The taylor swift epidemic: is the swiftie fandom over the top

Singer and songwriter, Taylor Swift, is a globally renowned star within the music industry. Swift is arguably the most successful artist in history due to her countless rewards, music versatility, and influence on society. Swift is the most streamed artist on Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and Amazon Music making her the most streamed artist of all time. Swift is constantly topping the charts and regularly breaks records she sets. Swift has been hitting #1 and having world tours since her second album “Fearless” was released back in 2008. Swift’s current world tour “The Eras Tour” has sold out every one of the whopping 149 shows; estimated 12 million attendees spanning across five continents, and was recently named the highest grossing tour in history. The Eras Tour movie is the highest grossing box office concert film of all time and sold 2.2 billion tickets in North America alone. Swift is also the first artist to reach billionaire status solely from music. Not only is Swift widely recognized for her music, but also her actions within advocacy, philanthropy and shaping of pop culture. 
Taylor Swift's fans, often called Swifties, are known for their unconditional love and loyalty to Swift and her music. Although Swifties are technically just a fanbase, their passion for Swift goes way beyond that. Swifties have essentially created their own community through music. Swifties use Swift's music to spread ideals of positivity and kindness, to not only eachother but also the general public. Swifties create a safe space to relate their experiences described in Swift’s discography. The relationship between Swifties comes from the emotional and personal aspect of Swift's music. Swift dives deep into her insecurities and describes her emotions through descriptive imagery in storytelling, lyrics, and genre making her music relatable and healing for many. 
Despite Swift's unmatched success and prosperity within the entertainment industry, she and Swifties face large amounts of criticism on a regular basis. By some, Swifties are viewed as “dramatic,” “insane,” “annoying,” “obsessive” and “crazy teenage girls” to name a few. These types of comments have been especially circulating recently because of her current record breaking world tour called “The Eras Tour” The large amount of media attention surrounding the record breaking tour has sparked negativity on all social media platforms and political news channels. 
Concertgoers often post videos either at the concert or in support of Swift. Some users have posted videos online sharing their experience and reactions. Many of these videos are of the emotional whiplash many fans feel when Taylor first appears or when hearing their favorite song. These types of videos have provoked certain groups of people to lecture both Swift and her fans using the deemed stereotypes as an attempt to question the validity of the impact of Swift and her influence on fans, specifically females. The majority of Swift’s fans are women and majority of her “haters” are men.  
The most interesting part about this is not only failure to recognize Swift's success and impact, but also the disregard of other fan bases behavior, whether that be sports, music, or influencers, especially predominantly male ones. No one bats an eye when it comes to half naked men who have painted their whole body their favorite team's color to attend a game, but Swifties do when they plan themed outfits and put glitter on their face for a concert it's “stupid” Absolutely no concern about men repeatedly checking and memorizing their favorite players names, numbers, positions, performance, and stats, but when you know every lyric to her song it's “insane” There's no problem when Men camp outside hours before games to tailgate and get drunk, but getting to the Eras tour early to gather outside the stadium to trade friendship bracelets and sing is. It's fine when a grown man throws a temper tantrum because a player doesn't catch the ball, he is just “passionate” Or when their team loses they throw something at the TV or punch a wall. When they shout derogatory terms at the opposing team or fans, that's just loyalty right? 
There's no problem because they are just “passionate” about their team and having fun but when Swifties do it not only passionately but positively, unlike some men, they are cruelly ridiculed and put in a bad light. 
The truth is the problem does not involve the so-called “extremism” and obsessiveness of Swifties, but lies within the internalized sexism and toxic masculinty deeply integrated into society. Swift’s domination of the music industry is not acknowledged by the vast majority of males and they refuse to accept her achievements. They deflect their internalized misogyny onto Swift by undermining her achievements and diverting media attention using her “crazy” fans, dating life, and character assassin. From a young age, women are taught to accept male behavior as normalized in all aspects of life. Whether explicitly stated or not, sexism is integrated into the way society thinks about and views women, especially successful women, which is the reason why the “Swifties” face so much criticism. 

As Taylor Swift said in her 2019 album Lover: “If I was a man, then i'd be THE man”