If a surprise double album and 31 new songs wasn’t enough to talk about, Taylor Swift gave fans another reason to debate, decode and derail the social media discussion.
Swift, 34, released The Tortured Poets Department at midnight on Friday, April 19, followed by The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology two hours later. Overnight, fans also noticed she “liked” a post on Instagram from Betches Media that featured a number of T-Swift memes.
The fourth slide in the five-pic carousel features a screenshot from Lifetime’s Dance Moms and its infamous pyramid ranking system. Only, the names in the pyramid are of Swift’s exes, with current boyfriend Travis Kelce at the top.
Taylor Lautner, Tom Hiddleston and Harry Styles are in the middle row. Underneath them, Calvin Harris, Joe Alwyn, Jake Gyllenhaal and Matty Healy occupy the bottom.
Unlike many of us, Swift isn’t one to mindlessly scroll Instagram and blindly “like” posts. That led many fans to assume she scrolled through the Betches post and certainly saw the meme of her exes before double tapping.
Fittingly, the first post in the carousel features a picture of Swift and an X post from Betches that reads, “Decoding Taylor Swift easter eggs feels like working 2 jobs, training for a marathon, dating a man who is emotionally unstable, and clocking in the overnight shift at the FBI all at once.”
Naturally, Swifties took the Instagram “like” to be a subtle sign of her approval, and they flooded the comments.
“I CANT BELIEVE TAYLOR LIKED THIS… SHE IS COMING FOR JOE,” one user commented in all caps.
Added another, “TAYLOR LIKED IT AHAHAHHAHAHAHA I CANT THIS IS SO UNHINGED.”
And those were among the more tame reactions.
The second slide featured screenshots of Swift Easter eggs with an accompanying X post that reads, “Thank god she became a musician and not a serial killer.”
Another read, “Every time we get a new lyric, the Hunger Games cannon goes off,” referring to the cannon in the series that would signify another death in the games.
Swift herself posted a message via Instagram at midnight when her album dropped, explaining her thoughts on what fans soon realized was 31 new tracks.
“There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed,” she wrote. “And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry. THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is out now.”
