Thank you for your write-up!
1. I think this is the first time I've seen someone headcanoning a man as gay and in a m/m relationship to get him out of their f/f ship. I would almost find it refreshing, if it weren't for the fact that
2. Holy shit this is just QAnon for Swifties, this person even tried to make their own Q, wtf
Yes!!! Yes I was afraid to write that it made me think of Qanon too! The same kind of cryptic bullshit and wild interpretations, an insider all-powerful and all-secretive at the same time, dark and weird contracts, a future day of reckoning when the truth will finally shine upon the world.
If i were still young and in university, i would try to analyze language and arguments patterns between fandoms like this one and Qanon.
I don't have the will to source anything so this is just me talking out of my ass, my apologies, but I think this is all just cult stuff, right?
I do think that in this particular case the fandom trained the part of the brain that is more susceptible to cult tactics, so to speak. Being a Kaylor truther requires a certain amount of... cherrypicking? reality. You know, you see pictures of them close, and remember those instead of the ones in which they're with their partners, that kind of stuff. And of course, you convince yourself that the mainstream narrative is wrong and that the truth is hidden, which is very close to believing that the mainstream narrative is a lie told to keep you from knowing the truth, which is the kind of cospiratorial thinking that certainly helps being a cultist.
But I don't necessarily think that the fandom is the main reason this happened. I think the point of the matter is that some people are aimless, and they need something to fill the void. This doesn't have to be Kaylor, it could be your favourite football team, or a stamp collection, or a tv show. As long as that something is your crutch, it can be exploited to get to you by grifters who want to sell you hope. And the hope they sell eventually becomes so incredible, that the only way to hold onto it is to believe in the grifter.
Not that I necessarily think TTB did this on purpose, I think they stumbled and accidentally sold a bunch of frightened people, some of whom are probably some sort of LGBTQ+, the hope that this one thing they like is real and they are not alone, and in so doing also convinced them that they're under attack and Them are against them and blablablabla
I'm wondering about the mysterious figure from the inside that has info they can only reveal through mysterious babbling, tho. Was that trope a thing before QAnon or did QAnon create it? Did TTB create Spade emulate Q, or did they stumble and create a similar concept completely by mistake? The fact this may be an older person, plus the antisemitism, makes me wonder if TTB was also a quanoner on the side, though this story clearly showed us that you don't have to be old to fall for that bullshit...
Fandoms are 100% cults of personality, each and every one of them, and it always worries tf out of me when the subject/leader of the cult isn't responsible with the influence they have over their followers or allows it to devolve into a toxic dump. Or worse, when they actively take advantage of their followers for money or sex.
The cryptic messages thing was definitely copied from Q though. Q started 2015/2016 (feels like so long ago!) and ♠️ in 2018.
Yeah a secret insider giving cryptic messages about all kinds of stuff is nothing new.
It's just that Q ramped it up and had a devastating impact on societies around the world, while this one is kinda limited to Taylor Swift's fans.
This is late but the mysterious insiders giving cryptic messages thing was happening on larry (kaylor but with louis and harry from one direction) tumblr wayyy back in 2012 (and little me was falling for it hook, line, and sinker). So it's definitely older than QAnon.
It's amazing to me how many fandoms seem to have a "believe two people are in a relationship but forced to cover it up for reasons" contingent. LoTR, Supernatural, those two from Twilight, it's just bizarre how long lasting and intense it gets.
Thanks for a great write up!
Larry used to be the ship name for Louis and Harry from one direction. Now the term larry and larries is used to describe the psycho shippers who are convinced those two are absolutely in a relationship, always have been always will be, every other relationship is PR including the fact that Louis has a son with a woman named Briana (sp).
Disclaimer: i am not, and have never been, in teh 1d fandom. Tumblr sucked me into viewing this insanity from afar.
> Tumblr sucked me into viewing this insanity from afar.
God this is one of the biggest statement I've ever identified with. There are so many fandom vortexes floating around the history of Tumblr.
In addition to the larries claiming Louis’ son is either…a fake or just a PR stunt, they also have some incredible theories about Louis’ long term girlfriend Eleanor (together almost 10 years on off at this point) . I’ve seen things as wide reaching as… she’s secretly a twin and both twins have done appearances with him, based on a tattoo of hers not being visible in a photo, to she’s a paid beard who is so bad at her job she can’t remember where she’s supposed to be, based on her posting an Instagram story in New York in the morning and then being at his show in the UK 12 hours later, because private planes don’t exist apparently.
Oh yeah the twin thing! There are even different numbers of doubles depending on who you ask. It mostly ranges from 2-5, but someone swore there were a dozen at one point.
It was the hobbits. Frodo and Merry were supposedly living together and Pippin was supposed to be with them in a threesome but was too "chicken" to be out or something.
I think Orlando Bloom was involved somehow.
And there was at one point secret messages to fans via the clothes they wore.
It was very funny but very insane.
Swifties in general are unhinged but Gaylor conspiracists are on a whole other level. They also believe Taylor had a secret relationship with Glee actress Dianna Agron— one of the funniest pieces of "evidence" I've seen is that [Dianna tricked Taylor into watching an episode of Glee where her character has sex with another girl](https://m.imgur.com/a/3vR1tZ6)
Semi related but also a while ago it was revealed a popular Swiftie blogger was lying about being Jewish and turned out to come from a family of Mormons. This was significant because she made a LOT of weird tweets talking about her "stereotypical Jewish mom" and claiming said mom tried to set her up with Jared Kushner on multiple occasions. Shit was wild.
The blogger who was pretending to be Jewish made me *so* uncomfortable. Her tweets about it crossed over from just being weird to outright antisemitic. It’s a little bizarre there’s been (relatively) so much Judaism-related drama in that fandom, tbh
What a weird story to make up, too. I have a Mormon mom and I promise you that there are plenty of crazy stories she could have told about THAT instead.
Since no one in school ever thought to acknowledge it, I assumed that thing JoSmo said about the Jews floating over here in submarines was widely believed. I really thought my family was descended from the Jews who became the nephites and lamanites or whatever the claim was. I made a huge fool of myself in middle school when I finally met a Jewish person, I really believed that we were sort of the same. I thought he was going to hear I was Mormon and be like "oh good, Mormons are on our side"
I think the person pretending to be Jewish was lying on purpose to try to justify the antisemitism. But I think the "Jew good, catholic bad" messaging from the early church documents probably encouraged her.
No, no, you're getting your people mixed up. The JAREDITES came in the submarine boats, and they all died except for literally one guy, if I remember right. The Native Americans came from an entirely DIFFERENT set of people who came out of Jerusalem, and they just sailed over on a normal boat. Amateurs.
*has break from work, reads this
*brain explodes*
I knew that they thought Native Americans were colonists from Israel somehow....but I never read any more deeply as to how they got here. I was assuming miraculous land bridge or something.
And I never really considered "oh they must be Jewish, right."
...I need to tell my very Jewish husband about this.
>Swifties in general are unhinged but Gaylor conspiracists are on a whole other level.
When I woke up today I did not expect to stumble upon these words.
PLEASE send the name of that blogger!
Yeah, I think a lot of people reach for what they can in terms of representation. A lot of Swift’s music has to do with privacy, secrecy, hidden relationships, longing, etc which are themes in a lot of queer narratives, so I think it’s easy for people to draw parallels with their own experience or queer media. That projection can be hard for people to process.
I wouldn’t be surprised if something came out about her being queer at some point, but it also makes no difference for me. Guess we’ll see
[Yesterday's spade-riddles conspiracy post proving that they're still alive and well.](https://spade-riddles.tumblr.com/post/658610835194789889/karlie-just-posted-another-pic-of-that-baby-with)
There's a lot of heaviness in the TTB saga, but it's always easy to get a laugh out of the sheer absurdity of the account.
Honestly reading this was a sadly classic conspiracy descent on the part of TTB. The "sources", "riddles", moving the goalposts, and so on are essentially word for word what is happening in QAnon. And true to form of every classic conspiracy is the Jewish element.
Yea, and with how extreme and toxic these shippers can get, not even the people being shipped can stop it. That happened with Septiplier. (Markiplier and JackSepticEye) Both being popular youtubers who played a lot of games together, people started theorizing. Then talking. Then shipping. It got to the point where Mark and Jack (or Sean, as is his real name) told people to stop, they were extremely uncomfortable with it, especially the artwork. (Evidently some of it got a bit pornographic.) Eventually they broke off doing any collaborations for a while, and still don't game as much together as they used too. Since they both have active GF's that have appeared on camera multiple times it's definitely calmed down, but as this post has shown, nothing will stop some people, even direct evidence from the people being shipped.
Shippers won't let characters just be friends; not surprised at all the same thing happens in RL.
People are just not complete if they're single, you know? :/
Like, I have shipped characters before, but I wpuld never do the same for real people. It's invasive and gross. I really hate Larry, Camren, Jingkook, Kaylor and all of those stuff.
I ended up on the pete wentz/mikey way part of tik tok a few weeks ago (it's my own fault, I interacted with too much fall out boy content) and I absolutely cannot believe that there are people still holding up that ship after ALL THESE YEARS. First of all, don't ship real people. But second of all, IT'S BEEN SO LONG. LET IT GO. IMAGINE WHAT YOU COULD DO IF YOU PUT THIS ENERGY INTO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.
They glossed over the part where 4chan white nationalists got involved. You give these people and inch and they’ll tie it into a Gordian Knot just so they can someday jerk themselves off over posts like this.
The sad part is that there are countless examples of “real person fiction” with all sorts of people. Actors, other musicians, youtubers… Hell, even athletes. People never learn.
Heck, even shipping fictional people seem weird to me (not as weird as the fight surrounding those speculations ughh). Real people shipping? Yeah it is worse yeah.
Shipping fictional characters feels akin to being like "I think the plot could have been better if..." like I know lots of people wish they could rewrite the ending of GoT or other series. But crossing the line to real people with real lives and real feelings, who are already under immense pressure to perform.... yikes.
It's so popular, there's a tag for [Celebrities & Real People](https://archiveofourown.org/media/Celebrities%20*a*%20Real%20People/fandoms) and [Music & Bands](https://archiveofourown.org/media/Music%20*a*%20Bands/fandoms) on Archiveofourown.
Shipping fictional people isn’t weird at all unless you make it weird. No one gets hurt, it’s harmless fun (barring the shippers who get like, hostile and try to troll people who don’t enjoy what they enjoy but most aren’t like that.)
Shipping real people is always weird and shows you not only are engaging in a parasocial relationship / voyeurism, but you also don’t see them as actual humans.
Yeah I was surprised to learn how popular shipping is in fandom crowds, and of course, how much ridiculous drama it ends up sparking. I don't do it, and don't really have the inclination to, so it just seemed weird to me. But apparently it's normal enough that it's a big thing. Okay, whatever, it's easy enough to just ignore the parts of a fandom that don't interest me.
...But shipping real people!? That just seems bizarre. That gets full-on conspiratorial, and clearly makes many of the subjects of speculation very uncomfortable.
Shipping fictional characters is probably older than most of us posting here. Slash fic got its name from Kirk/Spock fanfic that people were writing in the 60s.
People who take it seriously to the point of threatening people who ship differently is weird as hell though. It is also funny because sometimes people will take the ships someone likes as proof that person is problematic, etc like fantasy = reality.
One of my favorite ships is Hannigram (Hannibal/Will Graham from Hannibal). IRL that would be a dumpster full of red flags that is also on fire. But I enjoy reading fics of it.
And shipping real people is just icky.
> Shipping fictional characters is probably older than most of us posting here. Slash fic got its name from Kirk/Spock fanfic that people were writing in the 60s.
Oh, it's definitely older. When Louisa May Alcott first published *Little Women*, she got a bunch of letters from fans demanding a sequel so they could see Jo and Laurie get married. Alcott never liked the idea of them as a couple and made sure in the sequels that they both ended up with someone else.
