If You Spread Those Taylor Swift Conspiracy Theories Online You're Complicit and Part of the Problem

Did you TRULY believe that the most famous pop star on the planet was putting Nazi dog whistles on her album?

I’m not a Swiftie. If anything I could be considered quite the opposite.

I mean I literally have two of her *alleged* exes, Matty Healy from the 1975 and Harry Styles, tattooed on me.

Me not being a Swiftie though doesn’t or shouldn’t mean that when misinformation about her or her music comes up that I can’t pushback on this incredibly dangerous narrative that arose upon the release of her latest album The Life of a Showgirl.

Miles Klee’s latest article with Rolling Stone “Taylor Swift’s Last Album Sparked Bizarre Accusations of Nazism. It Was a Coordinated Attack” spoke to me immensely.

Looking at a new research report from GUDEA, a new startup that looks at how reputation damaging claims go viral, the paper uncovers that upon the release of The Life of a Showgirl,

“3.77 percent of accounts drove 28 percent of the conversation around Swift and the album during that period.”

Those that were chronically online at the time remember conspiracy theories being spread that the album had Nazi dogwhistles, that she was promoting this idea of being a trad-wife, and possibly the wildest that a lightning bolt necklace was actually a reference to the SS.

Having a relatively decent following on TikTok and being active on the app for five years now I have a pretty good understanding of not only what type of video goes viral but how jumping on these “trends” can help your account grow immensely. And with how fast trends are birthed and die on the platform being the first to post about the topic or being the loudest can come with immense benefits. You get the followers, the likes, the comments. The serotonin is nuts.

Knowing that this specific conversation surrounding Swift and these “Nazi allegations” were the talk of the town and also knowing that if I posted about it (whether disparaging her or being on her side) I might get more followers I also knew the theories without even doing proper research were utter bullshit.

The looking at lyrics completely out of context and giving meaning to these random symbols felt like in elementary school when my friends and I would say that if you played “Single Ladies” backwards Beyoncé was saying “Hail Satan” or that every pop-star was part of the Illuminati.

Not to pat myself on the back but I didn’t post a single video on the topic. Having a following comes this responsibility of knowing that, though you may disagree with it, some of your followers take what you say as 100% truth. And the more influencers that post these conspiracy theories and spread them only emboldens into the viewers minds that the most famous pop star on the planet is not so secretly a Nazi.

In doing this these content creators many of whom have thousands, some millions, of followers push these narratives and theories (many of which we found out through this article started from bots) only further into the algorithm.

Keith Presley, GUDEA’s founder and CEO, spoke on this phenomenon in the article stating that,

“You’ll see the influencers jump on first, because it’s going to get them clicks.” Downstream of these well-known figures, anonymous followers will start churning out their own takes.”

My generation and millennials often joke about how boomer’s will repost the wildest conspiracy theories on their Facebook walls and will take anything they see online as Bible.

But ironically we do the same thing if not worse.

We not only repost these conspiracy theories but make content off them only further spreading them onto our followers and those that come across us on their fyp.

We saw this with Amber Heard, we saw this with Blake Lively, and now we see this with Swift. These bots are powerful sure with igniting the match but these influencers and content creators are taking that match and trying to burn the entire forest and these women’s careers down to ashes.

We as content creators, and I hate this term, influencers give these theories immense weight and in doing that damage the reputations of these women that in all three of situations were at the time or prior in incredibly public disagreements with powerful men.

And if there’s one thing we know about powerful men is they will do anything to stay in power.

Gen Z loves to call ourselves woke (or more so than boomers) and critical thinkers but what this situation has done is pretty much confirm what I’ve believed for a while now.

We’re just as easily led to believe misinformation as every other generation.

I’m not someone that likes to publicly call people out but with the Internet being forever it doesn’t take much to type a creators name into the TikTok search bar put in a few key words like “Swift” or “Allegations” and see for yourself these creators spread misinformation.

And I’m sure none if any these creators will post a retraction to their statements and even if they do it’s too little too late. You posted a batshit conspiracy theory and influenced not only your followers but those that don’t follow you but came across your video on their fyp to jump on a hate train whose tracks were built by bots and laid on this ground of misogyny.

How does that make you feel? Does that make you feel complicit in this bot/ conspiracy theory problem that has dripped into our politics for almost a decade now?

I even remember writers and creators ON HERE writing way too long think pieces about the Swift “Nazi allegations”. A platform that I thought had better critical thinkers than TikTok but I’ve realized is much of the same.

And with Substack also having a helpful search bar if you’re keen you can find and read those articles and see for yourself these writers be part of the problem.

This is all ultimately a lesson that I thought everyone knew but I guess is something that should be emphasized.

Know where you get your information and for the love of God stop posting bullshit.

Cheers,

Dev