Gaylor
I'm still a believer but I don't know why
Being a Taylor Swift Fan means a lot of things. There’s the love of her music, and with any celebrity, there is the love of their lore. Who they dated, how they grew up, where they live. All of that matters to a fan. Each fan base is unique both in perception by outsiders and what they get from their star. Taylor Swift fans, on the outside, are seen as mindless consumers who eat up the popular thing being sold to them. An ultrafamous modelesque blonde woman who makes pop country music. In some ways, she is the platonic ideal of a pop star, especially from the 2000s.
Our image of Taylor Swift as a fan is almost entirely different from how people who aren’t fans perceive her. From the inside, that image is almost obscured. Her fame and reach cannot be denied, but to true fans, she is not just a pop star. She is a mythic figure and our best friend. She toes this line with incredible finesse. When I talk about Taylor Swift with my friends, there are references and understandings that people who haven’t studied her don’t understand. To be a true fan means to forget everything you’ve ever been told about Taylor and then rebuild her again in your mind from scratch.
The most important part about being on the inside is the theories. Taylor Swift fans love their little theories. As time has gone by, her dropping “easter eggs” into her release announcements and on her Instagram has turned into her fans thinking she has written deeply coded ciphers about all aspects of her life into everything she does. The official coded messages have all the depth and complexity of a People Magazine crossword. Yet we persist. The theories have spawned a fan base of people connecting pictures on a corkboard with red string. Theories beget theories, with the most popular, heavily researched, and obsessive one being the theory that Taylor Swift is Gay, or as it has come to be known, Gaylor.
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I was first introduced to Gaylor theories through Tumblr. At the time (2015), the common belief among Gaylors was that Taylor Swift was dating her identical best friend, supermodel Karlie Kloss. They had a secret relationship and put a lot of effort into covering it up. The truth was there if you wanted to look for it, and several did. The posts titled “Gaylor Evidence Materpost” gather everything from Instagram metadata to flight logs to dinner reservations. They are long screeds that present theories as fact. Every compelling piece of evidence has a logical fallacy to go with it. The whole thing is too over the top to be believable, but there are also enough pieces of evidence that feel impossible to argue with.
They are delusional but fun. The deeper you go, the more familiar you become, and when you hear songs, you begin to immediately notice details you remember from a Tumblr post long ago. It becomes a way to interpret her lyrics and her actions. (Everything “Golden” is about Karlie, for example) It makes you a new kind of fan. Lyrics can be about boys, or they can be about a secretive lesbian romance that we’ll never know the truth about. Common metaphors become specific motifs that only true believers understand. To me, Gaylor interpretations are a parlor game with little to no basis in reality. It’s fun to twist her words to fit my beliefs. I love the Gaylor theories, but I love interpretation and analysis.
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As for the theory itself, it’s difficult to explain, even to myself, what I believe. I believe it, but I don’t. I think it’s real, but I know it’s fake. It’s not entirely unfounded. I would guess that Taylor Swift, a person who’s been trying to be famous since she was 14, and Karlie Kloss, who has been modeling since she was 14, would have trouble forming a normal friendship. I would believe that for the first time in both of their lives, they found someone who understood them and formed an intense bond that was as fragile as it was strong. I believe that they loved each other in a way they have never loved anyone before or since, whether I believe that love was romantic changes on the day. I believe there are songs about Karlie Kloss because we all know Taylor pulls from all parts of her life to write her songs.
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If I were to categorize myself, I am, first and foremost a Kaylor truther. That one is the most interesting to me because, in a way, it’s still playing out. Whatever they had, they don’t have anymore. They broke up as friends somewhat publicly and have woven a very tangled web that includes Scooter Braun, The Kushners, and a handful of other famous people forced to take sides. It has a level of glamour and palace intrigue rarely seen anymore. It’s a great story regardless of whether or not it’s true. Others are more interested in Swiftgron, a relationship between Taylor and actress Dianna Agron. Or they’re invested in Taymily, a relationship between Taylor in her early days and a Violin player who toured with her. Whatever your preferred narrative, there’s something for you.
I’ll buy into it because it’s fun to buy into it. The world is more interesting if you allow for just a touch of conspiracy and only the fun kind. When someone puts together a really convincing video or text post about the whole theory, I’m invested. When I hear Taylor Swift songs on the radio or at a bar I’m not thinking about how they are gay lovesongs written from the perspective of a closeted woman who cannot come out for the sake of her career. When I’m in the car with my friends or alone in my room, it’s fun to ponder and mull over. It does not have to be all things all the time. In the seminal words of Pete Davidson, “it’s like when you’re joking but you mean it.”