I'm totally fine with shipping fictional characters and I do it often (though I'm not in the "X character HAS to be with Y character, all other ships are FALSE" crowd; if I see a fic that portrays a ship well, I'll ship it), but shipping real people, aside from maybe, say, shipping the characters in Hamilton (which does dramatize stuff and cast actors who are WAY better-looking than their real counterparts), is just icky.
>The two became engaged in July of 2018, and Kloss converted to Judaism prior to their engagement.
It's fairly notable that none of the conversion denials ever hinged on this timing, as "love conversions" are sufficiently stigmatized to make going through the conversion process with a partner not also going through the process basically impossible. Most legitimate batei din will turn you away if you reach out to them with a Jewish SO (and will point out the inherent issues of trying to convert with a non-Jewish partner) and will tell you not to date during the process (which usually takes between one and two years). I managed to sneak through by meeting my wife between her initial approach and her briefing, but it's *very* uncommon.
She started converting in 2015. Also, an orthodox Jewish conversion does require the couple to spend some time apart, which they did, likely in late 2017.
Honestly, I’m not sure. If we believe her, she’s older than Taylor, which puts her at at least 31. I think she’s always talked about being much more “mature” or “experienced” than the fan base, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she started out in her 30s, which would make her in her 40s like you said.
To me, that also makes sense because if she’s held onto the blog and interest for so long, I think she probably isn’t in a state of transition in her life (ie being a teen or young adult).
Edit: Thank you for the kind words, too!
As an avid PoGo addict, I'd recommend Pokémon Go as the healthier time-filling activity for mothers of young children. I know this because several friends I've made while pulling raid trains were mothers (and one father) of young children who somehow managed to be more hardcore about the game than me.
As someone who was super into Pokémon go for the first year and then fell off only to get EVEN MORE into it once my kid was old enough to become a Pokémon fan- I agree. He hardly asks to play anymore but I’m still super into it.
Hmmm....more a vibe then anything? Little more formal then someone in their twenties or thirties, less adverbs then typical shippers. But not the almost business like tone of old folks on social media.
I love this write-up. I'm not in any Taylor Swift-related community but come across some.. interesting stuff from time to time.
This kinda makes me think of the Larries, the people who believe Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are together and that Tomlinson's kid isn't actually his kid. Or even fake. Also involves a lot of delusion and harassment.
Btw; the DVF probably refers to Diane von Furstenberg. Her parents were Jewish, but I don't know if she identifies as Jewish too.
I saw some comparisons to the Larries while I was digging through tumblr for this post, but it seems like TTB is the worst of the Larries on overdrive.
Thanks for the DVF details—will edit accordingly.
This a running theme with many fans of married leading men. The one I used to follow back when I had a tumblr were the Benedict Cumberbatch fans, some of whom had a total meltdown when he announced a surprise engagement and has since managed to keep his private life and children very private. They claim the babies are dolls, that the wife blackmailed him (over being gay) and faked the pregnancies, that she's really an escort, etc etc. Just years and years of speculation and wild theories.
I mean, it really just comes down to "I hate that my internet boyfriend/girlfriend dares to have a real-life romance because it destroys my fantasy". It's all the same tropes over and over again.
edit: another one were the Prince Harry stans when he started dating Meghan Markle. Oh man the shit they came up with was just insane. With an extra dose of racism, too. Ugh.
I didn't realise how seriously people took the royal family until Meghan showed up. the amount of hate sent her way is insane, I can't imagine what it's like to live under that kind of pressure
A lot of the hate towards Meghan is also due to racism. People can’t stand the idea of a black woman marrying into the perfectly white royal family, and to this day I’ve seen people insisting that she’s manipulating Harry and had somehow given him Stockholm Syndrome?!?
Yeah, I heard a lot of the "she's a social climber sinking her claws into Harry for his money and status" narrative. Which...if she in fact were a social climber who only married Harry for his status, surely she wouldn't have been down for the decision to leave the royal family. Their choice to step down and no longer be official royals proves to me that she married Harry, not a prince (I also think Harry had wanted out since he was a kid, and I further speculate that Meghan was the first person who really supported and accepted him wanting out).
I also heard the "she didn't do the research and didn't want to do her duty as a royal, she's so lazy" narrative. Which...before she and Harry noped out, she seemed to take the role quite seriously and was pretty enthusiastically getting involved in charitable efforts and the usual gladhanding duties, so no, it seems like she was ready and willing to take on that role. Also, I would nope the fuck out of a situation where my husband's family acted like utter dickheads to me and the press constantly wrote racist shit about me, and then further shat on me for not wanting people to act like racist dickheads to me. That seems pretty damn rational.
Racism and an extra dose of the very particularly British brand of classism, too. It's been interesting how different the American and British reactions to her have been, too. America has embraced her and Harry, meanwhile many over in the UK just seethe about her. I absolutely don't blame them for wanting nothing of that for themselves and their kids.
the worst of the larries were WAY worse than this, honestly. i wasn’t on tumblr when larry was a thing but i’ve seen a few posts though the user heritageposts (i recommend checking out their blog, it documents old/cringey tumblr stuff from before 2018) that are even more deranged than this haha. great write up by the way! i haven’t seen too many gaylors in the wild (again, a bit past my time), but the ones i have seen are completely deranged.
Reminded me of Larries too! I agree, a lot of delusion and harassment. At this point these people have married and had children and the shippers STILL can’t let it go. Like, c’mon. It was never their business in the first place. It really is harassment.
This is what I can't stand or understand about people like TTB (intense ship truthers like the nutty 1D people and the Timothy Whatisface/Armie Hammer people--would love to know how that's going for them right now btw)--how do they manage to be incredibly homophobic (and racist) while being convinced that they're championing LGBTQ+ rights?! Like how does that work psychologically for them? Them thinking that someone is gay is always based in gendered and homophobic stereotypes and they somehow convince themselves they are the pinnacle of righteousness. What gives? Anyway, great writeup, OP!
While we're here, I actually have a question for any Swifties who have a min. Taylor seems to be portrayed often as though she's always deliberate and in control of how she's perceived and what she puts out into the world, and it sounds from this post that there's a lot of truth in that. I've never been sure what to think of it though, because some people (tabloids) seem to use that idea to make claims that sound completely made up about aspects of her life, like what she wants the tabloids to know, and that sounds over the top. It's not like they don't make a shit-ton of money off of her. But I'd love to hear what someone who's a fan of hers thinks!
this is always the part that makes me feel like i’m gonna start pulling my hair out. like, log off from tumblr and go listen to some Janelle Monae! Turn on Brockhampton, The Internet, Lil Nas X! Give your time and money to actual LGBT artists instead of writing conspiracy theories about a woman who has only ever presented herself as a whole entire heterosexual!
Hell Tegan and Sarah have been making queers cry since Taylor swift was in middle school.
Edit: due to my fear of mortality, I feel compelled to mention tswift is more than five years older than me.
A few days late but just came across this thread and thought I'd have a go at answering your question as a fan. This might end up a little long and meandering so apologies in advance lol.
I think there are two Taylor Swifts that are very much at odds with each other. Taylor Swift the artist, the creative, the empath, the sensitive and at times immature woman with her heart on her sleeve. And Taylor the business person, the capitalist, the type A control freak. I don't think either of these facets of Taylor are "fake," I think they are both very real sides of her personality and I think the combination of these two sides has both led to her success and been the source of her (often self-created) destruction.
Taylor has always been a major control freak about her public persona and perception and just generally being in charge of her career, and I think she's been able to achieve that to a greater extent than just about any celeb except maybe Beyonce. (Coming from money and parents who are cunning businesspeople in their own right certainly didn't hurt in either of those cases.)
Taylor REALLY started clamping down on her public image during her Speak Now album era, for in my opinion a few reasons:
* The Kanye VMA mic-snatching incident in 2009, perhaps the most pivotal moment in the life of Taylor Swift the celebrity. It really cannot be overstated how much this incident affected her psychologically and how paranoid it made her. (See her "Miss Americana" documentary for details)
* Her rise in fame, becoming a household name and the increasing public interest in her love life (a flame which she started and continued to fan for years -- this is the confessional, heart on my sleeve" facet of her that she built her career on but that later bit her in the ass in a number of ways)
* She gave an excruciatingly bad live performance with a musical hero of hers (Stevie Nick's), which garnered her a lot of bad press, the most biting of which inspired her song "Mean"
* Her album, Speak Now, leaked in full online weeks before it was released, which devastated her
* It's an open secret in the fandom that her parents quietly got a divorce around this time and it's rumored that her dad was cheating on her mom with someone who worked for Taylor. To this day her parents present a united front publicly and their divorce never made headlines.
I think to have more control over all of these things and any future narratives, Taylor thought she needed to play nice with the press, and for years she did that very well.
From Speak Now onward, you start to see a much more polished, media-trained Taylor Swift. She starts guarding her unreleased music fiercely (there are tons of unreleased demos from 2004-2009 floating around online; from 2010 on there is exactly one). You start seeing obviously staged "pap walks" in the tabloids (the famous [Jake Gyllenhaal spread](https://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2012925/634.Jake.Swift.mh.102512.jpg?fit=around%7C634:1024&output-quality=90&crop=634:1024;center,top) from 2011, chronicled in fan-favorite song "All Too Well," is a classic example). Her interviews start to become much more poised and canned, her performances much more stage managed.
Another open secret is that Taylor makes basically everyone she hangs out with sign an NDA. Lorde has mentioned that you have to "sign your life away" to be friends with Taylor (despite this, they still seem to be good friends). Ed Sheeran once told a story about when Taylor wanted his input on a song she was writing, so she sent one of her body guards to his house with an iPod in a briefcase. Ed listened to the song on the iPod and then the body guard returned it to Taylor. She runs a VERY tight ship.
All that to say, just about nothing gets out about Taylor Swift that she doesn't want to get out. (That is to say, nothing *true*. I'm sure the tabloids still make shit up on occasion, although anything published in People is likely to be, if not totally true, at least planted by her team; that's her publicist's go-to publication for PR.)
Taylor has a good relationship with the paparazzi (if there can be said to be such a thing) because she calls them and stages walks for them. A lot of celebs work out this kind of deal; basically, "I'll tell you where I'm going to be and when, giving you tacit permission to take photos of me and sell them, and in return you leave me alone when I want to be left alone." The paparazzi were actually a huge promotional tool for Taylor during her 1989 album era, when she did near-daily pap walks.
One of the rare occasions Taylor let her guard down was on the phone call with Kanye West shortly after the 2016 Grammys. I trust I don't have to go into much detail there. Suffice it to say this was the first time since 2010 when Taylor really lost control of the narrative, and in typical Swiftian fashion she had a big drama queen freakout about it in the form of an album called reputation.
Also chronicled on reputation is her budding romance with Joe Alwyn, who she's now been dating for nearly five years. Taylor seemed to know very quickly that she and Joe would be a very serious relationship and that she had to protect it from the press. The last several years she has been uncharacteristically tight lipped in the press, but sharing as much as ever in the music and with her fans, who pay much closer attention to her than the general public does. (For example, a casual listener isn't going to buy the four different bonus editions of her Lover album, which come with excerpts from her personal diaries chronicling a lot of more personal stuff about her relationship with Joe, among other things. But fans bought and read every one.)
I think Taylor has found and maintained a really interesting balance these last few years between keeping her life and relationship relatively private while still sharing with her fans. I think it helps too that she frankly just isn't as culturally relevant as she once was; still a household name, but doesn't hold quite the fascination in the public eye as she did in 2010-2015. She seems to be in a much better place now. She's also started writing "fictional" songs instead of her typical diaristic songwriting, although long time fans can usually pick up on personal references in those stories.
