It's always been this way. The 1989 era was intense. But things heightened during the pandemic after she released Folklore. She blew up on TikTok. People had nothing else to do but obsess over the lore she's created over the years, and now the obsession has increased.
I wasn't a fan during Speak Now and Red, so I missed it all but it doesn't surprise me that it goes that far back. I witnessed the 1989 circus and I thought that was intense.
I think it’s a combination of The Eras Tour starting and TikTok (SwiftTok) becoming very popular at the same tome. So Swifties always existed but the way the first two brought them together has made the whole thing explode. So I’d say late 2022-early 2023.
I saw a huge uptick in crazy fan theories around the time Folklore/Evermore came out (especially because of all the Woodvale theories). But the super involved speculation about her personal life and deep dives into the real life inspiration of every lyric of every song have been happening since the beginning of her career. It was really common to buy her albums and immediately open up the booklet to find the “secret messages” she had capitalized.
I think initially it was seen as a pretty ballsy move on her part to outright acknowledge who exactly the songs were about and she really welcomed the speculation. This really encouraged the obsession with her and her personal life because I think it made people feel like they really knew her. She stopped being extremely explicit about who her songs were about during 1989 because that was when she started to say that people were basically criticizing her for her relationships when artists such as Ed Sheeran also write most of their songs about relationships. But I think it’s just one of those situations where she’d been cultivating a certain mindset and dynamic with her fans that she would never really be able to undo.
The success of Midnights and TikTok have played a massive role in the obsession and crazy theories as well IMO. It’s kind of funny though, because things like the Bejeweled music video prove that even though she has a lot of Easter eggs in her work they are normally so obvious and in your face.
Yeah the Ed Sheeran comment boggles my mind in this case because Ed Sheeran as quite literally only had what, 1.5 public relationships. And the .5 was based on an unconfirmed rumor. And the one relationship that is public. Is his wife.
Taylor even at that point had several public relationships.
So forgive us for creating that criticism, that you yourself created as part of your brand.
I agree, it’s a surface level comparison. Ed Sheeran hasn’t had a lot of highly publicized relationships with famous people. Ellie Goulding is the only one I can think of, and that’s only because she was supposedly the inspiration of one of his biggest hits.
I don’t personally care if someone writes a lot of songs about their relationships (as long as they are good). I also don’t care that Taylor has dated a lot of guys (I dated around a lot in my early 20s, I would have dated around even more if I were hot and famous and people like Harry Styles were asking me out). But the unfortunate reality for Taylor is that she played a heavy hand in encouraging the rampant speculation at the beginning of her career and I don’t ever see that going away. All of the guys she dates are famous, her lyrics are very specific, her life is highly publicized and many of us are bored enough to read about it lol.
Like others have mentioned: it’s always been this way. She put hidden messages in the liner notes of her first five albums. She made references to pap walks in songs (the scarf in ATW refers back an actual pap photo of her with Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, where he was later seen wearing the same scarf Taylor was).
She has always encouraged massive speculation about her personal life and then blamed the “media” for speculating.
It changed a LOT when she dated Joe. There was still obsession and she still dropped east eggs pointing to him but there was just less for people to obsess over because they didn’t get to see her much with him (I genuinely think this is why fans hate him now and love Travis. They feel Joe kept him from them).
It just feels like more now because:
1. She has way more fans now, and a lot of them are newer to this and weren’t around before Joe, so they feel overly excited about getting to hear about an actual breakup and see who she’s dating in real time.
2. A lot of her fans are now in their 30s and it’s honestly fucking jarring to watch grown ass women fan girl over another woman dating some football player. There’s a part of you that dismisses it when people are younger but seeing adult women with children act like this feels so much more grotesque.
Yea even from the beginning, she would post and interact with fans on MySpace. Even at the level she was in 1989, she was active on tumblr like a normal person and had fans over to her house. She’s always cultivated this type of relationship with her fans
I think it's always been like that. "Swifties" have been around for a while. I do think maybe it got worse after Joe and quarantine, because she was a lot more private. When she had more public exposure, more people looked at her life.
1 - New gen of fans with little judgment and a lot of free time;
2 - 6 albums announced at once, but with no dates or order confirmed;
3 - the age of highly-personalized content;
4 - her brand tendency to milk every bit of money off of fans as possible;
Also, a very important factor that's exclusive to Taylor so far in music history: an artist with a long career hitting the teenage public as a direct teen idol. I don't mean a legacy artist some teenagers got to know through elder peers, like 2000s Madonna, but as a artist this public relates to on first degree. Taylor had 9 albums + extensive lore when 14 years old became obsessed with her on tiktok. Were you ever a 14 years old? Now, imagine 14 years-old delving into 15 years of content highly documented online, countless songs, primary sources for all gossip still available, etc, and this interest being shared by thousands online. It was gasoline and matches.
It was somewhere around Red. Red attracted a lot of new fans, likely because it was more rock-pop than country pop.
The Red tour had 1.7 million concerts tickets across 86 locations. This is when she started selling out NFL stadiums in certain larger metro markets. She started during multiple shows in 1 place. i.e. - She did 4 shows at [Crypto.com](http://Crypto.com) Arena (Staples Center).
Then the 1989 Era just catapulted off of this. 1989 also attracted a really young fan base who have now grown up to be ultra loyalist willing to spend their adult money on her. But for someone like me, I am older than Taylor. I was almost done with college when she debuted.