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When these were the musings of crazy people on Tumblr it was fine. It was only known to the already discredited group, teenage girls obsessed with Taylor Swift and Tumblr users. No one was listening to what they had to say anyway, so it didn’t matter that they had this crazy theory. When Tumblr lost most of its users in 2018, they went elsewhere. They grew up a little bit and the teenage girls were now 20-somethings with a little bit of cultural authority and Twitter accounts. They turned their no-character-limit Tumblr manifestos into never-ending tweet threads. People who were otherwise normal but aware of Taylor Swift came to find them.
Through Twitter, it gains a more widespread audience. Journalists and Twitter Intellectuals begin to find it. It is a weird part of girl internet that people become familiar with. People who pride themselves on knowing all the bizarre subcultures spawned from the internet document it. It’s in a category with Incels, Furries, and the Red Scare subreddit. A type of weirdo you’re likely to come across if you spend too much time on the internet. In this iteration it is still somewhat contained, all parties involved know how to engage with each other. Everyone accepts that they are some kind of internet weirdo.
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Then it goes to TikTok. TikTok is full of innocents. It has not only a younger user base but a user base full of people who have found community on the internet for the first time, regardless of their age. They are not scarred with the knowledge of Twitter, Tumblr, MySpace, Facebook, Livejournal, Reddit, or various other forums where people found a home where they were not afraid to let their freak flag fly. These people have a wide-eyed wonder and believe everything they come across. There is a childlike approach to the internet and its inhabitants despite their age. They are gullible and trusting of the wrong people while being callous and cruel to those who do not deserve it. They are young and naive and have not been hardened by the ways of the world. They do not yet have the kind of brain that can categorize and discard other internet weirdos. They are served videos by fellow Taylor Swift fans. These fellow fans are convincing and have a lot of evidence. If they have a lot of evidence, it must be true.
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When the conspiracy moves to TikTok it becomes too mainstream. Now that it’s mainstream, it’s presented as fact. A secret being actively kept from us. This is a huge mistake and it’s resulting in disaster. Now that they have this information, they don’t know how to handle it. They see it as a black-and-white issue, with the only nuance coming in to talk about the politics of coming out, rather than the politics of truth and belief. If you believe, you have to believe all the way and you have to fight with those who don’t believe. You can’t consume this content for fun, and more than anything, you have to say something.
Gaylor is a conspiracy theory. It is by definition not the easiest version of the truth. It requires going against the popular and accepted narrative. Most people when they hear the information will think that the person talking about it is crazy. When this theory was for true internet weirdos everyone understood that. Now that it’s popular, the tone has changed. People who buy into it treat it as objective truth. They demand answers from Taylor. They think Taylor is a hateful combination of stupid and evil. They get themselves worked up over clues she’s not leaving intentionally, and meltdown when she does not deliver on a plan she never agreed to. We’re mad at her because we misinterpreted the symbols and now have to choose a new date to speculate on, rather than examine our beliefs. Like a doomsday cult recalculating the date of the apocalypse.
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Some theories are meant to be read and absorbed and thought about. I hate to say it but we do actually need to read theory to understand it. We can listen to it as well, as long as the original intention is the written word. In video form, we absorb less and there’s less thought behind the words overall. Especially on TikTok. TikTok as a medium is built for off-the-cuff quick videos that have low production value. It's not about writing a script or being camera ready to present to an audience. It's about venting in your car. TikTok lets us absorb thoughts and ideas from others without really thinking about them ourselves. Both creator and viewer are the problem here. No one is thinking that deeply about what they are saying or how they are saying it. The written word allows us to choose our words carefully and select what we want to say and how we want to say it. It also weeds out people who don’t want to read.
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In the old days, Gaylors were people who were students of the theory. There was a natural gatekeeping that prevented just anyone from buying in and having their own opinions about it. Now anyone with a TikTok and a feeling can chime in about Gaylor. It's hard to watch for me personally. Seeing people I once thought were neutral to fine, or even maybe respected a little bit spout off about how Taylor Swift should behave now that they believe she’s gay is driving me crazy. I do not need to see anyone who has known about this theory for less than a year discuss it with any kind of seriousness. If you’re not having fun, you’re taking it too far.
That’s my central beef with modern Gaylor discourse. It is far too serious, on all sides. TikTok presents this idea as mainstream and popular and somewhat normal. It’s too close to Taylor herself. Those who have seen this theory from the beginning know that it is not fit for public consumption. The people on TikTok treat it with a realness and sincerity it does not deserve. They treat it with the seriousness of a crime, which even if it were true it doesn’t deserve that treatment. The Tumblr girls did as well but we could and did dismiss them. That’s not allowed anymore. Especially if you’re talking about like you’re in a discussion section at a liberal arts college. Lest you be accused of being a Hetlor. We’ve forgotten that someone can think you’re being stupid while agreeing with your overall belief.