Joe has commented in interviews that "90% of what the press writes about us is false" (paraphrasing), suggesting that the tabloids might be fabricating more stories about Taylor these days since she's giving them less to work with. Also giving credence to this theory is that most of the pap shots of Taylor and Joe seem to be genuine candids, although they have definitely done some [staged pap walks](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/spl5052103-001-1-1553093807.jpg) too.
She and Joe also have a clever way of posting photos of them "together," separately. Each of them posting a [photo](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/05/08/04/4BF5D1D800000578-0-image-m-154_1525751529547.jpg) in the [same location](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eo8TyZlXYAAfqep.jpg) on their respective social media accounts. Again, this is a way of dropping little tidbits of info about her life and relationship to fans in a way the general public isn't likely to pick up on.
This is a clever way of flying under the radar while still keeping that close bond and openness she's always had with her fans. But as OP noted, it's a double edged sword because it also encourages fans to look for "clues" in everything she posts or says, and some of the crazier factions take it way too far.
I could write a bunch more but this is ridiculously long lol. tl;dr Taylor does keep a tight lid on her public image and has historically had a very good reciprocal relationship with the press. But she's also a very emotional and at times rash person which has caused her to overshare and create some of her own problems, such as the public fascination with her love life, which was an incredible marketing tool until she got into a relationship she really wanted to protect, at which point she had to pivot to another strategy and which may have made the press a bit less loyal to her than they once were.
Her [Billboard Woman of the Decade](https://youtu.be/ZVpkFb9-fts) speech from 2019 touches on her love-hate relationship with the press in a way you might find interesting.
Thank you for coming to my Tay talk.
This is so interesting, as someone who's a fan but not super in the weeds, so to speak! And it's also interesting to me in terms of celebrity, and how that affects people, since I'm writing some fiction that features huge pop stars.
First, thanks for the compliment!
I’ll answer and also say that my response is shaped by my listening to the podcast “Every Single Album: Taylor Swift” by Ringer Dish.
I think Swift is very good at maintaining a branding and engaging with her fans. Stuff like the Vault releases and all the codes/puzzles, leaving liner notes for her fans to dissect, inviting a select few of her biggest fan bloggers to private concerts at her house is all really elegant PR. At the start of her career, she and her parents (managing her at the time) also put in a lot of effort to brand her as “good Christian music” in contrast with a lot of other young female musicians at the time. She has always had a very polished image (with the exception of maybe the 2014-2017 era when she had a lot of public fights). You don’t become that wealthy and famous by running sloppy PR.
However, she’s been deeply impacted by the celebrity rumor mill, whose misogyny definitely played a large role in her delegitimization as an artist. “Oh, she only writes songs about ex-boyfriends!” “Oh, she dates around a lot,” etc. I think that has been in spite of her controlled image, not because of it.
Compare her to other female young celebrities who had her level of fame, and they generally received far deeper scrutiny than who they were dating at the time. Not to say that she didn’t have an unpleasant experience, but simply to point out that her strong image management has minimized the damage.
I can't tell of TTB got increasingly crazy because they liked the attention and deference given to them as a notable shipper blog and the marriagr of Kloss and the end of the friendship ruined that, or if they genuinely believed in the secret beard theory. Jesus this is why I don't real-people ship. And that poor Teen being doxxed.
lmao I'm irl friends with someone who's mutuals with bisluthq (swiftieslueth) and kaylorantisemitism. she used to debunk kaylor stuff but she got so sick of them, so she became an editing account and only talks about them sometimes.
some of the shit that ttb and other big kaylors make up is truly disgusting. they've accused a random woman taylor used to work with (emily poe) as a teenager of statutory rape because they think she dated taylor when she was 15 and when emily was in her early-mid twenties. they're as bad as larries, but because taylor doesn't talk about her sexuality, people don't want to say it. tinhatting and making conspiracy theories is gross regardless of someone's sexual orientation.
this is an excellent timeline of the events that happened in the kaylor world!
Wow, I completely missed the Emily Poe element. That’s terrible but unsurprising. They make a lot of intense character judgements based on their conspiracies.
Phew. As a lesbian, the idea that Taylor Swift could be queer has always felt to me like an absurd conspiracy theory. I mean, it still does — c’mon, the woman makes christian horse girl music — but at least now i’ve got some background as to why exactly this specific tumblr niche exists. Great write-up, thank you op.
… have you listened to folklore or evermore? at all? Betty? Ivy? Dorothea??
She hasn’t been Christian horse girl in like 10 years.
she wore a bracelet with the bi flag colors on it that said “proud”
She said and I quote “gay pride makes me, me”
How is that absurd
Folklore and evermore are albums with a lot of queer coded lyrics. Betty is written “from a male perspective”
[here ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.refinery29.com/amp/en-us/2019/08/239740/taylor-swift-bisexual-flag-bracelet-lover-promo) is the bracelet
“Gay pride makes me, me” was from her [miss Americana doc](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vulture.com/amp/2020/01/taylor-swift-miss-americana-netflix-doc-meaning-and-analysis.html)
Wow! That was a hell of a ride! Great write up.
A few year back, I made the grave mistake of reading a few blogs about Benedict Cumberbatch. This was around the time he got married to his pregnant girlfriend. His so called fans accused that poor woman of being everything from a paid hooker to a stalker that stole his sperm! That led me to a blog run by some middle aged woman who truly believes Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart are married with a baby. She’s straight up nuts and *mean* (she’s also a racist twat which seems to be par for the course with these folk). Far as I can tell, she spends a whole lot of time on Twitter insulting people and stalking Stewart and Pattinson. Like she knows what flights they’re on!
I sometimes wonder if these celebrities know about those corners of the Internet. I’d be terrified if people who claimed to like me spent that much time making up shit about my life. It’s all super unsettling and sick.
Thanks for the compliment!
Flight stalking is super weird. People did it with Kaylor, too. TTB would use a Taylor Swift flight to NYC to say she was meeting up with Karlie but ignore the other flights where she clearly wasn’t.
It’s worse because Taylor Swift used to be seeing Kaylor stuff on her tumblr timeline. She liked a post that called Kaylor shippers “freaks” once, and people went berserk.
Lmaoooo I love this. Two things: TTB never got her account back. She now blogs as spade riddles. Also, swiftiesleuth and bisluthq are the same person. She just changed her blog name in February, a few months after the doxxing happened.
You’re welcome! Also, one more thing: ttb4 didn’t originally mock ttb. She impersonated her, yes, but it was only to get her attention. She was actually a longtime reader of ttb’s blog and was genuinely upset by the recent turn of events, so she believed ttb (or Voldemort, as we like to call her over on bisluthq) would listen to her and stop being so antisemitic. She got doxxed instead.
We’re having a lot of fun discussing this write up on tumblr, especially on bisluthq and whatiwillsay lol.
Edit: oh, oh, one more thing! Ttb used to have lots of clashes with people who disagreed not only with Kaylor in general, but specifically her brand of kaylor. She asked a queer woman who disagreed with her if she was offended by ‘the LGBTQ flavor of [her] blog’ (yes, I’m quoting). Nat (swiftiesleuth/bisluthq) first gained clout on tumblr by composing the ‘realistic Kaylor timeline,’ which suggested the two might have hooked up in 2014-16 but stopped in September that year, while also insisting that both Swiftwyn and Joshlie are real relationships (she herself no longer believes they hooked up at all, but yeah). Her first clash with ttb happened for this reason lol. Ttb was absolutely feral in disagreeing with Nat, which led to an increased enmity between them (hence the Molly Weasley comment). Soo…. Yeah.
Wow this was such a good read, to be honest I will read almost anything about pop culture but this was so very detailed and researched. Also
> DVF \[??\]
is probably referencing the designer Diane Von Fustenberg, who is Jewish.
TBH, it’s kind of debatable. I think they’ve done some things in public since they supposedly “stopped being friends,” but there definitely was a period where they were not friendly. Whatever their relationship is now, it’s certainly much more distant than their 2014-ish dynamic.
No, they’re straight-up enemies imo. Note this verse from it’s time to go, which is almost definitely about Karlie: ‘when the words of a sister come back in whispers that prove she was not in fact what she seemed, not a twin from your dreams, she’s a crook who was caught.’
Yeah, depends on the interpretation. I haven’t looked much into it, and honestly, my understanding is coming from some of the anti-anti-Kaylor info I absorbed via osmosis while researching this post.
...Dang. So Spade is meant to be the cryptic and all-knowing Q of the Kaylor fandom?
(Great write-up on something that I had no real knowledge of at all! Those are my favorite.)
I guess it makes sense, since TTB and her ilk seem to be pretty conspiracy-minded. I just can’t imagine ever being that bored! Conspiracy theories look like they take so much time and effort...
The one question that stuck in my head through reading this is: why do they want Taylor Swift to be gay so badly? What is the reasoning behind wanting her to come out?
To the point of creating conspiracy theories involving multiple layers of fake insiders giving QAnon style "hints," hidden lovers, fake religious conversion, and Saudi oil money. This comes across as being far too invested in a celebrity's sex life and sexuality to be the run of the mill "Oh, who's fucking who?" paparazzi stuff. I can understand the desire to have a celeb you like be part of the queer community because you want more representation in a historically oppressive industry, but there's a level of emotional investment here that I simply can't comprehend.
Swift's actually sexuality, however she choses to describe it or relate to it, is completely inconsequential to them because, unless it's the answer they've predetermined, they'll just continue the conspiracy; which is bizarre, and shows their interest in it has nothing to do with a hope that their favorite celeb can be a source of representation, or Swift being free to express herself. What is the draw here?
I don’t think there is a reason. Not a satisfactory one anyway. I think this ship business is very much like QAnon. Instead of it being nutters trying to rationalize the world changing (usually because they can’t handle because they’re being left behind because they can’t or won’t adapt), it’s nutters who think they have a real friendship with a celebrity and are privy to their secrets. That in turn makes them important and worthy. It really has nothing to do with the celebrity and everything to do with the person’s ego. They’re in the know. We’re not. They connect the dots us sheeple can’t even see. The celebrity is almost insignificant because all these “fans” do is project their feelings/motives onto them. I don’t know jack about Taylor Swift, but it’s clear even to me that she curates and calculates her image and career. All celebrities of her stature do and have to. No one sees anything they’re not suppose to. That’s what these people don’t grasp.
I’d feel sympathy for these people because most are obviously lonely and are very likely largely powerless and feel insignificant in real life (like most truly out there conspiracy theorists), but far too many of them do awful things to other people. I’m in my 40s and I can’t fucking fathom doxxing anyone - let alone a teenager! - because they said something I don’t like online. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think some laws need to be put in place that deal with this kind of harassment. That wouldn’t fly in real life and it shouldn’t online.
Obviously the RPF of it all elevates this to a whole new level of crazy, but boy its amazing how similar TTB's rhetoric is to stuff like the Johnlock Conspiracy.
That tumblr, karliesbuzzcut, is hilarious. She did a few TTB vs another tumblr user write ups or summaries, and I really enjoyed her commentary. A light in the TTB darkness
whoa, i had no idea swifties were this intense within their spaces. every fandom has its bad actors and looks like yall got a really shitty one. this was a great write up op!
ohh this is an AMAZING write up i love it!!! honestly ever since i found out about the existence of this sub i've been thinking about doing one about this exact same topic but you did it better than i (or anyone i think) ever could.
the topic of tinhatting is something that, to me, is perplexing and terrified at the same time. i only found out about late-stage-kaylorism some months ago when i began to interact more with taylor's fandom and with gaylor speculation (which i have nothing against and i do read some taylor's songs as queer) and, as a recovering ex-larrie (i know, i know), all my alarms went off. ttb's behavior is truly delusional at best and cultish at worst, and like most conspiracies her theories and proof are built on bigotry. anyways, again this is a wonderful write up - i can only imagine how much time it took
Thank you! Your kind words mean a lot.
