Taylor Swift owns the internet. Not in the literal sense, of course. But she may as well. Her remit of influence extends way beyond the celeb-hungry and Instagram-obsessed. She might not break it in the same world stopping capacity as the other two points in the holy trinity of women in pop culture (we’re looking at you Beyoncé. Yes, you too Kim) but make no mistake, the internet belongs to Taylor Swift in a very different way. And it’ll do exactly what she wants it to do.
There are few people who can have such high profile online fallouts with half of the A-list population, delete, undelete, and re-delete her social media presence, piss people off for saying the wrong things and piss people off even more by not saying anything at all, and then bounce back to their previous stature of relevance off the back of a (perceptively unremarkable) album announcement. But apparently Taylor Swift can.
The world wide web is back on its knees, just like old times, hoping and #praying for one more piece of an undecipherable social media puzzle to ease our fascination with the good girl of Country turned bad girl of Pop. The one who only a year ago prompted Instagram to create a whole new function to help her manage the outpouring of abusive comments and snake emojis.
Much like everyone else in the celebrity game, it's no secret that most of Taylor’s power comes from social media. And as much as it was crucial in cementing her status as the 'best friend to all' and leader of her since dissolved girl squad, we've also seen that social media has often been the vehicle by which most of her apparent downfall was delivered. Her decision not to weigh in on the 2016 presidential election, that rogue beef with Nicki Minaj and of course the uncovering of a phone conversation with Kanye West giving him the okay on referencing her in his ‘Famous’ single. The drama that ensued wouldn’t have happened outside of this manufactured digital universe. And even though all of these incidents probably influenced Taylor's apparent disappearance from the spotlight and well, relevance, earlier this year, we’re still talking about someone who at the hand of Tumblr post managed to make Apple adjust the way they compensate the artists on their streaming service. She ran shit then, and she's still running shit now.
The proof is in the Instagram video. Low key is out of the window for Swifty, hence the dialing up of the dramatics which retrospectively always works in her favor. Taylor is all about the long game. Of course, her social media tantrum wasn’t incidental. There was never any doubt that there was something brewing. And if the resurrection of Taylor Swift wasn’t going to happen over the 4th July, the national holiday she somehow managed to claim for her own, it was going to be in line with the biggest event in the music calendar – the MTV Music Awards. Forget Instagram, Award Shows are Taylor’s platform of choice. It’s where the Kanye beef was born back in 2009. It’s also where it was temporarily squashed after that awkward Grammy’s hug in 2015. She’s taking it back to where it all started.
So, yeah, sure. Retweet #ReclaimTheSnake all you like, but in reality, Taylor already owned that too. Kim may have tweeted the emoji but Taylor's the one who managed to have them blocked from her profile on the most influential app in the world (Kim has since opted to do the same though, apparently). Make no mistake, Taylor Swift isn’t a snake. She commands way more attention and is a force to be observed, reckoned with, and to be fair, frightfully respected. If those three Instagram videos are anything to go by, if anything Taylor is a Harry Potter style Basilisk and the internet is her Chamber. And while we might not always know what she's up to, we can rest assured that it's going to be something big, and it's going ruffle a lot of feathers.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.