Following the US presidential election, Swifties, the title for Taylor Swift’s followers, are fleeing X for Bluesky. X’s proprietor, billionaire Elon Musk, was considered one of Donald Trump’s greatest backers, funneling over $100 million into the Trump-supporting America PAC; stumping for the candidate on the marketing campaign path; and boosting Trump’s messaging on X. Musk additionally helped Trump faucet right into a distinctly right-wing male viewers. Swifties, who’ve constructed a sturdy group on the platform previously referred to as Twitter, took discover. By Thursday, lower than 48 hours after Trump received the presidency, they had been beginning to flock from the platform for good.
“I really like the concept of constructing a brand new group right here and would love to not should assist Elon in any manner,” says Justin, who goes by @justin-the-baron.swifties.social on Bluesky and requested to make use of solely his first title for worry of harassment. “Elon is after all an enormous Trump supporter, which does not align with Taylor’s values or the values of Swifties.”
Although there are Swifties on all sides of the political spectrum, the group prides itself on being a optimistic and accepting house. After Kamala Harris was introduced because the Democratic nominee for president, Swifties started to mobilize to assist her. In September, Swift herself endorsed Harris. In an Instagram publish saying her assist, Swift cited AI-generated photographs of herself and her followers that had been utilized by Trump to suggest she’d endorsed him.
Following the endorsement, Musk posted, “High-quality Taylor … you win … I provides you with a toddler and guard your cats with my life.” Musk, who has repeatedly shared issues about declining beginning charges, has at the least 11 kids with at the least three ladies. In accordance with The New York Occasions, he additionally provided his sperm to Nicole Shanahan, the previous working mate for unbiased candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (She declined.)
Irene Kim, an organizer with Swifties for Harris, says that the outpouring of misogyny following the election pushed her and plenty of different Swift followers to desert X and search refuge on Bluesky. Although analysis has discovered that hate speech and disinformation elevated after Musk took over the platform, the election of Trump appears to have supercharged it. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue discovered that within the 24 hours following Trump’s electoral victory, phrases like “Your physique, my alternative,” parroting the election night time rhetoric of white supremacist Nick Fuentes, rose 4,600 % on X.
“I feel that is the type of rhetoric we wish to get away from,” Kim says. She additionally notes that X’s current replace to the “block” function, which permits folks to see the profile and posts of customers which have blocked them, has contributed to a extra damaging expertise on the platform. “Twitter has undoubtedly turn out to be such a hellscape,” Kim says.
