Bruno Mars Sets The Record Straight After He's Caught Allegedly Liking A Post Calling Taylor Swift 'Talentless'

Bruno Mars found himself facing backlash over an alleged like he gave to an alleged reel about an alleged X post, by the official BTS account, that called Taylor Swift "talentless" according to a celebrity gossip-sharing Instagram influencer who cited an Instagram reel of a reel from a parody account currently only on TikTok.

If that was confusing, it should be.

The accusation was dubious at best and fairly easily debunked if people just checked out the accounts shown as posting the reel and the original X post.

But instead of doing that, the Instagram account Pop Faction (@popfaction) posted a photo accusing Mars of liking a Swift hate post. They backed their claim with a copy of the reel of a reel—from a parody account.

The reel of a reel posted by the account Pop Base (@bopbase) showed Mars allegedly liked their reel about an alleged X post by BTS_Official (@btsbighit) that got 1.6 million views, 34.6 thousand reposts, and 80.3 thousand likes.

One key detail Pop Faction ignored was Pop Base's description, saying they are:

"...your best source for all parody..."

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Regardless, Pop Faction's Instagram post was captioned:

"Bruno Mars likes hate post about Taylor Swift on page that promotes mass content against the singer:"

A review of the BTS_Official account on X doesn't show any content related to Taylor Swift, let alone the "mass content" Pop Faction claimed. As Pop Base's Instagram no longer exists, it's impossible to check their content.

It seems Pop Faction either fell for a parody reel by Pop Base trying to claim Mars and BTS think Swift is talentless or chose to amplify the hoax because they knew it would garner attention for their Instagram account.

The X post in the Pop Base reel was captioned:

"Genuinely how did she get famous? White privilege is crazy because imagine if an Asian was as talentless as her"

After including the caption from the alleged BTS_Official X post, Pop Faction noted:

"[Mars] has since unliked the post."

But if the official BTS account really posted an attack on Swift on X that got over a million views, wouldn't that have been major entertainment news? Very little common sense or deductive reasoning seems to have gone into Pop Faction's accusation against Mars.

You can scroll left to see the reel of a reel Pop Faction used to accuse Mars here:

Two posts were made on X with that exact caption on March 14 and 15, but neither is by BTS_Official.

The first post was reposted five times, but never by BTS_Official.

As the original post featured in the reel that Pop Faction claimed Bruno Mars "liked" doesn't seem based in reality, other people did their due diligence and discovered this is likely all a hoax.

Right? Right‽‽

After the backlash on X against Mars became headline news, and after a Rolling Stone investigation, the 16-time Grammy Award winner finally had to address an accusation based on seemingly nothing.

Replying to one of the accounts amplifying the accusation on X, Mars wrote:

"Taylor has always been supportive and kind to me. Only love over here."

But fans were determined to keep this nothing burger going despite ample evidence it never happened.

As for Rolling Stone's "investigation," they concluded the reel alleging a like by Mars was "a likely fake bait post that proclaimed to show him dissing his fellow pop superstar."

So did Mars really like the original Pop Base reel, if it ever existed, or did someone create a reel making it look like he did?

Who knows?

The dark side of AI is that even the most minimally talented individuals can create deepfakes and edit to create a reel showing fake posts and fake likes. Even screenshots can't be trusted.

With no original reel, just a reel of alleged screenshots of a reel, it's hard to tell parody from reality.

Common sense is going to be more important than ever in separating truth from deliberate misinformation.