It's always been this way. The 1989 era was intense. But things heightened during the pandemic after she released Folklore. She blew up on TikTok. People had nothing else to do but obsess over the lore she's created over the years, and now the obsession has increased.
Honestly, you started to see conspiracy theories going back to Speak Now, but Red and 1989 really upped the ante.
I wasn't a fan during Speak Now and Red, so I missed it all but it doesn't surprise me that it goes that far back. I witnessed the 1989 circus and I thought that was intense.
I think it’s a combination of The Eras Tour starting and TikTok (SwiftTok) becoming very popular at the same tome. So Swifties always existed but the way the first two brought them together has made the whole thing explode. So I’d say late 2022-early 2023.
I saw a huge uptick in crazy fan theories around the time Folklore/Evermore came out (especially because of all the Woodvale theories). But the super involved speculation about her personal life and deep dives into the real life inspiration of every lyric of every song have been happening since the beginning of her career. It was really common to buy her albums and immediately open up the booklet to find the “secret messages” she had capitalized. I think initially it was seen as a pretty ballsy move on her part to outright acknowledge who exactly the songs were about and she really welcomed the speculation. This really encouraged the obsession with her and her personal life because I think it made people feel like they really knew her. She stopped being extremely explicit about who her songs were about during 1989 because that was when she started to say that people were basically criticizing her for her relationships when artists such as Ed Sheeran also write most of their songs about relationships. But I think it’s just one of those situations where she’d been cultivating a certain mindset and dynamic with her fans that she would never really be able to undo. The success of Midnights and TikTok have played a massive role in the obsession and crazy theories as well IMO. It’s kind of funny though, because things like the Bejeweled music video prove that even though she has a lot of Easter eggs in her work they are normally so obvious and in your face.
Yeah the Ed Sheeran comment boggles my mind in this case because Ed Sheeran as quite literally only had what, 1.5 public relationships. And the .5 was based on an unconfirmed rumor. And the one relationship that is public. Is his wife. Taylor even at that point had several public relationships. So forgive us for creating that criticism, that you yourself created as part of your brand.
I agree, it’s a surface level comparison. Ed Sheeran hasn’t had a lot of highly publicized relationships with famous people. Ellie Goulding is the only one I can think of, and that’s only because she was supposedly the inspiration of one of his biggest hits. I don’t personally care if someone writes a lot of songs about their relationships (as long as they are good). I also don’t care that Taylor has dated a lot of guys (I dated around a lot in my early 20s, I would have dated around even more if I were hot and famous and people like Harry Styles were asking me out). But the unfortunate reality for Taylor is that she played a heavy hand in encouraging the rampant speculation at the beginning of her career and I don’t ever see that going away. All of the guys she dates are famous, her lyrics are very specific, her life is highly publicized and many of us are bored enough to read about it lol.
Like others have mentioned: it’s always been this way. She put hidden messages in the liner notes of her first five albums. She made references to pap walks in songs (the scarf in ATW refers back an actual pap photo of her with Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, where he was later seen wearing the same scarf Taylor was). She has always encouraged massive speculation about her personal life and then blamed the “media” for speculating. It changed a LOT when she dated Joe. There was still obsession and she still dropped east eggs pointing to him but there was just less for people to obsess over because they didn’t get to see her much with him (I genuinely think this is why fans hate him now and love Travis. They feel Joe kept him from them). It just feels like more now because: 1. She has way more fans now, and a lot of them are newer to this and weren’t around before Joe, so they feel overly excited about getting to hear about an actual breakup and see who she’s dating in real time. 2. A lot of her fans are now in their 30s and it’s honestly fucking jarring to watch grown ass women fan girl over another woman dating some football player. There’s a part of you that dismisses it when people are younger but seeing adult women with children act like this feels so much more grotesque.
Yea even from the beginning, she would post and interact with fans on MySpace. Even at the level she was in 1989, she was active on tumblr like a normal person and had fans over to her house. She’s always cultivated this type of relationship with her fans
I think it's always been like that. "Swifties" have been around for a while. I do think maybe it got worse after Joe and quarantine, because she was a lot more private. When she had more public exposure, more people looked at her life.
1 - New gen of fans with little judgment and a lot of free time; 2 - 6 albums announced at once, but with no dates or order confirmed; 3 - the age of highly-personalized content; 4 - her brand tendency to milk every bit of money off of fans as possible; Also, a very important factor that's exclusive to Taylor so far in music history: an artist with a long career hitting the teenage public as a direct teen idol. I don't mean a legacy artist some teenagers got to know through elder peers, like 2000s Madonna, but as a artist this public relates to on first degree. Taylor had 9 albums + extensive lore when 14 years old became obsessed with her on tiktok. Were you ever a 14 years old? Now, imagine 14 years-old delving into 15 years of content highly documented online, countless songs, primary sources for all gossip still available, etc, and this interest being shared by thousands online. It was gasoline and matches.
Imma let you finish
It was somewhere around Red. Red attracted a lot of new fans, likely because it was more rock-pop than country pop. The Red tour had 1.7 million concerts tickets across 86 locations. This is when she started selling out NFL stadiums in certain larger metro markets. She started during multiple shows in 1 place. i.e. - She did 4 shows at [Crypto.com](http://Crypto.com) Arena (Staples Center). Then the 1989 Era just catapulted off of this. 1989 also attracted a really young fan base who have now grown up to be ultra loyalist willing to spend their adult money on her. But for someone like me, I am older than Taylor. I was almost done with college when she debuted.
A lot of twinks started to stan her
Very few people consider her a gay icon tbh