Taylor Swift. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Late yesterday afternoon, a British tabloid published several photos of Taylor Swift kissing the actor Tom Hiddleston on a rock near her home in Rhode Island. Two weeks before that, Taylor Swift broke up with her previous white male companion, Calvin Harris (a DJ). And roughly 4.6 billion years before that, collisions in a solar nebula caused the formation of the sun and eventually, Earth. Why did these events happen in this particular order?

Because Taylor Swift wanted them to.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Taylor Swift dating Tom Hiddleston - two weeks after dumping Calvin Harris.https://t.co/ytzLqZyGSu pic.twitter.com/2SBiPbFMxu — Dan Wootton (@danwootton) June 15, 2016

Taylor Swift has been strategically employing famous boyfriends to shape her music and public image since it was legal for her to do so. She started dating Joe Jonas a few months after she turned 18 and later told Ellen Degeneres that he broke up with her in a “27-second phone call,” inspiring the song “Forever & Always.” Then it was Taylor Lautner (“Back to December”), John Mayer (“Dear John”), Jake Gyllenhaal (“We Are Never Getting Back Together”), Conor Kennedy (“Begin Again”), and Harry Styles (“Style”). She has it all down to a science. First comes the adorable paparazzi photo shoot (remember those maple latte pics with Gyllenhaal at Thanksgiving?), then a coy interview or two, then a breakup song.

Taylor Swift says the hardest song to write was about Jake Gyllenhaal 😲 https://t.co/RmX71ujZ9s pic.twitter.com/ONBEdy92W5 — HollywoodLife (@HollywoodLife) April 19, 2016

Yesterday, Swift rushed her tried-and-true formula. Before processing the Calvin Harris breakup through song, she let paparazzi photograph her being all cute and goals with a new man. Why?

The answer is in Caity Weaver’s excellent GQ profile of one Kim Kardashian.

In it, Kardashian discusses the drama surrounding the release of her husband Kanye West’s recent album, which contains the following line about Swift: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.” When he released the album in February, West claimed he called Swift to discuss the line with her, and she approved it. Swift’s publicist then released a statement denying his claim: “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.” The next day, in a Grammy acceptance speech, Swift made a dig at West, stating, “I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments, or your fame…”

Kardashian is calling bullshit on Swift’s claims. From GQ: