Americans are Finally Addressing the Real Issue of Our Time: Is Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce a Government PsyOp?

Patrick Smith. Getty Images.

I do not choose to be the Taylor Swift person around here. We have people who work that beat full time, when they're not otherwise engaged in brutal flame wars with part-time employees from the Midwest. And they're much more attuned to her Cult of Personality and its massive impact on our culture. 

What I am is a bit of a conspiracy buff. Sure, "conspiracy theory" is a derisive term. Invented in the 1960s as a condescending way to refer to any questions people asked because they wanted an explanation for how a scruffy-little nobody was supposedly able to kill the President of the United States all by himself, no matter how legitimate. And it's been used ever since to dismiss reasonable inquiry into a broad range of topics, from true government corruption to UFOs to issues of war and peace that affect millions. 

So when the aforementioned biggest popstar in the land becomes deeply involved in the biggest sports/entertainment conglomerate in the land, it's going to raise questions. Or conspiracy theories, if that's the term you prefer. It's only natural. Inevitable, really

From my early take on how she and Travis Kelce became an item just before the Chiefs played in New York so that when you put "taylor swift jets" into a search engine, you got pictures of her at Met Life instead of articles about her hideously large carbon footprint:

… to the one about how this arranged marriage was all to sell NFL Sunday Ticket to Swifties because YouTube was losing a $2 billion investment, and now her demographic is calling the shots in pro football:

… to Dante's more recent post, drilling down into the pure dollars involved in this romantic entanglement:

Well the internet wins again. Because these theories, while mildly conspiratorial, have nothing on what's going on right now. Both on social and legacy media. All-out war has been declared on the Taylor Swift/NFL front. And it's nothing less than a battle for the soul of all humanity. Armageddon. The apocalypse. A nuclear holocaust of internet flaming. 

It begins with right wingers calling out the Deep State for being behind all of this. Like a sort of domestic spy network version of eHarmony, designed just to bring two single people together as part of a widespread government psyop. Including a guy who just ran for President:

Which was then amplified by conservative podcasters:

Including those saying the goal of the operation is to raise Swift's profile to record proportions, have her endorse President Biden, and swing the election:

And even to poison the minds of our youth and turn them away from religion:

Not to be outdone, the left wing media responded with an even higher level of hysteria:

A response that includes the same sort of eerily identical, seemingly coordinated phrasing we heard when people were skeptical about, say, their reporting on Covid:

Which will make everyone who believes that Taylor Swift really IS a psyop say in unison, "That's exactly what they'd say if Taylor Swift really IS a psyop." Meaning this thing is going to be the great Ouroboros of early 2024 and beyond, eating its own tail. A self-perpetuating echo chamber of insanity. 

Or, from where I'm sitting, hilarity. And I welcome you to pull up a chair and join me. At least until it burns itself out and we can move on to the next nationwide moral panic. 

Of course a few things could happen that would take all the energy out of this ridiculousness. The 49ers could win in Las Vegas a week from Sunday. Which is a good possibility since the game opened at SF -1.5 and is now SF -2.0. 

Or, the officials could call a flawless game and give the theorists nothing to theorize about. Which is highly unlikely given their track record:

Or Swift and Kelce could just keep their political thoughts to themselves. Which is not only not likely, it's pretty unAmerican. And she endorsed Biden in 2020, so what's the point of sitting this one out. 

Or finally, our whole culture could just grow the fuck up, quit giving all this energy to useless, trivial nonsense while ignoring our real problems, and get back to working together to find real solutions like the nation that is supposed to be a beacon of hope to the world.  

That ship sailed. We are not a serious country anymore. So bring on the absurdity and let's make the most of it. Super Bowl Week is going to be WILD.