An old photo of Lady Gaga is going viral as people mistakenly think it shows her outfit at the 2022 Met Gala

• Lady Gaga did not attend the Met Gala this year, reportedly because she was performing in Las Vegas.
• On Twitter, a picture of Gaga has gone viral with false claims that it was taken at the Met Gala.

A picture of Lady Gaga from 2018 has gone viral on Twitter and TikTok as people wrongly said the image showed the singer at the Met Gala.

Several tweets — some of which were seen by Insider but have since been deleted — include an image that shows the singer wearing an Elizabethan-style dress at the Los Angeles movie premiere for "A Star is Born," which took place in 2018. Users have captioned the image with inaccurate claims that it was taken at the 2022 Met Gala, which took place on May 2.

As reported by Elle magazine, Lady Gaga did not attend the 2022 Met Gala because she was singing at a residency show in Las Vegas. Gaga has been posting updates and pictures that reference her show on Instagram over the last few days.

Pictures of various other celebrities who did not attend the Met Gala, according to Cosmopolitan, such as Zendaya, Dua Lipa, and Beyoncé, have been circulating on social media over the past 24 hours, with claims that they were taken at the event.

An image of Doja Cat wearing a period-style dress said to have been taken at the event, has also gone viral with 450,000 likes. However, the celebrity rapper did not attend the event, according to Cosmopolitan. Insider was not able to independently verify where this image originates from, but it was posted on Instagram in October 2020 by LA-based PR firm D'Orazio.

Of all the images mistakenly claiming to show celebrities at the Met Gala, the 2018 image of Lady Gaga has gone the most viral. Here's how it journeyed across social media, from Twitter to TikTok.

The false rumor began on Twitter and quickly drew attention

It appears the oldest tweet claiming the image was from the event was posted on May 2 by an account with the username @vvhiteferrari, who captioned the image, "Lady Gaga at the 2022 #MetGala." The tweet now has 256,000 likes and 23,000 retweets.

On TikTok, some people have reused the image in videos, as part of a popular trend where TikTokers rate celebrity outfits at the event out of 10.

Most TikTokers who appeared to believe the rumor said in their videos that the singer's outfit matched the dress code for the 2022 Met Gala, which was "gilded glamor," a tribute to the industrial Gilded Age of 1870s New York. As Insider previously reported, celebrities in attendance wore corsets and ruffled clothing inspired by the fashion of the time.

According to Vanity Fair, the dress Gaga wore to the 2018 "A Star is Born" premiere was designed by Alexander McQueen and featured a period-style ruff and collar.

Some TikTok users realized the photo was not from the Met Gala

Lifestyle influencer Louis Levanti, who used the image in a TikTok video with 650,000 views where he shared his opinion on various outfits that celebrities wore to the event, told Insider he found the picture on Twitter and "didn't realize the photo wasn't taken at the Met Gala until people in my comments pointed it out."

After commenters told Levanti that the image was old, he added a comment under his TikTok, saying, "the Lady Gaga one apparently is not from the Met, oops."

Another video which has 98,000 views showed the image and the face of a TikTok user who was commentating on it. The user said, "she can follow a theme and she just looks so good," and added, "this is what I want to see at the Met Gala."

When commenters under the video wrote that the image was actually taken in 2018, the user posted a subsequent video showing the same image with an on-screen caption that read, "not Twitter trolling me and me falling for it." The user did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The Met Gala, formally known as the Costume Institute Gala, is a fundraising event in New York with a dress code, and it is commonly attended by A-list celebrities. While Lady Gaga did not go this year, singer Lizzo, every Kardashian sister, and actor Blake Lively were all in attendance. You can see a round-up of the real-life looks from the night here.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.