The Strangest Conspiracy Theories About Taylor Swift

Right around the time in 2023 that Taylor Swift started dating a pretty famous football player, a particularly virulent conspiracy theory popped up around her — one that was outlined with specificity by right-wing podcaster Mike Crispi during the AFC Championship Game in January 2024, in which Swift's boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, was playing. Swift was attending the game, as she did many of her boyfriend's games throughout the season, and Crispi, clear-eyed as ever, was not afraid to shout the truth from the digital rooftops. "All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA," he posted on X (formerly Twitter). "Calling it now: KC wins, goes to [the] Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and 'endorses' Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield." 

The "Taylor Swift is a secret government shill helping Joe Biden get re-elected" theory proved to have surprising legs. In a poll released on February 14 by Monmouth University, fully 18% of respondents had not only heard the theory but believed it to be true. Of course, two-thirds of the poll's respondents approved of Swift's well-publicized (and highly successful) efforts to motivate her fan base to vote, so that Democrat propaganda is obviously working pretty well. However, this theory's end game failed to materialize, and the Chiefs did indeed win the Super Bowl — but there was no midfield endorsement of Biden. Weird.

Over the years, there have been a whole lot of celebrities — mostly musicians — who have been accused of being in league with Lucifer. But if ever there was a celebrity for whom those accusations were all but inevitable, it is Taylor Swift. Consider: in 1966, a guy named Anton Lavey founded the Church of Satan, which exists to this day. (The church does not actually believe in Satan, or God, for that matter, but try convincing its detractors of that.) His daughter, Zeena (pictured above), was once the spokesperson for the church and actively involved in its promotion. 

What does this have to do with Swift, you ask? Just this: Zeena and Swift bear a striking resemblance to each other. So much so that conspiracy theorists jumped to the obvious conclusion — that Swift is a clone of Zeena Lavey, created to lull impressionable youth over to the dark side through the power of solidly crafted pop tunes. In the 1990s, Zeena distanced herself from the church, became a Buddhist and a graphic artist, and changed her last name to Schreck; she has never publicly commented on her supposed cloning.

If you're one of the six or seven people who took in the $200 million, Henry Cavill-starring flop-ola "Argylle" during its mercifully brief 2024 theatrical run, you may have been inspired to do so after reading the novel of the same name, which was also released in 2024 and was credited to an author by the name of Elly Conway. This is a pen name; Conway is a character in the novel (and the film, portrayed by Bryce Dallas Howard), a spy novelist whose work begins to mirror real life. The novel was actually written by bestselling author Terry Hayes, in collaboration with fellow scribe Tammy Cohen — but if the internet is to be believed, this is all a bunch of mularkey, because "Argylle" was actually written by (wait for it) Taylor Swift.

As evidence, Swifties point to a bunch of weird, random details in the trailer for "Argylle," in one of Swift's videos, and in some of the pop star's social media posts; given Swift's penchant for dropping Easter eggs, it's perhaps understandable how fans could be enchanted into reading things that aren't there into nearly anything she says or does. Hayes, though, was just as understandably mystified by the whole thing. "There's a lot of crazy people in the world," the author told Inside Edition. "To string all of these things together and come up with that solution, I thought was pretty wild."

Okay, so bust this: You know that Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, the British singer and actor, dated for a bit back in 2012, right? And that most fans think the tune "Style," from "1989," is a nod to that relationship, yeah? Alright, well, according to a few of Swift's more enlightened fans, it is certainly that. It's also a confession, right there on one of the biggest hit album of the teens, to a deadly hit and run. The deed was committed by Styles, who was driving — with Swift in the passenger seat — when they struck a pedestrian out on a lonely road, killing them. That's right: Two of the biggest pop stars on the planet totally killed a guy, with Styles' slick ride suddenly becoming a getaway car.

The evidence is supposedly all over "1989," but particularly in "Style," where Swift sings of her boyfriend that "he can't keep his wild eyes on the road," on a journey that "could end in burning flames." Not to fear, though, because when they "come crashing down" (into some poor person's face) they "come back every time" (because Swift is rich and powerful enough to cover it up). Pretty obvious, huh? Why would Swift confess to a crime in a hit song, you ask? Well, she sure loves her Easter eggs.

So, 2016 was a pretty tough year for Taylor Swift; that's when, between the relationship-shaming, the Kim-and-Kanye bullying, and the overall super-intense levels of public scrutiny, she all but disappeared from the public eye for a bit. Some fans, though, think that it's not just Swift herself that disappeared that year; it was also an entire new album, titled "Karma," that was to be released in 2016 but was scrapped.

For starters, Swift reliably dropped an album every two years until the inexplicable three-year gap between "1989" in 2014 and "Reputation" in 2017. Then, in the video for "Look What You Made Me Do" from the latter release, there's a plane with a broken wing with the call letters TS6 (as in, Taylor Swift's sixth album), and Swift wearing an all-orange outfit — thought to be the lost album's color palette — while trapped in a big cage. The biggest supposed clue, though, came in the video for "The Man," in which there's a wall tagged up with the names of all Swift's albums, with "KARMA" dead center — next to a sign reading, "Missing, If Found Return to Taylor Swift." Swift herself gave the theory a boost during a Vogue interview, during which she said that her biggest life lesson was that "Karma is real" — and in her video announcement of the tracklist for her 2022 album "Midnights," she cackled for several minutes over the title of track eleven ... "Karma."

In the early teens, a user on 4chan — the image-based message board where all the users are anonymous, and there is a conspiracy theory and usually some racism lurking around every corner — invited members of one board to ask them questions, saying that they were an "entertainer" and "one of the 50 most famous people on the planet." Most users probably figured this person was full of crap, while others may have speculated as to who it could be — while yet others already knew. It was (wait for it) none other than that treacherous scamp Taylor Swift, whom many 4chan users were already convinced was a regular on the boards.

Now, while this is almost certainly not true, there are a few interesting pieces of evidence. Two of the most compelling: Immediately after a user on the /b/ board asked its denizens to name their cat, Swift took to social media to introduce her new cat Meredith, which was the winning name. Then, there was the 4chan user who posted, "Nothing quite like a freezing cold, wintery beach," right before Swift posted pretty much the exact same thing on X (then known as Twitter). 4chan's founder, Christopher Poole (also known as moot), took to his own boards to debunk this notion, but users were unsurprisingly not convinced. Wrote one, "Taylor Swift pays moot to say she isn't on /b/ so she can remain anonymous." Obviously.

Roundabout 2017, Taylor Swift became the latest in a long line of celebrities to become the focus of a very specific theory: that the musician (it's always musicians for some reason) everyone knows and loves is no more, because they were tragically killed, their death hidden from the public. They were then cloned by the Illuminati, because why own and operate massive, secret clone farms if you're not going to use them?

This theory really blasted off with the release announcement for "Reputation," which heavily featured... a snake. (If you don't know the connection between snakes and clones, well ... you're not alone.) Then, there's the single "Look What You Made Me Do" and its video, which is not really about Swift's desire for agency over her image and career and her disdain for those who seek to control her, but about the fact that she's a clone now. Proponents of the theory went so far as to stage elaborate public tributes like the mural pictured above, which might seem silly but relatively harmless to us, but it probably hits different if you are Taylor Swift. Of course, the New Taylor Swift seems to let these kinds of things roll off her back.