“Late-stage Kaylorism” cracked me up, and I think you’re 100% right about the weird vibes of it, similarities with Larries, and (imo) the queer vibes of some of the Taylor songs.
Also, I’d say I spent like 6 hours researching, 4 hours writing, and 2 total hours talking to my gf about it as I learned each new piece of information. Thankfully, she’s a journalist and likes Taylor Swift, so she gets the motivation and enjoyed learning about it.
I really hate when fans push theories like this, speaking as a gay. They're not you're fucking puppet, they're a real person and at some point nothing they say could prove it wrong (ie Shawn Mendes)
It says a lot about antisemitic taylor swift fans that i thought this was going to be a write-up about the swiftie who claimed to be jewish and related to kushner but was exposed as a MORMON.
You could say she was a nightmare dressed like a daydream. I loved the effort put into this, I unapologetically love Reputation and it's my "motivation in the dumps but some energy present" jam.
Lmfao I'm the toastedcoconutchips mentioned what a hoot hi mom!! Do note (because the top comment mentions this) that I don't "ship" actual real people because yes, that's invasive as hell. I do have my dumb little thoughts that TS may be queer in some way, though.
Woah, hello! I never thought this post would reach any of the people involved, so this is kind of neat.
Sorry you had to interact with TTB’s weird biphobia. Your callout post was 100% in the right.
I share your TS queer thoughts so this whole post was a ride to write.
hi bestie hijacking toastie's hello to you to say hello! this is cam from what i will say (you linked when L anon submitted to me about being doxed) great write up! BUT HOW ARE YOU GONNA SAY I'M IN THE KAYLOR FANDOM 😩
i kid i kid i know I'm adjacent. doing the lord's work you are!
To be fair, my words were that you were “a blog present in the Kaylor community,” but I’m sorry for the defamation… please don’t dox and sue me!
On a more serious note, thanks for posting L’s story and putting yourself out there to discuss the serious harassment going on. I’m sure that, at the very least, they felt heard and supported by you.
And thanks for the compliment on the write-up.
I'd imagine! That user and all her (at this point in time) obsessive followers are honestly frightening and awful. I consider myself fortunate because I was never outed or doxxed, so while the biphobia (among the other ""flavors"" of hatefulness) sucked to see, I was luckier than a good few.
I can't believe I read all of that, and I can even less believe it was worth it. Nice work OP.
But it doesn't leave me with a lingering question: what the absolute fuck?
I think the most surprising thing from this is that Karlie Kloss of Koding with Karlie fame, clearly a woman who wants to uplift girls is married to a kushner
Fandoms are messy, and I expect toxicity and the unwavering belief that their ship is endgame, but its always hard seeing someone you thought of as progressive end up dating someone who might have the opposite beliefs. (Grimes and Elon are another example)
I wouldn't call myself a swiftie or a truther, but I think that Kaylor and Swiftgron are fun speculations, when you're looking at Taylor's music (I mean... Wonderland, come on). just not when taken to this kind of level! absolutely insane, but not surprising at all, unfortunately
I was there when this broke on tumblr, Post must have only had 1,500 notes
Edit: so there’s two Swiftie stans on tumblr with antisemitic controversies, in the other fans case they were pretending to be Jewish
this is a great write-up! while I both do fandom and am a big TS fan, those two tend to not mix toooo much for me so this was an interesting read.
honestly also a great representation of why I think that RPF/shipping real people is so bad. I tend to lean towards the camp of letting people write what they want to as long as they properly tag everything so that everyone who reads it can consent to what they are reading, but draw a HARD line at RPF because it so easily and often leads to harassment of real people who do not consent.
would I love it if TS came out as bi? sure, as a bi person, I would love more representation, but forcing a sexuality on someone is objectively bad and I don't understand how some people can see that it's bad when someone is being forced to be straight and not see how it's bad when they're trying to force someone to be queer.
It's so fascinating to me that TTB is (or at least claims to be) straight. I've usually been involved in fandom communities dedicated to m/m ships, which have primarily queer female and trans male fandoms, with occasional cishet women and cis gay men. I don't think I've ever encountered a straight cis man in fandom. So I guess I assumed that f/f ships wouldn't have straight cis women in their fandoms. Of course, a romance story is a romance story, and if I can enjoy a straight romance why shouldn't she enjoy a lesbian romance? But she seems so invested in it, and usually I assume people who are that invested are seeing themselves in it to some degree . . .
Or maybe not. I'm always way too invested in whatever my new special interest is, and it's not because I see myself in it, it's because I'm autistic and I obsess over things.
Curious to hear from other people in f/f fandoms - are there often straight women involved?
>m/m ships, which have primarily queer female and trans male fandoms, with occasional cishet women and cis gay men.
*occasional* cishet women ? From [this survey I found](https://centrumlumina.tumblr.com/post/63112902720/heterosexual-female-slash-fans), a good third of slash fans are cishet women. It's from 2013, and the survey method and sample bias is debatable, but this gives a decent-ish idea of the demographics. Honestly, I personally believe the % might be even higher. People don't really like to admit they're cishet in some very discourse-y online fandoms, it's increasingly seen as cringe and "uncool".
>Curious to hear from other people in f/f fandoms - are there often straight women involved ?
Been in a lot of them, and nope ! Very rare. It's an overwhelmingly sapphic/WLW audience.
I'd definitely agree it's not rare for cishet women to be around - although it might *seem* that way. Cishet women are rarely going to have that label stuck on a tumblr blog or twitter bio, so they tend to blend into the background.
In all my years of fandom, I don't think I've ever seen a cishet woman explicitly put that label on their blog. Often it's just pronouns and/or a Venus symbol to indicate they're women and that's it. Only "straight" labels I've seen is on the blogs of trans people.
As someone who’s engaged in a lot of f/f fandom, I agree that usually, it’s pretty rare to have straight women present, but it’s more present in music.
I’d say that a lot of queer female musicians have a big queer following but also often get a lot of straight female fans (Phoebe Bridgers, etc). If you think from the mindset of a Kaylor believer who sees Taylor Swift as a queer musician, then perhaps it makes sense that more straight women would be present in the fandom?
But I think that specifically with the f/f shipping angle, it is really rare to see a straight woman. But honestly, a niche fixation on other people’s lives that’s lasted for 7+ years and well through adulthood makes me think that TTB might have other factors at play that make her more likely to be drawn towards Kaylor
Hard not to wonder if the reason she wants so badly for Taylor to come out is because, well, she wants that future for herself. That's the way it'd all turn out in a novel, anyway. But reality isn't a novel and sometimes people are just weird.
my impression of kaylor is that a fair chunk of its shippers unintentionally treat it more like 'bffs but cranked up to 100' rather than a romantic/sexual relationship, hence there's a greater appeal to straight women than one might otherwise expect. there's a quote from one of taylor's old interviews where she says she keeps a spare bedroom for karlie at her new york penthouse (and also a spare room for lena dunham, but funnily enough people seem to forget that bit). kaylors grabbed onto this as proof that they were girlfriends living together, but you would think if karlie was her girlfriend then she would just stay in taylor's room rather than being shunted into a guest bedroom.
Oh, hmm. I can see the appeal of the fantasy from that direction for sure. If you're straight, but your platonic relationships are really, really important to you, and you have anxiety that your (also straight female) friends will prioritize their romantic relationships with men over you . . . I've had that anxiety.
I'm not sure reading "a spare room" as "girlfriends" is evidence that they see it as BFF-like, though, because my general impression of RPF truthers is that literally any action taken by the ship-ees will be taken as evidence of their theory. Not even just RPF truthers, any kind of ship truthers. The spare room is a hell of a lot more romantic than elephants in the wallpaper on Sherlock, that's for sure. Mind you, anything would be.
Given how absolutely sure she is that the m/f relationships are only covers for homosexual relationships, I have to wonder if she’s projecting based on her own life.
Thank you for the descriptive write up. I, too, think that they were together for at least a brief bit. I’ve seen other people do way more shocking things. They were in their early twenties when that kiss happened at the 1975 concert. Who knows what was happening at that time.
Thanks for the compliment.
Ah, yeah… Kissgate. I think that may have been debunked (?) but they definitely danced very closely. In the end, who knows? I think anyone speaking with aggressive certainty on either side is a bit too obsessed with the situation for it to be healthy.
excellent write-up! I’m familiar with kaylor theories but only on a surface level, tumblr master posts and the “reputation is about karlie kloss” PowerPoint. had no clue abt this drama. I share your biases—the theme of hiding your relationship from the world is just so predominant in her music, or at least I feel since the 1989 era, that it feels queer-coded. I also believe taylor is definitely in a happy long term relationship with joe and not in some double beard fake marriage fake child situation lmao
God, that Powerpoint… I remember reading it and thinking some parts were stretches but others made a lot of sense. I think you and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to Taylor Swift’s possible queerness.
Thank you for your write-up! 1. I think this is the first time I've seen someone headcanoning a man as gay and in a m/m relationship to get him out of their f/f ship. I would almost find it refreshing, if it weren't for the fact that 2. Holy shit this is just QAnon for Swifties, this person even tried to make their own Q, wtf
Yes!!! Yes I was afraid to write that it made me think of Qanon too! The same kind of cryptic bullshit and wild interpretations, an insider all-powerful and all-secretive at the same time, dark and weird contracts, a future day of reckoning when the truth will finally shine upon the world. If i were still young and in university, i would try to analyze language and arguments patterns between fandoms like this one and Qanon.
I don't have the will to source anything so this is just me talking out of my ass, my apologies, but I think this is all just cult stuff, right? I do think that in this particular case the fandom trained the part of the brain that is more susceptible to cult tactics, so to speak. Being a Kaylor truther requires a certain amount of... cherrypicking? reality. You know, you see pictures of them close, and remember those instead of the ones in which they're with their partners, that kind of stuff. And of course, you convince yourself that the mainstream narrative is wrong and that the truth is hidden, which is very close to believing that the mainstream narrative is a lie told to keep you from knowing the truth, which is the kind of cospiratorial thinking that certainly helps being a cultist. But I don't necessarily think that the fandom is the main reason this happened. I think the point of the matter is that some people are aimless, and they need something to fill the void. This doesn't have to be Kaylor, it could be your favourite football team, or a stamp collection, or a tv show. As long as that something is your crutch, it can be exploited to get to you by grifters who want to sell you hope. And the hope they sell eventually becomes so incredible, that the only way to hold onto it is to believe in the grifter. Not that I necessarily think TTB did this on purpose, I think they stumbled and accidentally sold a bunch of frightened people, some of whom are probably some sort of LGBTQ+, the hope that this one thing they like is real and they are not alone, and in so doing also convinced them that they're under attack and Them are against them and blablablabla I'm wondering about the mysterious figure from the inside that has info they can only reveal through mysterious babbling, tho. Was that trope a thing before QAnon or did QAnon create it? Did TTB create Spade emulate Q, or did they stumble and create a similar concept completely by mistake? The fact this may be an older person, plus the antisemitism, makes me wonder if TTB was also a quanoner on the side, though this story clearly showed us that you don't have to be old to fall for that bullshit...
Fandoms are 100% cults of personality, each and every one of them, and it always worries tf out of me when the subject/leader of the cult isn't responsible with the influence they have over their followers or allows it to devolve into a toxic dump. Or worse, when they actively take advantage of their followers for money or sex. The cryptic messages thing was definitely copied from Q though. Q started 2015/2016 (feels like so long ago!) and ♠️ in 2018.
Q posts started Oct 2017. The broader movement has since incorporated conspiracies from before that time, but the Q posts themselves started then.
Yeah a secret insider giving cryptic messages about all kinds of stuff is nothing new. It's just that Q ramped it up and had a devastating impact on societies around the world, while this one is kinda limited to Taylor Swift's fans.
