What that amounts to is a celebrity-journalism spin on the old saying that “comment is free, but facts are sacred.” It was the naked (or, in this case, the chunky-sweater-wearing) facts—Taylor and Tom, together, on some rocks—that mattered more than the ancillary truths about their real relationship or how it may or may not have come about. The Sun’s photos claimed to “reveal a secret romance”; their real purpose, however, was to titillate people with the mere idea that Taylor and Tom might be a couple. It was to give people an excuse to do what they will do any time a new celebrity couple, whether Brangelina or Gigi-and-Zayn or Bennifers I or II, emerges: create nicknames (Hiddleswift! Or maybeTomlor?​ ​Or Hiddley Swiddley Swiffleton?); generate memes; fantasize about the mergings and clashings of fandoms; ask questions about what the new union might mean for Taylor’s song-writing and for Tom’s Bond prospects and for their respective exes and, in general, for the status of the space-time continuum.

The point of the images was, in other words, to inspire fan fiction. The pictures served not as a story unto themselves, as the Sun claimed, but rather as a prompt for participation in the new form of literature that has emerged on the internet: a genre that invites fans to fill in the blanks with their own ideas and hatreds and hopes and truths.