About

"Taylor Swift Is a Snake" is a catchphrase used to smear the American pop singer-songwriter as a deceitful manipulator in the light of her post-breakup dispute with Calvin Harris, Scottish musician and her ex-boyfriend, as well as an unrelated controversy stemming from her reaction to the lyrics of Kanye West's 2016 rap single "Famous", both of which became high publicized in July 2016. The phrase is mainly used in the form of emoji and comment spamming on her Instagram account.

Origin

The rocky relationship between Taylor Swift and Kanye West began with the latter's infamous interruption of Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. A few years later, the two musicians seemed to have reconciled their differences at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, with Taylor Swift confirming that there were no hard feelings between them in an interview with MTV, while Kanye West publicly apologized for his previous stunt during his acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Then in late June 2016, another feud arose between the two following the release of the music video for "Famous," the first single from Kanye West's seventh studio album The Life of Pablo.

The music video quickly became a popular subject of gossips and media attention due to its inclusion of provocative imageries of celebrities and public figures, as well as lyrical references alluding to his

I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex
Why? I made that bitch famous (God damn)
I made that bitch famous

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Taylor Swift's Response

In response, Taylor Swift claimed she was offended and never approved the lyrics. But Kanye West claimed she did approve the lyrics, with Swift and her supporters denying the claim.

Kim Kardashian's Snapchat Video

However, on July 18th, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West's wife, uploaded videos on SnapChat of Kanye West and Taylor Swift having the conversation (which she then uploaded to her Instagram account).

Online Reaction

Since then, there were various reactions to videos, with hashtags on twitter like #KimExposedTaylorParty and #TaylorIsASnake started being used. Various websites and media outlets like BuzzFeed and 4chan's /mu/ (music) have been discussing and reporting on the drama and creating various image macros on the subject.

Justin Bieber's Instagram Post

On August 2nd, Justin Bieber posted a mobile screenshot of himself video chatting with Kanye West via FaceTime to his Instagram account, along with the caption that simply read "Taylor swift what up." Within the first 12 hours, the post garnered over 1.5 million likes and 135,000 comments.

Taylor swift what up.

Bieber's dry greeting was largely interpreted as a subtle diss towards Swift in the light of her recent feud with West and it subsequently triggered a massive flood of spam comments on Taylor Swift's Instagram posts, in a very similar way to the raid that ensued on Miley Cyrus' Instagram account after Nicki Minaj confronted her by saying "Miley, What's Good?" during her acceptance speech for the Best Hip Hop Video Award at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.

Snake Video

On August 21st, 2017, Swift tweeted a short glitched video of what appeared to be a snake's tail on her Instagram and Twitter accounts (shown below). Since the video marked the artist's first social media since her accounts had been purged of all content, many speculated that it may have signaled a new album in the works. Meanwhile, others on Twitter made jokes about the video post coinciding with the 2017 solar eclipse.

Examples

Search Interest

External References