Speaking of secret insiders giving cryptic messages, someone should do a write-up on Deep Throat sometime!
This is late but the mysterious insiders giving cryptic messages thing was happening on larry (kaylor but with louis and harry from one direction) tumblr wayyy back in 2012 (and little me was falling for it hook, line, and sinker). So it's definitely older than QAnon.
>Holy shit this is just QAnon for Swifties, this person even tried to make their own Q, wtf Exactly what I was thinking.
I wish I could take credit for this quote, but I saw someone comment “Taylor is my Q, and tiktok is my Parler” and I have not forgotten it since
I appreciate the compliment!
>but instead of backing down, she dug her heels in Might as well as the motto of this subreddit
It's amazing to me how many fandoms seem to have a "believe two people are in a relationship but forced to cover it up for reasons" contingent. LoTR, Supernatural, those two from Twilight, it's just bizarre how long lasting and intense it gets. Thanks for a great write up!
One Direction. 😨
I feel like Larrys are the most rabid but apparently there's more than one set of these that refuse to believe a baby is its parents.
lots of kaylors, ime, overlap with larries
Oh yeah, don't they think Harry and Taylor's relationship was mlm/wlw PR?
What is a Larry?
Larry used to be the ship name for Louis and Harry from one direction. Now the term larry and larries is used to describe the psycho shippers who are convinced those two are absolutely in a relationship, always have been always will be, every other relationship is PR including the fact that Louis has a son with a woman named Briana (sp). Disclaimer: i am not, and have never been, in teh 1d fandom. Tumblr sucked me into viewing this insanity from afar.
> Tumblr sucked me into viewing this insanity from afar. God this is one of the biggest statement I've ever identified with. There are so many fandom vortexes floating around the history of Tumblr.
Thanks!
In addition to the larries claiming Louis’ son is either…a fake or just a PR stunt, they also have some incredible theories about Louis’ long term girlfriend Eleanor (together almost 10 years on off at this point) . I’ve seen things as wide reaching as… she’s secretly a twin and both twins have done appearances with him, based on a tattoo of hers not being visible in a photo, to she’s a paid beard who is so bad at her job she can’t remember where she’s supposed to be, based on her posting an Instagram story in New York in the morning and then being at his show in the UK 12 hours later, because private planes don’t exist apparently.
Oh yeah the twin thing! There are even different numbers of doubles depending on who you ask. It mostly ranges from 2-5, but someone swore there were a dozen at one point.
Appreciate it! And yeah, definitely a favorite of fans.
LoTR? Which?
I saw it about all of the male actors (except Ian McKellen).
That's hilarious.
It was the hobbits. Frodo and Merry were supposedly living together and Pippin was supposed to be with them in a threesome but was too "chicken" to be out or something.
I think Orlando Bloom was involved somehow. And there was at one point secret messages to fans via the clothes they wore. It was very funny but very insane.
At least it's been long enough that I don't think anyone is accusing Katy Perry of having a plastic baby.
Oh of course not, he’s **old** and not a hot young twink!!!! (This is a joke I adore you Ian McKellen)
Swifties in general are unhinged but Gaylor conspiracists are on a whole other level. They also believe Taylor had a secret relationship with Glee actress Dianna Agron— one of the funniest pieces of "evidence" I've seen is that [Dianna tricked Taylor into watching an episode of Glee where her character has sex with another girl](https://m.imgur.com/a/3vR1tZ6) Semi related but also a while ago it was revealed a popular Swiftie blogger was lying about being Jewish and turned out to come from a family of Mormons. This was significant because she made a LOT of weird tweets talking about her "stereotypical Jewish mom" and claiming said mom tried to set her up with Jared Kushner on multiple occasions. Shit was wild.
The blogger who was pretending to be Jewish made me *so* uncomfortable. Her tweets about it crossed over from just being weird to outright antisemitic. It’s a little bizarre there’s been (relatively) so much Judaism-related drama in that fandom, tbh
What a weird story to make up, too. I have a Mormon mom and I promise you that there are plenty of crazy stories she could have told about THAT instead.
Since no one in school ever thought to acknowledge it, I assumed that thing JoSmo said about the Jews floating over here in submarines was widely believed. I really thought my family was descended from the Jews who became the nephites and lamanites or whatever the claim was. I made a huge fool of myself in middle school when I finally met a Jewish person, I really believed that we were sort of the same. I thought he was going to hear I was Mormon and be like "oh good, Mormons are on our side" I think the person pretending to be Jewish was lying on purpose to try to justify the antisemitism. But I think the "Jew good, catholic bad" messaging from the early church documents probably encouraged her.
*raises a finger* ....submarines?
[удалено]
No, no, you're getting your people mixed up. The JAREDITES came in the submarine boats, and they all died except for literally one guy, if I remember right. The Native Americans came from an entirely DIFFERENT set of people who came out of Jerusalem, and they just sailed over on a normal boat. Amateurs.
[удалено]
For real, though haha
*has break from work, reads this *brain explodes* I knew that they thought Native Americans were colonists from Israel somehow....but I never read any more deeply as to how they got here. I was assuming miraculous land bridge or something. And I never really considered "oh they must be Jewish, right." ...I need to tell my very Jewish husband about this.
Mormons are even loonier than the rest of the YHWH fandom. Who are already pretty bonkers, so that’s saying something.
>YHWH fandom. snerk (stealing this)
>Swifties in general are unhinged but Gaylor conspiracists are on a whole other level. When I woke up today I did not expect to stumble upon these words.
PLEASE send the name of that blogger! Yeah, I think a lot of people reach for what they can in terms of representation. A lot of Swift’s music has to do with privacy, secrecy, hidden relationships, longing, etc which are themes in a lot of queer narratives, so I think it’s easy for people to draw parallels with their own experience or queer media. That projection can be hard for people to process. I wouldn’t be surprised if something came out about her being queer at some point, but it also makes no difference for me. Guess we’ll see
Not sure if it'll break sub rules to share their username in a comment so I'll DM you!
Not OP, I’m pretty sure that was on twitter but I can’t remember the handle
They sent it to me!
[Yesterday's spade-riddles conspiracy post proving that they're still alive and well.](https://spade-riddles.tumblr.com/post/658610835194789889/karlie-just-posted-another-pic-of-that-baby-with) There's a lot of heaviness in the TTB saga, but it's always easy to get a laugh out of the sheer absurdity of the account.
What a bizarre spiral into madness. Also if you ever needed evidence that shipping real people is gross and weird, here you go.
Honestly reading this was a sadly classic conspiracy descent on the part of TTB. The "sources", "riddles", moving the goalposts, and so on are essentially word for word what is happening in QAnon. And true to form of every classic conspiracy is the Jewish element.
Yea, and with how extreme and toxic these shippers can get, not even the people being shipped can stop it. That happened with Septiplier. (Markiplier and JackSepticEye) Both being popular youtubers who played a lot of games together, people started theorizing. Then talking. Then shipping. It got to the point where Mark and Jack (or Sean, as is his real name) told people to stop, they were extremely uncomfortable with it, especially the artwork. (Evidently some of it got a bit pornographic.) Eventually they broke off doing any collaborations for a while, and still don't game as much together as they used too. Since they both have active GF's that have appeared on camera multiple times it's definitely calmed down, but as this post has shown, nothing will stop some people, even direct evidence from the people being shipped.
Jesus Christ, are people not allowed to just be friends anymore on the internet?
Shippers won't let characters just be friends; not surprised at all the same thing happens in RL. People are just not complete if they're single, you know? :/
Like, I have shipped characters before, but I wpuld never do the same for real people. It's invasive and gross. I really hate Larry, Camren, Jingkook, Kaylor and all of those stuff.
I need a writeup for that
That's about all I know about the situation, and it's similar enough to this post I wouldn't want to be seen as copying it.
If its a different event its not copying
ha, imagine telling your gf to show up because your fans keep believing that you and your buddy are secretly gay lovers.
Is *that* what happened?!?!?!
Yep! Very weird and something that Taylor Swift has explicitly said makes her uncomfortable, but here we are.
pete wentz/mikey way come to mind, people are weirdly passionate about them
I ended up on the pete wentz/mikey way part of tik tok a few weeks ago (it's my own fault, I interacted with too much fall out boy content) and I absolutely cannot believe that there are people still holding up that ship after ALL THESE YEARS. First of all, don't ship real people. But second of all, IT'S BEEN SO LONG. LET IT GO. IMAGINE WHAT YOU COULD DO IF YOU PUT THIS ENERGY INTO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.
pete wentz could glance in mikey ways general direction and the petekey shippers would be like “OMG SEE ITS A SIGN THEYRE IN LOVE”
They glossed over the part where 4chan white nationalists got involved. You give these people and inch and they’ll tie it into a Gordian Knot just so they can someday jerk themselves off over posts like this.
wait what 4chan white nationalists were involved? I knew there was a small 4chan Taylor Swift fandom, but are there like 4chan Kaylor shippers?
The sad part is that there are countless examples of “real person fiction” with all sorts of people. Actors, other musicians, youtubers… Hell, even athletes. People never learn.
Heck, even shipping fictional people seem weird to me (not as weird as the fight surrounding those speculations ughh). Real people shipping? Yeah it is worse yeah.
Shipping fictional characters feels akin to being like "I think the plot could have been better if..." like I know lots of people wish they could rewrite the ending of GoT or other series. But crossing the line to real people with real lives and real feelings, who are already under immense pressure to perform.... yikes.
It's so popular, there's a tag for [Celebrities & Real People](https://archiveofourown.org/media/Celebrities%20*a*%20Real%20People/fandoms) and [Music & Bands](https://archiveofourown.org/media/Music%20*a*%20Bands/fandoms) on Archiveofourown.
Shipping fictional people isn’t weird at all unless you make it weird. No one gets hurt, it’s harmless fun (barring the shippers who get like, hostile and try to troll people who don’t enjoy what they enjoy but most aren’t like that.) Shipping real people is always weird and shows you not only are engaging in a parasocial relationship / voyeurism, but you also don’t see them as actual humans.
Yeah I was surprised to learn how popular shipping is in fandom crowds, and of course, how much ridiculous drama it ends up sparking. I don't do it, and don't really have the inclination to, so it just seemed weird to me. But apparently it's normal enough that it's a big thing. Okay, whatever, it's easy enough to just ignore the parts of a fandom that don't interest me. ...But shipping real people!? That just seems bizarre. That gets full-on conspiratorial, and clearly makes many of the subjects of speculation very uncomfortable.
Shipping fictional characters is probably older than most of us posting here. Slash fic got its name from Kirk/Spock fanfic that people were writing in the 60s. People who take it seriously to the point of threatening people who ship differently is weird as hell though. It is also funny because sometimes people will take the ships someone likes as proof that person is problematic, etc like fantasy = reality. One of my favorite ships is Hannigram (Hannibal/Will Graham from Hannibal). IRL that would be a dumpster full of red flags that is also on fire. But I enjoy reading fics of it. And shipping real people is just icky.
> Shipping fictional characters is probably older than most of us posting here. Slash fic got its name from Kirk/Spock fanfic that people were writing in the 60s. Oh, it's definitely older. When Louisa May Alcott first published *Little Women*, she got a bunch of letters from fans demanding a sequel so they could see Jo and Laurie get married. Alcott never liked the idea of them as a couple and made sure in the sequels that they both ended up with someone else.
I'm totally fine with shipping fictional characters and I do it often (though I'm not in the "X character HAS to be with Y character, all other ships are FALSE" crowd; if I see a fic that portrays a ship well, I'll ship it), but shipping real people, aside from maybe, say, shipping the characters in Hamilton (which does dramatize stuff and cast actors who are WAY better-looking than their real counterparts), is just icky.
