The Gaylors Sub-Reddit Has Gone Dark

Elizabeth Gulino

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images

Most Swifties were ecstatic about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement this week — they’ve been crying at work, group-chatting their friends, and furiously decoding any Easter eggs in the couple’s collaborative Instagram post. But there’s a community of superfans who aren’t exactly thrilled, and on Tuesday, they convened in the 50,000-member-strong r/GaylorSwift sub-Reddit to rehash their long-standing theory that Swift is queer. Let’s just say they aren’t doing great, and in the midst of their distress, the sub-Reddit went from public to private shortly after the couple’s announcement.

To give you a gist of the vibe over on r/GaylorSwift, one user likened Swift’s striped Ralph Lauren proposal dress to a prisoner’s outfit, while another said this was all part of her marketing playbook. Another wrote that they believed the engagement was “performance art at its finest,” while someone else said that “nothing, absolutely nothing, can ever convince me that Kaylor wasn’t real,” referencing the popular Gaylor theory that Swift and Karlie Kloss were more than just friends.

After screenshots of the Gaylors in crisis started circulating on social media, the moderators seem to have shielded their community from the prying eyes of outsiders. Now, only approved members can view and contribute to the site, and the only way anyone else can join is by messaging the mods for acceptance. Good luck with that.

While the r/GaylorSwift moderators haven’t shared why they went into hiding, another, smaller Gaylor sub-Reddit was recently asked to go private by one of its members because of an “influx of trolls.” Over on the r/GaylorSwiftSnark sub-Reddit (apparently, there’s a snark page for everything), someone wrote, “I have a friend in the sub and they’re just melting down coping. The sub went private so Reddit users wouldn’t ‘invalidate their feelings.’” I think the engagement already accomplished that?