None of what we say about Gaylor discourse matters because we’ll never know the answer. Here are our two options, realistically. Taylor Swift is straight therefore she’s never coming out OR Taylor Swift is gay and is also never coming out. Let’s say for argument’s sake that Taylor Swift is a closeted lesbian who is able to have relationships with other women that she is able to keep hidden from public eye, more or less. She kind of has a good deal going now. She has a public life and a private life and they are entirely separate. The media doesn’t have to know. The fans who would want to know, already have it figured out.
The typical coming-out narrative doesn’t make sense when everything you already do is under an insane amount of scrutiny by the press. She’s already made the decision to live her life in secret. All she’s done in her personal life so far is fight for a perfectly manicured public image that protects her privacy. Frankly, she should lie more. Those aren’t her real cats, those aren’t her real houses, that’s not even her real boyfriend. She distances the public from the private and is able to protect it better.
Taylor Swift the idea is separate from Taylor Swift the person, even more so as they both age. Yet smart people who deal with and think about the entertainment industry every day, and should know better refuse to give up the game. From the beginning Taylor Swift, the pop star has been manufactured and packaged, and sold to us. The Taylor Swift whose music you listen to, whose media you consume, whose products you buy, is not the same as the human being Taylor Swift. That entity is larger than life. It’s a business. All of it is manufactured. Sure the real person embodies the entity and she’s the creative director for it but at this point, it’s more of a separate entity. This point is almost directly stated in the Anti-Hero music video. The separation between those two entities is more than Taylor’s right to privacy. It’s Taylor’s life as a human being versus Taylor embodying the pop star she has to maintain.
That’s why Taylor Swift is interesting. It’s interesting to watch the machine work as she grows up and stops making palatable country music. The fun is in watching and consuming her content now is watching her try to navigate the world she has built for herself. We’re watching her navigate how to make and craft a persona when she no longer has her youth to trade on, and she no longer wants to make post-9/11 country music. What negotiations is she willing to make, what details is she willing to give us to show us that she’s aged? When she swears or sings about drinking or sex, what parts of her adulthood is she claiming for herself? What is she taking from the cultural lexicon to prove she is an adult and what parts are true to her being? We will never know the answer and we can choose to believe whatever we want. The real Taylor Allison Swift could be a chain-smoking alcoholic lesbian who swears like a sailor but you would never know it from her music and that’s on purpose. We’ll never know because It doesn't serve us to know.
That’s really the central thesis of any Gaylor theory, that she’s hiding something from us which of course she is. She’s hiding everything from us! She gave us everything throughout her childhood and young adulthood and at some point, we turned on her. Just like Britney. Just like every other woman in culture who we ever claimed to love. I don’t know what has protected Taylor for so long. I don’t know why she has avoided total annihilation but the trade-off for her that lets her keep going is that she now has to be intensely private. She’s smart enough to know that we want to know more so everything about her life is divided into three categories. There are the things she produces to be known, the things she hints at in her music, and the things we will never be allowed to know. Whatever the truth is, she writes the fantasy well which is her selling point. We say we want her reality but what we really want is for her to give us the fantasy. She knows the difference. The public does not.
The reason we’ll never be allowed to know if Taylor Swift is gay is not that she has a right to privacy, or that people should be allowed to come out at their own pace, it’s because Taylor Swift ™ is not gay and that’s the only one we’re allowed to know, and that’s the way it should be. If anything, celebrities should be more manufactured. We should never have access to the personal details of these people because we’ve proven over and over again that we cannot handle it.
All in all, I think information should not be dispersed through video, the moving image was a mistake, and cameras are a tool of the devil. TikTok is the symptom, not the disease. Writing whatever crazy shit you want is the preferred method of circulating disinformation, as we have been doing it for centuries. Taylor Swift ™ is not Taylor Swift, and it’s fine to think one of them is gay as long you don’t exhaust yourself because of stuff you made up. Also, none of this is real and there’s no such thing as truth.
Such a good explanation for those of us who aren't Taylor fans. Very thoughtful points about the consequences of leaving Tumblr/going to TikTok. Very weird to suddenly be around a bunch of internet users who don't automatically think something is a joke/fake and go along with it for fun.
My favorite celebrity conspiracy is Max Landis' Carly Rae Jepsen one. He publicized it pretty heavily, but just the length of his essay alone makes it very exciting: https://youtu.be/jCFh0lJ-WAg
Sadly the website is down, but there are still user uploaded versions archived:
https://www.scribd.com/document/361084161/A-Scar-No-One-Else-Can-See-pdf
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