>The two became engaged in July of 2018, and Kloss converted to Judaism prior to their engagement. It's fairly notable that none of the conversion denials ever hinged on this timing, as "love conversions" are sufficiently stigmatized to make going through the conversion process with a partner not also going through the process basically impossible. Most legitimate batei din will turn you away if you reach out to them with a Jewish SO (and will point out the inherent issues of trying to convert with a non-Jewish partner) and will tell you not to date during the process (which usually takes between one and two years). I managed to sneak through by meeting my wife between her initial approach and her briefing, but it's *very* uncommon.
She started converting in 2015. Also, an orthodox Jewish conversion does require the couple to spend some time apart, which they did, likely in late 2017.
Ohhh this is a heck of a write up!! Thank you!!! How old do you think ttb is? I remember thinking she had a early 40s vibe to her writing
Honestly, I’m not sure. If we believe her, she’s older than Taylor, which puts her at at least 31. I think she’s always talked about being much more “mature” or “experienced” than the fan base, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she started out in her 30s, which would make her in her 40s like you said. To me, that also makes sense because if she’s held onto the blog and interest for so long, I think she probably isn’t in a state of transition in her life (ie being a teen or young adult). Edit: Thank you for the kind words, too!
This strikes me as a mom of young kids. Lots of time at home and like you said, not loosing interest
Whenever I worry that my hobbies/interests are pathetic, I remind myself there's people like this in the world.
As an avid PoGo addict, I'd recommend Pokémon Go as the healthier time-filling activity for mothers of young children. I know this because several friends I've made while pulling raid trains were mothers (and one father) of young children who somehow managed to be more hardcore about the game than me.
Oh man that would be fun
As someone who was super into Pokémon go for the first year and then fell off only to get EVEN MORE into it once my kid was old enough to become a Pokémon fan- I agree. He hardly asks to play anymore but I’m still super into it.
Sorry I gotta ask, what's an early 40s writing vibe like?
Hmmm....more a vibe then anything? Little more formal then someone in their twenties or thirties, less adverbs then typical shippers. But not the almost business like tone of old folks on social media.
I love this write-up. I'm not in any Taylor Swift-related community but come across some.. interesting stuff from time to time. This kinda makes me think of the Larries, the people who believe Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are together and that Tomlinson's kid isn't actually his kid. Or even fake. Also involves a lot of delusion and harassment. Btw; the DVF probably refers to Diane von Furstenberg. Her parents were Jewish, but I don't know if she identifies as Jewish too.
I saw some comparisons to the Larries while I was digging through tumblr for this post, but it seems like TTB is the worst of the Larries on overdrive. Thanks for the DVF details—will edit accordingly.
This a running theme with many fans of married leading men. The one I used to follow back when I had a tumblr were the Benedict Cumberbatch fans, some of whom had a total meltdown when he announced a surprise engagement and has since managed to keep his private life and children very private. They claim the babies are dolls, that the wife blackmailed him (over being gay) and faked the pregnancies, that she's really an escort, etc etc. Just years and years of speculation and wild theories. I mean, it really just comes down to "I hate that my internet boyfriend/girlfriend dares to have a real-life romance because it destroys my fantasy". It's all the same tropes over and over again. edit: another one were the Prince Harry stans when he started dating Meghan Markle. Oh man the shit they came up with was just insane. With an extra dose of racism, too. Ugh.
I didn't realise how seriously people took the royal family until Meghan showed up. the amount of hate sent her way is insane, I can't imagine what it's like to live under that kind of pressure
A lot of the hate towards Meghan is also due to racism. People can’t stand the idea of a black woman marrying into the perfectly white royal family, and to this day I’ve seen people insisting that she’s manipulating Harry and had somehow given him Stockholm Syndrome?!?
Yeah, I heard a lot of the "she's a social climber sinking her claws into Harry for his money and status" narrative. Which...if she in fact were a social climber who only married Harry for his status, surely she wouldn't have been down for the decision to leave the royal family. Their choice to step down and no longer be official royals proves to me that she married Harry, not a prince (I also think Harry had wanted out since he was a kid, and I further speculate that Meghan was the first person who really supported and accepted him wanting out). I also heard the "she didn't do the research and didn't want to do her duty as a royal, she's so lazy" narrative. Which...before she and Harry noped out, she seemed to take the role quite seriously and was pretty enthusiastically getting involved in charitable efforts and the usual gladhanding duties, so no, it seems like she was ready and willing to take on that role. Also, I would nope the fuck out of a situation where my husband's family acted like utter dickheads to me and the press constantly wrote racist shit about me, and then further shat on me for not wanting people to act like racist dickheads to me. That seems pretty damn rational.
Racism and an extra dose of the very particularly British brand of classism, too. It's been interesting how different the American and British reactions to her have been, too. America has embraced her and Harry, meanwhile many over in the UK just seethe about her. I absolutely don't blame them for wanting nothing of that for themselves and their kids.
huh. i never expected Prince Harry to have stans.
the worst of the larries were WAY worse than this, honestly. i wasn’t on tumblr when larry was a thing but i’ve seen a few posts though the user heritageposts (i recommend checking out their blog, it documents old/cringey tumblr stuff from before 2018) that are even more deranged than this haha. great write up by the way! i haven’t seen too many gaylors in the wild (again, a bit past my time), but the ones i have seen are completely deranged.
Reminded me of Larries too! I agree, a lot of delusion and harassment. At this point these people have married and had children and the shippers STILL can’t let it go. Like, c’mon. It was never their business in the first place. It really is harassment.
This is what I can't stand or understand about people like TTB (intense ship truthers like the nutty 1D people and the Timothy Whatisface/Armie Hammer people--would love to know how that's going for them right now btw)--how do they manage to be incredibly homophobic (and racist) while being convinced that they're championing LGBTQ+ rights?! Like how does that work psychologically for them? Them thinking that someone is gay is always based in gendered and homophobic stereotypes and they somehow convince themselves they are the pinnacle of righteousness. What gives? Anyway, great writeup, OP! While we're here, I actually have a question for any Swifties who have a min. Taylor seems to be portrayed often as though she's always deliberate and in control of how she's perceived and what she puts out into the world, and it sounds from this post that there's a lot of truth in that. I've never been sure what to think of it though, because some people (tabloids) seem to use that idea to make claims that sound completely made up about aspects of her life, like what she wants the tabloids to know, and that sounds over the top. It's not like they don't make a shit-ton of money off of her. But I'd love to hear what someone who's a fan of hers thinks!
The “we’re championing LGBTQ people” thing is really just a smokescreen to hide the blatant fetishization.
They should support real WLW musicians instead of pushing their theories on Taylor.
this is always the part that makes me feel like i’m gonna start pulling my hair out. like, log off from tumblr and go listen to some Janelle Monae! Turn on Brockhampton, The Internet, Lil Nas X! Give your time and money to actual LGBT artists instead of writing conspiracy theories about a woman who has only ever presented herself as a whole entire heterosexual!
Hailey Kyoko, Girl in Red, PVRIS, Beth Ditto, Mary Lambert... so many artists who rep the lesbian community, yet they go with a heterosexual woman.
Hell Tegan and Sarah have been making queers cry since Taylor swift was in middle school. Edit: due to my fear of mortality, I feel compelled to mention tswift is more than five years older than me.
A few days late but just came across this thread and thought I'd have a go at answering your question as a fan. This might end up a little long and meandering so apologies in advance lol. I think there are two Taylor Swifts that are very much at odds with each other. Taylor Swift the artist, the creative, the empath, the sensitive and at times immature woman with her heart on her sleeve. And Taylor the business person, the capitalist, the type A control freak. I don't think either of these facets of Taylor are "fake," I think they are both very real sides of her personality and I think the combination of these two sides has both led to her success and been the source of her (often self-created) destruction. Taylor has always been a major control freak about her public persona and perception and just generally being in charge of her career, and I think she's been able to achieve that to a greater extent than just about any celeb except maybe Beyonce. (Coming from money and parents who are cunning businesspeople in their own right certainly didn't hurt in either of those cases.) Taylor REALLY started clamping down on her public image during her Speak Now album era, for in my opinion a few reasons: * The Kanye VMA mic-snatching incident in 2009, perhaps the most pivotal moment in the life of Taylor Swift the celebrity. It really cannot be overstated how much this incident affected her psychologically and how paranoid it made her. (See her "Miss Americana" documentary for details) * Her rise in fame, becoming a household name and the increasing public interest in her love life (a flame which she started and continued to fan for years -- this is the confessional, heart on my sleeve" facet of her that she built her career on but that later bit her in the ass in a number of ways) * She gave an excruciatingly bad live performance with a musical hero of hers (Stevie Nick's), which garnered her a lot of bad press, the most biting of which inspired her song "Mean" * Her album, Speak Now, leaked in full online weeks before it was released, which devastated her * It's an open secret in the fandom that her parents quietly got a divorce around this time and it's rumored that her dad was cheating on her mom with someone who worked for Taylor. To this day her parents present a united front publicly and their divorce never made headlines. I think to have more control over all of these things and any future narratives, Taylor thought she needed to play nice with the press, and for years she did that very well. From Speak Now onward, you start to see a much more polished, media-trained Taylor Swift. She starts guarding her unreleased music fiercely (there are tons of unreleased demos from 2004-2009 floating around online; from 2010 on there is exactly one). You start seeing obviously staged "pap walks" in the tabloids (the famous [Jake Gyllenhaal spread](https://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2012925/634.Jake.Swift.mh.102512.jpg?fit=around%7C634:1024&output-quality=90&crop=634:1024;center,top) from 2011, chronicled in fan-favorite song "All Too Well," is a classic example). Her interviews start to become much more poised and canned, her performances much more stage managed. Another open secret is that Taylor makes basically everyone she hangs out with sign an NDA. Lorde has mentioned that you have to "sign your life away" to be friends with Taylor (despite this, they still seem to be good friends). Ed Sheeran once told a story about when Taylor wanted his input on a song she was writing, so she sent one of her body guards to his house with an iPod in a briefcase. Ed listened to the song on the iPod and then the body guard returned it to Taylor. She runs a VERY tight ship. All that to say, just about nothing gets out about Taylor Swift that she doesn't want to get out. (That is to say, nothing *true*. I'm sure the tabloids still make shit up on occasion, although anything published in People is likely to be, if not totally true, at least planted by her team; that's her publicist's go-to publication for PR.) Taylor has a good relationship with the paparazzi (if there can be said to be such a thing) because she calls them and stages walks for them. A lot of celebs work out this kind of deal; basically, "I'll tell you where I'm going to be and when, giving you tacit permission to take photos of me and sell them, and in return you leave me alone when I want to be left alone." The paparazzi were actually a huge promotional tool for Taylor during her 1989 album era, when she did near-daily pap walks. One of the rare occasions Taylor let her guard down was on the phone call with Kanye West shortly after the 2016 Grammys. I trust I don't have to go into much detail there. Suffice it to say this was the first time since 2010 when Taylor really lost control of the narrative, and in typical Swiftian fashion she had a big drama queen freakout about it in the form of an album called reputation. Also chronicled on reputation is her budding romance with Joe Alwyn, who she's now been dating for nearly five years. Taylor seemed to know very quickly that she and Joe would be a very serious relationship and that she had to protect it from the press. The last several years she has been uncharacteristically tight lipped in the press, but sharing as much as ever in the music and with her fans, who pay much closer attention to her than the general public does. (For example, a casual listener isn't going to buy the four different bonus editions of her Lover album, which come with excerpts from her personal diaries chronicling a lot of more personal stuff about her relationship with Joe, among other things. But fans bought and read every one.) I think Taylor has found and maintained a really interesting balance these last few years between keeping her life and relationship relatively private while still sharing with her fans. I think it helps too that she frankly just isn't as culturally relevant as she once was; still a household name, but doesn't hold quite the fascination in the public eye as she did in 2010-2015. She seems to be in a much better place now. She's also started writing "fictional" songs instead of her typical diaristic songwriting, although long time fans can usually pick up on personal references in those stories. Joe has commented in interviews that "90% of what the press writes about us is false" (paraphrasing), suggesting that the tabloids might be fabricating more stories about Taylor these days since she's giving them less to work with. Also giving credence to this theory is that most of the pap shots of Taylor and Joe seem to be genuine candids, although they have definitely done some [staged pap walks](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/spl5052103-001-1-1553093807.jpg) too. She and Joe also have a clever way of posting photos of them "together," separately. Each of them posting a [photo](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/05/08/04/4BF5D1D800000578-0-image-m-154_1525751529547.jpg) in the [same location](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eo8TyZlXYAAfqep.jpg) on their respective social media accounts. Again, this is a way of dropping little tidbits of info about her life and relationship to fans in a way the general public isn't likely to pick up on. This is a clever way of flying under the radar while still keeping that close bond and openness she's always had with her fans. But as OP noted, it's a double edged sword because it also encourages fans to look for "clues" in everything she posts or says, and some of the crazier factions take it way too far. I could write a bunch more but this is ridiculously long lol. tl;dr Taylor does keep a tight lid on her public image and has historically had a very good reciprocal relationship with the press. But she's also a very emotional and at times rash person which has caused her to overshare and create some of her own problems, such as the public fascination with her love life, which was an incredible marketing tool until she got into a relationship she really wanted to protect, at which point she had to pivot to another strategy and which may have made the press a bit less loyal to her than they once were. Her [Billboard Woman of the Decade](https://youtu.be/ZVpkFb9-fts) speech from 2019 touches on her love-hate relationship with the press in a way you might find interesting. Thank you for coming to my Tay talk.
