Taylor Swift is doing a lot of peculiar things at the moment. In August, she got everyone's attention by wiping everything off her website, as well as her Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr sites. She eventually broke her social media hiatus by posting some creepy glitch videos of an aggressive (and spikey) snake to her 104 million Instagram followers.
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Taylor's hoard of devoted fans, also known as "Swifties" put their detective hats on and started speculating about what it could all mean. It turns out that Taylor did everything in preparation of announcing her new album, Reputation. She dropped the first single
Look What You Made Me Do, in which she announced that the "old" Taylor Swift couldn't come to the phone right now on account of her being dead.
Since then, she's hardly been seen making public appearances or giving interviews, and this "new" Taylor Swift seems to be much more secretive and defensive than before. Which is why Swifties are freaking out about what she's been doing lately.
According to a bunch of publicly shared screenshots, Taylor has been spending a bit of time on Instagram lurking her followers. Swifties have posted screenshots in which they've captured the real Taylor Swift watching their Instagram stories, joining their live streams, liking posts and sending them messages.
She joined this fan's live video:
And then left the most Swift-esque emoji:
Someone else noticed that Taylor viewed her Instagram story:
And the superstar even sent a smiley reply:
She sent replies to the Instagram stories of other people:
She did some good old-fashioned Insta-creeping with random likes of old cat photos:
And even participated in someone's poll asking if they should ask their crush to homecoming:
And in a poll about herself:
Obviously answering yes:
Another girl shared her and Taylor's DMs, before fangirling out of control and ceasing the conversation:
And it seems these "Instagram live things" are what Taylor is spending most of her time watching:
When people noticed that Taylor had noticed them, they used the precious opportunity for her attention to ask important questions, like the wellbeing of her two cats, Meredith and Olivia:
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She even gets borderline desperate to be noticed by a live-streaming fan here:
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/TSUpdatesNY/status/917114769991192577]]
Which makes you wonder exactly
why she's doing it? This kind of low-key stalking is getting Taylor Swift fans
very excited, and some are hoping she's using Instagram to scout attendees for a private concert before the release of Reputation, in a similar vein to the Secret Sessions she hosted ahead of the release of her album 1989, where she used Twitter to find guests. But maybe that's reading a bit far into it.
The pop star continues to mystify us all, but who knows if her odd behaviour online will actually amount to something, or if we're all just wetting ourselves for nothing. It could just be that Taylor is just a regular Insta-creep like you and me, and that she gets a kick out of interacting with her fans through social media.
