Taylor Swift shared a throwback photo of herself watching the 9/11 attacks?

On July 16, 2024, the X-account @Poo_Crave published a post (archived) claiming that pop star Taylor Swift shared an Instagram story with a photo of herself at age 12 watching the Twin Towers burn in New York City on September 11:

🚨 Taylor Swift shares a souvenir photo of herself from September 11, 2001: “12-year-old me watching 9/11… what a great time 🤍”

(X-User Poo_Crave)

At the time of writing, the post had received around 6.2 million views, 3,700 reposts and 72,000 likes.

However, this article was not a factual retelling of real events. The article was posted by an account that describes its publication in its bio as humorous or satirical, as follows:

I’m spinning in a whirlwind of pop parody chaos and crave those naughty retweets!

As Snopes confirmed when we previously reported The photo was taken by Los Angeles-based photographer Ari Abramczyk. Abramczyk confirmed to Snopes that the woman in the photo is one of her former roommates.

Aside from confirming that Abramczyk is the creator of the photo, there are other signs that suggest that the screenshot shared by Poo Crave does not show an authentic Instagram story from Swift, but was likely created using one of the many Instagram story mockup generators available online.

For one thing, the story does not appear on Swift’s official Instagram account or on any of the fan accounts that specialize in reposting everything Swift and her inner circle share on social media.

In addition, Swift was not yet twelve years old on September 11, 2001. She was born on December 13, 1989, and was still eleven years old on the day of the attacks.

As background information: Why we sometimes write about satire/humor.