Poetic Justice: Subreddit Dedicated to Kanye Is Now Taylor Swift Fan Club
The redditors previously devoted to the artist now known as Ye have started apologizing to Taylor Swift.
EntertainmentThe subreddit devoted to Kanye West has been taken over by his soon-to-be-former fans renouncing their love of the rapper in favor of his previous nemesis, Taylor Swift. Following months of increasingly disturbing behavior followed by his outright praise of Hitler on Thursday, many Ye fans have decided to become Swifties, and are turning the r/Kanye subreddit into r/Kanye (Taylor’s Version).
While redditors had posted versions of “you win, Taylor” jokes over the past year, the floodgates opened after his latest interview. “This is now a Taylor Swift Subreddit. We had a good run fellas,” a user wrote.
Since that post, redditors have been asking each other about their favorite Swift album, favorite Swift haircut, if they got Eras tour tickets. They praised Swift’s bars, and even used some of her most boring lyrics (like “now we got bad blood”) to show their new loyalties. It’s becoming r/TaylorSwift without the Gaylor hate. “Taylor swift is ready to carry the music industry on her back,” one fan posted to r/Kanye on Friday, alongside recent red carpet photos of Swift.
Another fan said they regretted supporting West through the “Famous” feud, which, of course, was a continuation of the infamous VMAs incident. In case your brain is filled with more useful things like your social security number and how to properly fold a fitted sheet, the battle between the pair started in 2009 when West ran onstage when Swift won Best Video by a Female Artist, uttering words that will live in infamy and that have since been parodied to death: “I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” Swift held her Moonman, looking very (rightly) confused. (Beyoncé went on to win Video of the Year, for which Swift’s “You Belong With Me” wasn’t even nominated.)
West apologized that night on his personal blog (lol! Those were the days), and after Swift performed her song about the incident (“Innocent”) at next year’s ceremony, the two appeared to move on. Then, in 2016, West released “Famous” (starting the fire) and an accompanying video (dumping kerosene on the situation). West rapped, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” At the time, Swift disavowed the song and said she “would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.” Swift went on to win Album of the Year for the second time, the first woman to do so. Then, West’s then-wife Kim Kardashian West released videos on Snapchat (once again, those were the days!) purporting to show Swift lying about not approving the the song. The full video was later leaked and seemed to show that, actually, West didn’t tell Swift all of the lyrics, and she was not in the wrong.
The literal years of back-and-forthing led to stans to attack both artists, something Ye fans are now revisiting. “I absolutely loathed her back in 2016/17 just because I took Ye’s side in their beef. Kinda regret it now that I like some of her music and it’s awfully clear that Kanye is a horrible person,” one reddit user wrote.
Swift—a woman once the subject of her own Aryan princess conspiracy theory—couldn’t have known how deep West’s antisemitism ran. But she is certainly the one emerging from all of this relatively scot-free.
In a predictably smart move, Swift has not commented on West’s very public embrace of hate, and I doubt she ever will. At this point, her PR team operates like a well-oiled machine, and they know far better than to get involved in this muck. Instead, in the spring, she’ll embark on the most in-demand arena tour of all time. Karma.