Taylor Swift’s fans seem to know what she’s up to before she does. How do they do it?

Ever since One Direction went their separate ways, splintering the once-laser focus of their enormous fanbase, the gold standard for internet sleuthing has been set by Taylor Swift’s squad of Swifties.



A bug on Taylor Swift's official website revealed the supposed name and cover artwork for Taylor's 6th studio album: "Reputation." pic.twitter.com/erlDBBX7jS — Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 23, 2017

The woman behind one of her biggest fan accounts on Twitter, with followers of nearly six figures, once told me she had a “pretty good idea” of the pop star’s whereabouts “80% of the time”. “But I keep it to myself,” she said, “unlike some others who are constantly stalking her jet patterns.”

As the delightful, if widely disproved, rumour that the pop star was regularly “transported in a huge suitcase” to avoid scrutiny goes to show, it’s never been easy to slip one past a Swiftie, and they’ve been putting in plenty of overtime lately to uncover details of her upcoming album.

One found its artwork hidden in a dark corner of her website – revealing not only the title, Reputation, but the number of tracks and their duration; within 15 minutes, Swift’s camp had released it officially.

A separate investigation revealed lyrics from old songs written in the site’s Javascript code – a crumb in the digital trail left by Swift to reward the most diligent of her fans. More recently, she has publicly liked select Tumblr posts – close-reads of her lyrics, interpretations of the video – that she presumably wants to be seen to have endorsed.

Pop star and fandom will be locked in this intricate two-step for another seven weeks until 10 November, when Reputation comes out, and all involved can turn their investigative powers towards finding MH370 or something.

Though not all stars may be as rewarding subjects as Swift is, many celebrity gossip devotees double as internet detectives, able to deduce the latest romances or rifts from stars’ social media activity. Who has unfollowed who? What could that favourite refer to?

Kylie Jenner unfollowed Rihanna on IG right when Fenty Beauty is about to launch. Rihanna has the girls shaking! pic.twitter.com/seAc28w6kK — . (@MilegendIsQueen) September 7, 2017

Rumours of a reunion between the Weeknd and model Bella Hadid were dispelled, for instance, when he and his new girlfriend, Selena Gomez, both unfollowed Hadid on Instagram. Speculation Drake and J-Lo’s short-lived relationship was a publicity stunt was put to rest by a similar move from Rihanna – and her subsequent falling out with Naomi Campbell was indicated on social media three months before the probable reason behind it surfaced for air in a hot tub.

Just this month, Rihanna herself was unfollowed by Kylie Jenner, solidifying the rumoured turf war over their rival beauty lines.

Of course there are more important things to be concerned with – especially now, when it seems your phone is as likely to buzz about another nuclear test in North Korea as about your new lives on Candy Crush. But following pop culture can be a welcome distraction from the impending end of the world, even a reminder that life goes on in the interim. As argued last month in the New York Times, “To Stay Sane, Read More Celebrity Gossip”.

Me trying to explain the "Look What You Made Me Do" video to everyone in my life this week like: pic.twitter.com/NUKnpKfDZs — trainwruk (@trainwruk) September 1, 2017

I see it as equivalent to sports super-fandom in the time-consuming tracking of key teams and figures – not to mention the point-scoring. There is a skill to keeping across it all and a lesson for all of us who use social media: it’s possible we may be giving away more than we thought.

The juiciest details are rarely to be found on page one, or even page 36 of Google search results – they are in the gaps, and you might be surprised at just how easy it is to fill them. That is precisely the case against the retention of metadata, in fact: that it only describes content is of little comfort when you can find so much out by connecting the dots.

Even absences signal something on the internet – if someone who’s consistently liked someone else’s selfies suddenly stops, for example. Equally, as I’ve posited in the past, when two Twitter users who were publicly flirting suddenly go silent, it can mean they’ve progressed to the next level: direct messaging.

me: it's just instagram it's not that deep

also me: this is a case for the fbi pic.twitter.com/IG2UKDs63d — ㅎㅇㄹㅇㅌ (@ribbonmp3) August 2, 2017

It is easy to see how someone might find themselves in too deep when we were arguably up to our necks about 300 words ago. A friend of mine is convinced that she found Prince Harry’s secret Instagram account, through one evening’s concerted efforts and workings so complex she was unable to articulate them the next day. The investigation is on hiatus – unless he finally accepts her follow request.

But if there was a Pulitzer for this kind of thing – maybe the anti-Pulitzer – it would have gone to Gizmodo’s Ashley Feinberg for her diligent cross-platform investigation into then-FBI head James Comey’s secret Twitter back in March. The account Feinberg identified as being “almost certainly” Comey’s responded by posting an Anchorman quote: “Actually I’m not even mad. That’s amazing.”