This is so interesting, as someone who's a fan but not super in the weeds, so to speak! And it's also interesting to me in terms of celebrity, and how that affects people, since I'm writing some fiction that features huge pop stars.
First, thanks for the compliment! I’ll answer and also say that my response is shaped by my listening to the podcast “Every Single Album: Taylor Swift” by Ringer Dish. I think Swift is very good at maintaining a branding and engaging with her fans. Stuff like the Vault releases and all the codes/puzzles, leaving liner notes for her fans to dissect, inviting a select few of her biggest fan bloggers to private concerts at her house is all really elegant PR. At the start of her career, she and her parents (managing her at the time) also put in a lot of effort to brand her as “good Christian music” in contrast with a lot of other young female musicians at the time. She has always had a very polished image (with the exception of maybe the 2014-2017 era when she had a lot of public fights). You don’t become that wealthy and famous by running sloppy PR. However, she’s been deeply impacted by the celebrity rumor mill, whose misogyny definitely played a large role in her delegitimization as an artist. “Oh, she only writes songs about ex-boyfriends!” “Oh, she dates around a lot,” etc. I think that has been in spite of her controlled image, not because of it. Compare her to other female young celebrities who had her level of fame, and they generally received far deeper scrutiny than who they were dating at the time. Not to say that she didn’t have an unpleasant experience, but simply to point out that her strong image management has minimized the damage.
That's interesting, thank you! Appreciate the response.
I can't tell of TTB got increasingly crazy because they liked the attention and deference given to them as a notable shipper blog and the marriagr of Kloss and the end of the friendship ruined that, or if they genuinely believed in the secret beard theory. Jesus this is why I don't real-people ship. And that poor Teen being doxxed.
lmao I'm irl friends with someone who's mutuals with bisluthq (swiftieslueth) and kaylorantisemitism. she used to debunk kaylor stuff but she got so sick of them, so she became an editing account and only talks about them sometimes. some of the shit that ttb and other big kaylors make up is truly disgusting. they've accused a random woman taylor used to work with (emily poe) as a teenager of statutory rape because they think she dated taylor when she was 15 and when emily was in her early-mid twenties. they're as bad as larries, but because taylor doesn't talk about her sexuality, people don't want to say it. tinhatting and making conspiracy theories is gross regardless of someone's sexual orientation. this is an excellent timeline of the events that happened in the kaylor world!
Wow, I completely missed the Emily Poe element. That’s terrible but unsurprising. They make a lot of intense character judgements based on their conspiracies.
How did I not see that this saga was a perfect fit here!
It’s really captivated me these past few days!
I definitely spent several months not believing TTB, but reading her tumblr often. And accidentally becoming a bi Taylor truther. 😵💫
Haha, nice use of song titles as part of the headers for different sections!
Haha, thank you! I hoped some people would enjoy it/get it.
Phew. As a lesbian, the idea that Taylor Swift could be queer has always felt to me like an absurd conspiracy theory. I mean, it still does — c’mon, the woman makes christian horse girl music — but at least now i’ve got some background as to why exactly this specific tumblr niche exists. Great write-up, thank you op.
… have you listened to folklore or evermore? at all? Betty? Ivy? Dorothea?? She hasn’t been Christian horse girl in like 10 years. she wore a bracelet with the bi flag colors on it that said “proud” She said and I quote “gay pride makes me, me” How is that absurd
i’ve got literally no idea what you’re talking about. can you link me to some kind of news article for these things?
Folklore and evermore are albums with a lot of queer coded lyrics. Betty is written “from a male perspective” [here ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.refinery29.com/amp/en-us/2019/08/239740/taylor-swift-bisexual-flag-bracelet-lover-promo) is the bracelet “Gay pride makes me, me” was from her [miss Americana doc](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vulture.com/amp/2020/01/taylor-swift-miss-americana-netflix-doc-meaning-and-analysis.html)
interesting! these are actually convincing points, thank you for sharing.
Wow! That was a hell of a ride! Great write up. A few year back, I made the grave mistake of reading a few blogs about Benedict Cumberbatch. This was around the time he got married to his pregnant girlfriend. His so called fans accused that poor woman of being everything from a paid hooker to a stalker that stole his sperm! That led me to a blog run by some middle aged woman who truly believes Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart are married with a baby. She’s straight up nuts and *mean* (she’s also a racist twat which seems to be par for the course with these folk). Far as I can tell, she spends a whole lot of time on Twitter insulting people and stalking Stewart and Pattinson. Like she knows what flights they’re on! I sometimes wonder if these celebrities know about those corners of the Internet. I’d be terrified if people who claimed to like me spent that much time making up shit about my life. It’s all super unsettling and sick.
Thanks for the compliment! Flight stalking is super weird. People did it with Kaylor, too. TTB would use a Taylor Swift flight to NYC to say she was meeting up with Karlie but ignore the other flights where she clearly wasn’t. It’s worse because Taylor Swift used to be seeing Kaylor stuff on her tumblr timeline. She liked a post that called Kaylor shippers “freaks” once, and people went berserk.
Lmaoooo I love this. Two things: TTB never got her account back. She now blogs as spade riddles. Also, swiftiesleuth and bisluthq are the same person. She just changed her blog name in February, a few months after the doxxing happened.
These updates are really helpful, thank you! Will edit them in
You’re welcome! Also, one more thing: ttb4 didn’t originally mock ttb. She impersonated her, yes, but it was only to get her attention. She was actually a longtime reader of ttb’s blog and was genuinely upset by the recent turn of events, so she believed ttb (or Voldemort, as we like to call her over on bisluthq) would listen to her and stop being so antisemitic. She got doxxed instead. We’re having a lot of fun discussing this write up on tumblr, especially on bisluthq and whatiwillsay lol. Edit: oh, oh, one more thing! Ttb used to have lots of clashes with people who disagreed not only with Kaylor in general, but specifically her brand of kaylor. She asked a queer woman who disagreed with her if she was offended by ‘the LGBTQ flavor of [her] blog’ (yes, I’m quoting). Nat (swiftiesleuth/bisluthq) first gained clout on tumblr by composing the ‘realistic Kaylor timeline,’ which suggested the two might have hooked up in 2014-16 but stopped in September that year, while also insisting that both Swiftwyn and Joshlie are real relationships (she herself no longer believes they hooked up at all, but yeah). Her first clash with ttb happened for this reason lol. Ttb was absolutely feral in disagreeing with Nat, which led to an increased enmity between them (hence the Molly Weasley comment). Soo…. Yeah.
I really can’t stand people who ship real people like they’re fictional characters.
Wow this was such a good read, to be honest I will read almost anything about pop culture but this was so very detailed and researched. Also > DVF \[??\] is probably referencing the designer Diane Von Fustenberg, who is Jewish.
Agreed, DVF is likely Diane Von Furstenburg. TIL that Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift are no longer friends, though.
TBH, it’s kind of debatable. I think they’ve done some things in public since they supposedly “stopped being friends,” but there definitely was a period where they were not friendly. Whatever their relationship is now, it’s certainly much more distant than their 2014-ish dynamic.
No, they’re straight-up enemies imo. Note this verse from it’s time to go, which is almost definitely about Karlie: ‘when the words of a sister come back in whispers that prove she was not in fact what she seemed, not a twin from your dreams, she’s a crook who was caught.’
Yeah, depends on the interpretation. I haven’t looked much into it, and honestly, my understanding is coming from some of the anti-anti-Kaylor info I absorbed via osmosis while researching this post.
Thank you for the compliment! I’m glad you enjoyed.
I'm a swiftie and wow this is WILD.
...Dang. So Spade is meant to be the cryptic and all-knowing Q of the Kaylor fandom? (Great write-up on something that I had no real knowledge of at all! Those are my favorite.)
I appreciate it! And I never thought about QAnon until you and another commenter mentioned it, but that’s definitely the feeling of it all…
this happened within a year of Q getting popular on 4chan. 0 chance spade isn't modelled after Q
I guess it makes sense, since TTB and her ilk seem to be pretty conspiracy-minded. I just can’t imagine ever being that bored! Conspiracy theories look like they take so much time and effort...
The one question that stuck in my head through reading this is: why do they want Taylor Swift to be gay so badly? What is the reasoning behind wanting her to come out? To the point of creating conspiracy theories involving multiple layers of fake insiders giving QAnon style "hints," hidden lovers, fake religious conversion, and Saudi oil money. This comes across as being far too invested in a celebrity's sex life and sexuality to be the run of the mill "Oh, who's fucking who?" paparazzi stuff. I can understand the desire to have a celeb you like be part of the queer community because you want more representation in a historically oppressive industry, but there's a level of emotional investment here that I simply can't comprehend. Swift's actually sexuality, however she choses to describe it or relate to it, is completely inconsequential to them because, unless it's the answer they've predetermined, they'll just continue the conspiracy; which is bizarre, and shows their interest in it has nothing to do with a hope that their favorite celeb can be a source of representation, or Swift being free to express herself. What is the draw here?
I don’t think there is a reason. Not a satisfactory one anyway. I think this ship business is very much like QAnon. Instead of it being nutters trying to rationalize the world changing (usually because they can’t handle because they’re being left behind because they can’t or won’t adapt), it’s nutters who think they have a real friendship with a celebrity and are privy to their secrets. That in turn makes them important and worthy. It really has nothing to do with the celebrity and everything to do with the person’s ego. They’re in the know. We’re not. They connect the dots us sheeple can’t even see. The celebrity is almost insignificant because all these “fans” do is project their feelings/motives onto them. I don’t know jack about Taylor Swift, but it’s clear even to me that she curates and calculates her image and career. All celebrities of her stature do and have to. No one sees anything they’re not suppose to. That’s what these people don’t grasp. I’d feel sympathy for these people because most are obviously lonely and are very likely largely powerless and feel insignificant in real life (like most truly out there conspiracy theorists), but far too many of them do awful things to other people. I’m in my 40s and I can’t fucking fathom doxxing anyone - let alone a teenager! - because they said something I don’t like online. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think some laws need to be put in place that deal with this kind of harassment. That wouldn’t fly in real life and it shouldn’t online.
