Carle Jasmin (Image : Facebook / BarbarianBody)
We know it: many lies and falsehoods circulate today on social media, always with the aim of attracting users’ attention and, more often still, provoking strong emotions based on information that does not even exist.
This message published on the Facebook account of BarbarianBody contains several elements that raise my curiosity. Essentially, it claims that the famous singer Shawn Mendes sang a Pride anthem with a choir of transgender people, while he is shown in a medallion draped in the LGBT flag.
Shawn Mendes gay? A Pride anthem? A trans choir? Misinformation on social media
Admit it, that is a lot to take in. Let us therefore carefully examine the content of this post.
Born on August 8, 1998 in Pickering, Shawn Mendes is a Canadian singer-songwriter who rose to fame in his teens by posting song covers on the Vine platform. His talent and growing popularity quickly allowed him to sign a record deal and launch an international career.
Revealed to the general public with hits such as Stitches, Treat You Better, and There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back, he has established himself as one of the defining figures of contemporary pop music. His music blends pop, folk, and light rock influences, while his lyrics often address love, human relationships, and personal challenges.
Over the years, Shawn Mendes has released several successful albums, including Handwritten, Illuminate, and Wonder. He has also collaborated with several renowned artists, notably Camila Cabello on the song Señorita, an enormous international hit.
Beyond his musical career, Shawn Mendes has been open about the pressures of fame and the importance of mental health. Highly followed on social media, he remains one of the most popular Canadian artists of his generation and continues to attract a global audience thanks to his distinctive voice, charisma, and stage performances.
As is often the case with highly popular celebrities, several rumors have circulated over the years claiming that the singer is gay.
To this day, Shawn Mendes has never publicly identified as homosexual.
Since the beginning of his career, rumors have circulated regarding his sexual orientation. In 2018, he directly addressed the issue, explaining that he found it frustrating that people constantly speculate about his private life and orientation. He also stated that he saw nothing wrong with being perceived as gay, but simply wished people would stop making assumptions about him.
As Shawn Mendes has never declared that he is gay, there is currently no public evidence to support such a claim. His sexual orientation remains part of his private life, and the only verifiable information is that he has had public relationships with women, including Camila Cabello, without this allowing any definitive conclusion about his orientation.
Misinformation and false information about Shawn Mendes and the Pride anthem
More seriously, regarding the claim that he sang a Pride anthem, have you ever heard of such an identity-based anthem? I certainly have not. I therefore conducted some research.
There is no evidence that a “Pride anthem” was ever performed by Shawn Mendes in the sense of an official or identity-defining song associated with the LGBTQ+ community.
What we observe instead is a confusion or amplified interpretation of content circulating on social media. In 2024, videos and concert excerpts showed Shawn Mendes performing an unreleased song, The Mountain, in which he directly addresses speculation about his identity and orientation, with lyrics referring to people saying “that I like girls or boys”.
However, this song is not an official “Pride anthem” nor a performance linked to a trans choir or any Pride event.
In other words, the idea of a Pride anthem sung by Shawn Mendes is more a case of misinformation or exaggeration than an established fact.
LGBTQ+ anthems: iconic songs of the LGBT community
There are indeed landmark songs that LGBTQ+ communities identify with, but not a single official or unique anthem exists.
The most classic and widely recognized include:
“Born This Way” – Lady Gaga (2011): often considered the modern anthem par excellence.
“I Will Survive” – Gloria Gaynor: a 1970s disco classic, symbol of resilience.
“I Am What I Am” – Gloria Gaynor: sometimes presented as an “Official Gay Anthem”.
“I’m Coming Out” – Diana Ross: a major classic linked to gay culture.
“You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” – Sylvester: disco icon and trans/gay figure.
Other popular titles include songs by Madonna, Cher, Whitney Houston, RuPaul, Kylie Minogue, as well as Beyoncé and Lil Nas X.
As for the alleged trans choir that supposedly performed with Shawn Mendes, its name is not even mentioned, nor its place of origin or the location of such a performance.
This is where things become interesting, and where it becomes clear that malicious actors manipulate information, often to gain attention, when an artificial intelligence is asked to analyze the image to determine whether the information it contains is plausible, and especially where it comes from. It is Google Gemini that allegedly revealed the fraud.
According to Gemini, the image captures Shawn Mendes during a performance at the Billboard Music Awards 2018, accompanied by students who survived the Parkland school shooting, as part of a tribute performance of the song Youth.
The image is in fact a manipulated montage combining two separate events to create false information.
The purpose of such a montage is to reinforce a misleading headline and deceive viewers, a common practice in social media misinformation.
Finally, the inset image showing Shawn Mendes with a rainbow flag comes from another concert moment, where he simply picked up a flag thrown by a fan, with no connection to any official event.
So these are the conclusions to draw from this investigation, which I truly enjoyed conducting for you: do not believe everything you read or see on the web. A lesson to remember.
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