Taylor Swift is headed to the Super Bowl — and triggering conservative pundits along the way.
Swift’s appearance on the field following Sunday night’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens sparked a fresh wave of social media vitriol and the resurgence of some conspiring that her near-dominant place in U.S. pop culture must be the result of some sort of psychological manipulation effort — known more colloquially in fringe circles as a “psy-op.”
One of the most viewed posts came from the right-wing X account End Wokeness, which describes itself as “fighting, exposing, and mocking wokeness.” The account shared a post Sunday suggesting that Swift’s overwhelming popularity over the past year was due to malign forces.
“What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic and natural. It’s an op,” the account posted. “We all feel it. We all know it.”
Swift had already been experiencing increased scrutiny from some football fans annoyed at her media exposure during NFL games, as cameras seem to pan to her every reaction. She told Time magazine in her Person of the Year interview that she has “no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”
But more recently, some right-wing pundits have suggested without evidence that all the hype around Swift could be part of an orchestrated plot to drum up hype for the Democratic Party in a presidential election year.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the Republican primary race this month, shared his own conspiracy theory on X on Monday, suggesting that the Super Bowl will be rigged to favor “an artificially culturally propped-up couple” who he believes will reveal a “major presidential endorsement” this fall.
“Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months,” wrote Ramaswamy, who after dropping out of the race has endorsed former President Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.
The Pentagon…
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