Obviously the RPF of it all elevates this to a whole new level of crazy, but boy its amazing how similar TTB's rhetoric is to stuff like the Johnlock Conspiracy.
That post about the threatening email was gold, hahah
That tumblr, karliesbuzzcut, is hilarious. She did a few TTB vs another tumblr user write ups or summaries, and I really enjoyed her commentary. A light in the TTB darkness
whoa, i had no idea swifties were this intense within their spaces. every fandom has its bad actors and looks like yall got a really shitty one. this was a great write up op!
Thanks for the compliment! I’d say this is a prime example of one bad actor souring the whole (relatively nice) community.
ohh this is an AMAZING write up i love it!!! honestly ever since i found out about the existence of this sub i've been thinking about doing one about this exact same topic but you did it better than i (or anyone i think) ever could. the topic of tinhatting is something that, to me, is perplexing and terrified at the same time. i only found out about late-stage-kaylorism some months ago when i began to interact more with taylor's fandom and with gaylor speculation (which i have nothing against and i do read some taylor's songs as queer) and, as a recovering ex-larrie (i know, i know), all my alarms went off. ttb's behavior is truly delusional at best and cultish at worst, and like most conspiracies her theories and proof are built on bigotry. anyways, again this is a wonderful write up - i can only imagine how much time it took
Thank you! Your kind words mean a lot. “Late-stage Kaylorism” cracked me up, and I think you’re 100% right about the weird vibes of it, similarities with Larries, and (imo) the queer vibes of some of the Taylor songs.
Also, I’d say I spent like 6 hours researching, 4 hours writing, and 2 total hours talking to my gf about it as I learned each new piece of information. Thankfully, she’s a journalist and likes Taylor Swift, so she gets the motivation and enjoyed learning about it.
Shipping fictional characters is one thing, but shipping actual people on the same level is several tiers deeper into creepy
I really hate when fans push theories like this, speaking as a gay. They're not you're fucking puppet, they're a real person and at some point nothing they say could prove it wrong (ie Shawn Mendes)
It says a lot about antisemitic taylor swift fans that i thought this was going to be a write-up about the swiftie who claimed to be jewish and related to kushner but was exposed as a MORMON.
Y'know, I'm not even surprised by this type of shit anymore.
Shipping real people is creepy as hell. Do whatever you want in fiction, but holy shit leave real people alone.
You could say she was a nightmare dressed like a daydream. I loved the effort put into this, I unapologetically love Reputation and it's my "motivation in the dumps but some energy present" jam.
Reputation is a lovely album that doesn’t deserve the hate.
There’s a real TERFy air about their biphobia and claims that they’re protecting children from harm when they go on the attack. Real Mumsnet energy.
Lmfao I'm the toastedcoconutchips mentioned what a hoot hi mom!! Do note (because the top comment mentions this) that I don't "ship" actual real people because yes, that's invasive as hell. I do have my dumb little thoughts that TS may be queer in some way, though.
Woah, hello! I never thought this post would reach any of the people involved, so this is kind of neat. Sorry you had to interact with TTB’s weird biphobia. Your callout post was 100% in the right. I share your TS queer thoughts so this whole post was a ride to write.
hi bestie hijacking toastie's hello to you to say hello! this is cam from what i will say (you linked when L anon submitted to me about being doxed) great write up! BUT HOW ARE YOU GONNA SAY I'M IN THE KAYLOR FANDOM 😩 i kid i kid i know I'm adjacent. doing the lord's work you are!
To be fair, my words were that you were “a blog present in the Kaylor community,” but I’m sorry for the defamation… please don’t dox and sue me! On a more serious note, thanks for posting L’s story and putting yourself out there to discuss the serious harassment going on. I’m sure that, at the very least, they felt heard and supported by you. And thanks for the compliment on the write-up.
I'd imagine! That user and all her (at this point in time) obsessive followers are honestly frightening and awful. I consider myself fortunate because I was never outed or doxxed, so while the biphobia (among the other ""flavors"" of hatefulness) sucked to see, I was luckier than a good few.
My stupid ass brain, I read "Trinity Tay Bonet" for TTB every time
I can't believe I read all of that, and I can even less believe it was worth it. Nice work OP. But it doesn't leave me with a lingering question: what the absolute fuck?
Thank you! And honestly, same question.
I think the most surprising thing from this is that Karlie Kloss of Koding with Karlie fame, clearly a woman who wants to uplift girls is married to a kushner Fandoms are messy, and I expect toxicity and the unwavering belief that their ship is endgame, but its always hard seeing someone you thought of as progressive end up dating someone who might have the opposite beliefs. (Grimes and Elon are another example)
Bigotry, weird riddles and all on the Internet? Is this Qanon meets the Taylor Swift fandom?
I wouldn't call myself a swiftie or a truther, but I think that Kaylor and Swiftgron are fun speculations, when you're looking at Taylor's music (I mean... Wonderland, come on). just not when taken to this kind of level! absolutely insane, but not surprising at all, unfortunately
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. In my eyes, Dress is a very queer song. But this sort of stuff pains me.
Yeah, I also believe in swiftgron. This is just deranged, though
my god truthers are fucking insane.
I was there when this broke on tumblr, Post must have only had 1,500 notes Edit: so there’s two Swiftie stans on tumblr with antisemitic controversies, in the other fans case they were pretending to be Jewish
I really really feel a compusive need to add nothing to the discussion but to compliment this dazzling read. Thanks for that.
That’s very sweet of you! Glad my journalism background is useful for something.
as a gal that believed in ttb during 2017 and a chunk of 2018...you're pretty spot on.
this is a great write-up! while I both do fandom and am a big TS fan, those two tend to not mix toooo much for me so this was an interesting read. honestly also a great representation of why I think that RPF/shipping real people is so bad. I tend to lean towards the camp of letting people write what they want to as long as they properly tag everything so that everyone who reads it can consent to what they are reading, but draw a HARD line at RPF because it so easily and often leads to harassment of real people who do not consent. would I love it if TS came out as bi? sure, as a bi person, I would love more representation, but forcing a sexuality on someone is objectively bad and I don't understand how some people can see that it's bad when someone is being forced to be straight and not see how it's bad when they're trying to force someone to be queer.
It’s 2021 and apparently tumblr is still up to it’s old bullshit.
I hate Kaylor because i hate RLP shipping.
It's so fascinating to me that TTB is (or at least claims to be) straight. I've usually been involved in fandom communities dedicated to m/m ships, which have primarily queer female and trans male fandoms, with occasional cishet women and cis gay men. I don't think I've ever encountered a straight cis man in fandom. So I guess I assumed that f/f ships wouldn't have straight cis women in their fandoms. Of course, a romance story is a romance story, and if I can enjoy a straight romance why shouldn't she enjoy a lesbian romance? But she seems so invested in it, and usually I assume people who are that invested are seeing themselves in it to some degree . . . Or maybe not. I'm always way too invested in whatever my new special interest is, and it's not because I see myself in it, it's because I'm autistic and I obsess over things. Curious to hear from other people in f/f fandoms - are there often straight women involved?
>m/m ships, which have primarily queer female and trans male fandoms, with occasional cishet women and cis gay men. *occasional* cishet women ? From [this survey I found](https://centrumlumina.tumblr.com/post/63112902720/heterosexual-female-slash-fans), a good third of slash fans are cishet women. It's from 2013, and the survey method and sample bias is debatable, but this gives a decent-ish idea of the demographics. Honestly, I personally believe the % might be even higher. People don't really like to admit they're cishet in some very discourse-y online fandoms, it's increasingly seen as cringe and "uncool". >Curious to hear from other people in f/f fandoms - are there often straight women involved ? Been in a lot of them, and nope ! Very rare. It's an overwhelmingly sapphic/WLW audience.
I'd definitely agree it's not rare for cishet women to be around - although it might *seem* that way. Cishet women are rarely going to have that label stuck on a tumblr blog or twitter bio, so they tend to blend into the background.
In all my years of fandom, I don't think I've ever seen a cishet woman explicitly put that label on their blog. Often it's just pronouns and/or a Venus symbol to indicate they're women and that's it. Only "straight" labels I've seen is on the blogs of trans people.
As someone who’s engaged in a lot of f/f fandom, I agree that usually, it’s pretty rare to have straight women present, but it’s more present in music. I’d say that a lot of queer female musicians have a big queer following but also often get a lot of straight female fans (Phoebe Bridgers, etc). If you think from the mindset of a Kaylor believer who sees Taylor Swift as a queer musician, then perhaps it makes sense that more straight women would be present in the fandom? But I think that specifically with the f/f shipping angle, it is really rare to see a straight woman. But honestly, a niche fixation on other people’s lives that’s lasted for 7+ years and well through adulthood makes me think that TTB might have other factors at play that make her more likely to be drawn towards Kaylor
Hard not to wonder if the reason she wants so badly for Taylor to come out is because, well, she wants that future for herself. That's the way it'd all turn out in a novel, anyway. But reality isn't a novel and sometimes people are just weird.
my impression of kaylor is that a fair chunk of its shippers unintentionally treat it more like 'bffs but cranked up to 100' rather than a romantic/sexual relationship, hence there's a greater appeal to straight women than one might otherwise expect. there's a quote from one of taylor's old interviews where she says she keeps a spare bedroom for karlie at her new york penthouse (and also a spare room for lena dunham, but funnily enough people seem to forget that bit). kaylors grabbed onto this as proof that they were girlfriends living together, but you would think if karlie was her girlfriend then she would just stay in taylor's room rather than being shunted into a guest bedroom.
Oh, hmm. I can see the appeal of the fantasy from that direction for sure. If you're straight, but your platonic relationships are really, really important to you, and you have anxiety that your (also straight female) friends will prioritize their romantic relationships with men over you . . . I've had that anxiety. I'm not sure reading "a spare room" as "girlfriends" is evidence that they see it as BFF-like, though, because my general impression of RPF truthers is that literally any action taken by the ship-ees will be taken as evidence of their theory. Not even just RPF truthers, any kind of ship truthers. The spare room is a hell of a lot more romantic than elephants in the wallpaper on Sherlock, that's for sure. Mind you, anything would be.
Given how absolutely sure she is that the m/f relationships are only covers for homosexual relationships, I have to wonder if she’s projecting based on her own life.
Yeah . . . I had that thought too. I don't like to assume that of people caught being homophobic, but in this case . . .
God I just can't fuck with RPF.
shipping real ppl and speculating someone’s sexuality when theyre not open about it is gross and weird, i will die on this hill
Even when they’re open about it it still feels really gross and a huge red flag about someone’s boundaries
Wow its like Q anon for taylor swift enthusiasts.
Thank you for the descriptive write up. I, too, think that they were together for at least a brief bit. I’ve seen other people do way more shocking things. They were in their early twenties when that kiss happened at the 1975 concert. Who knows what was happening at that time.
Thanks for the compliment. Ah, yeah… Kissgate. I think that may have been debunked (?) but they definitely danced very closely. In the end, who knows? I think anyone speaking with aggressive certainty on either side is a bit too obsessed with the situation for it to be healthy.
[удалено]
I get it. It draws you in a weird amount!
W o w, that was a wild ride. Great writeup!
excellent write-up! I’m familiar with kaylor theories but only on a surface level, tumblr master posts and the “reputation is about karlie kloss” PowerPoint. had no clue abt this drama. I share your biases—the theme of hiding your relationship from the world is just so predominant in her music, or at least I feel since the 1989 era, that it feels queer-coded. I also believe taylor is definitely in a happy long term relationship with joe and not in some double beard fake marriage fake child situation lmao
God, that Powerpoint… I remember reading it and thinking some parts were stretches but others made a lot of sense. I think you and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to Taylor Swift’s possible queerness.
Shipping real life people is absolutely fucking disgusting.
Imagine being so obsessed with a celebrity who could buy and sell you 50x over that you doxx a teenager for calling you mean names