Everyone, take a deep breath.
And yet …
For several hours Thursday night, it seemed that everyone from Resistance Twitter to cable news anchors, breathless TMZ headline writers and convention-goers themselves were convinced that Beyoncé was flying into Chicago to give a surprise performance, based on no substantial information whatsoever.
This is a story about the life and death of a media-fueled rumor in a celebrity-obsessed world. And not just any rumor: an extraordinary one that managed to break free from the social media fever swamps and piggyback on the national news cycles for hours, ultimately spreading through the sardine-packed audience inside the United Center, many of whom waited all night for a show that never happened.
It’s also probably a story about the degradation of American journalism, but one thing at a time.
It all seemed to start — where else? — on Twitter. Or X, as Elon Musk rebranded that site after he bought it and gutted its mechanisms to combat disinformation. The social-media rumor mill had been primed for some Beyoncé-Harris info long before Thursday, especially after reports that the Democratic-friendly pop star gave Harris the greenlight to use her song “Freedom” in the campaign.
Those rumors began to take shape last week, as a handful of anonymous accounts began to hint at a special guest at the convention. But they really took shape on Thursday, as Democrats teased their lineup for the final night of the convention.
“I’ve been sworn to secrecy, but you don’t want to miss the DNC tonight. If you thought the Oprah surprise was big, just wait,” wrote @Angry_Staffer, an account that claims to belong to a former White House staffer with “sources” in Washington.
Similarly questionable scoops proliferated across social media, and got a big boost Thursday afternoon, when White House political director Emmy Ruiz posted a single emoji: a bee, the unofficial symbol of the “Beyhive,” Beyonce’s fan base.
Three hours later, at 3:37 PM CT, White House political director Emmy Ruiz tweeted a bee, seeming to confirm rumors of Beyonce.
— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 23, 2024
She later recanted, saying her 6-year-old had accidentally tweeted the bee. But it was too late. pic.twitter.com/r0SJVgUPf5
Later, Ruiz, who is, again, the White House political director, implied her 6-year-old son took her phone and posted the buzzy bee. So was the boy spreading rumors, or falling for them? Ruiz did not respond to a request for comment.
It wasn’t long before the 24-hour news cycle got a hold of the rumor and reporters — perhaps under stimulated by the DNC’s actual lineup of speakers and performers — devoured it like a bear prepping for hibernation.
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar announced around 1 p.m. that people were “buzzing” about Beyoncé as they “pregame” for the convention.
Her colleague Jamie Gangel put on her glasses — a sign that she had something serious to say? — and soberly explained the mechanics of a rumor mill: “She’s coming. She’s not coming. She’s coming. I don’t think she’s coming. Wait, it may happen. Two minutes later, it may not happen.”
“We don’t really know,” Gangel concluded, but then added that there was a mysterious “block” in the DNC’s published schedule, and no one knew what would fill it. (Someone with knowledge of the DNC’s program told The Washington Post that the mystery programming gap was likely just a brief break to rearrange the stage.)
Cue the snowball effect. A CNN official, who did not want to speak on record, pointed out to The Post that its anchors never endorsed the rumor — they just reported on the uncertainty. But sometimes that’s all a rumor needs to grow.
“This is a complex media ecosystem that can really drive speculation to the front of people’s eyeballs very quickly,” said Kenneth Joseph, an associate professor who studies online behavior at the University at Buffalo. “When there’s an information void, there’s an opportunity … to provide speculation.”
He was reminded of a similar occurrence in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Reddit users compiled thousands of photos and spun myriad theories about the bombers’ identities. They (wrongly) decided two men dubbed the “Backpack Brothers” were responsible. They were not, but that didn’t stop the New York Post from putting the men on its front page.
By 2:30 p.m., Keilar was asking Sen. Chris Coons (D.-Del.) if Beyoncé would perform.
“You’ll have to tune in and find out if Beyoncé shows up,” Boris Sanchez told viewers at one point, sounding in that moment less like a CNN reporter than a promo ad.
Looking back a day later, “I don’t think anyone really knew what was happening,” said Phil Lewis, a deputy editor at HuffPost, which reported on the speculation but didn’t confirm or deny the rumors. “It more so felt like just hope. Hope and vibes.”
Hopes and vibes and — for one especially dramatic moment late in the evening — a mysterious curtain spotted on the DNC stage, which was widely and wrongly assumed to have been installed to hide Beyoncé.
Perhaps we’ve been overly trained by movies and game shows that something always lurks behind a curtain. In fairness, a curtain’s entire purpose is obfuscation, and the square of blue cloth pinned up at the United Center happened to block a view backstage that reporters had been peeking into all week.
But, yeah, turns out it was just a curtain. We didn’t necessarily need ABC’s Washington bureau chief to tell the world it had been hung.
When asked by reporters, convention and campaign officials did their part to dissuade them from following the rumors, according to people familiar with media operations on Thursday.
But not everyone bothered to ask if the rumors were true.
The news cycle finally detached from reality completely just before 8 p.m. Eastern time, when TMZ — the tabloid oracle on all things celebrity and shallow — published a headline: “Beyoncé Performing at DNC’s Final Night!!!”
It was a short story with no named sources and eyebrow-raising details like, “Chicago PD is on high alert.” It was totally erroneous, of course — and people close to the campaign and convention say TMZ never reached out to ask about the story’s veracity before posting it. But no one knew that yet.
Inside the United Center, reporters on the floor excitedly shared the TMZ story with one another. A video journalist from Reuters positioned himself between the Minnesota and South Carolina delegations for a good view. A Minnesota delegate, clad in white and hot pink, wormed her way back in as the arena reached capacity.
Kamala Harris? Who cares? Queen Bey was going to perform!
Until, of course, she didn’t.
“i genuinely don’t have words i’m so gagged right now, whatever man,” the account @beyoncegarden tweeted as the convention was nearing its end, with a sobbing trail of sobbing emojis.
And yet another exhausting media cycle came to a quiet end.
Thing is, the convention didn’t need Beyoncé. Democrats had spent a week force-feeding the internet clips of various left-leaning celebrities performing onstage in Chicago.
There was Jason Isbell. There were the Chicks. And Pink. And Patti LaBelle and Stevie Wonder and John Legend and Lil Jon and Common and Mickey Guyton and Maren Morris.
The convention was basically a B+ Bonnaroo lineup. And that might have been fine, if everyone hadn’t been expecting the A list to helicopter in at the last minute.
As the headline to TMZ’s follow-up report succinctly stated: “Beyoncé Not at DNC After All.”
If the DNC liked it, perhaps they should have put a ring on it.
Elahe Izadi and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report from Chicago.
