ms. Swift’s spokeswoman, declined to comment immediately for this piece.

She went on to say that she didn’t think they’d really broken up and that she expected Mr. Alwyn to show up to Ms. Swift’s next performance in Tampa, Florida “out of spite.” (Mr. Alwyn has been unrecognised at any of Ms. Swift’s tour dates.)

Ms. Hammer said that some Swifties are going crazy online because they can’t believe the rumour.

It’s not proven, but “on Reddit, people are scouring her lyrics about this supposed breakup and grieving,” she claimed. Your parasympathetic nervous system is in such bad shape. Take a break until you have all the information.

According to Katherine Mohr, a 31-year-old project manager from Madison, Wis., “I have the benefit of having a few more years on some of these newer Swifties or younger Swifties,” so she can speak with greater authority on the topic of media literacy. I’ve been around the block when it comes to celebrity rumors, so I know who to believe and who not to.

Ms. Mohr said she had been slow to believe rumours about Ms. Swift’s marriage, pregnancy, and recent online speculation about why the singer replaced “Invisible String,” a love song thought to be about her relationship with Mr. Alwyn, with another number in her set list. But she was convinced that the split was real after reading reports in publications like People and “Entertainment Tonight.”

Morgan Chadwick, now 27, reminisced about meeting Taylor Swift at an event many years ago and spoke to her about how long she had been seeing her boyfriend at the time. Ms. Chadwick, a graphic artist in Chicago, has noted that she and her now-husband often joked that every new love song written by Ms.

She said that she was confused by the news of the separation. She may make a remark at a concert or he might turn up at a show, but other than that, I don’t know that there’s going to be any type of proof,” Ms. Chadwick said.

New Yorker Katie Devin Orenstein, 23, who just graduated from college, is counting down the days until she can see Taylor Swift in concert in May in New Jersey. The teal shirt and yoghurt store uniform she had intended to wear as a reference to the phrase “teal was the colour of your shirt when you were 16 at the yoghurt shop” in “Invisible String” are now being rethought.

And she said she’ll take Taylor Swift’s advice as gospel for her future romantic prospects.

Everyone is going to analyse everything she does onstage, particularly the surprise songs, like it’s the freaking Torah,” Ms. Orenstein remarked.