It’s the night of Curtin commerce student Lily Grimley’s birthday party. She’s turning 22 and celebrating by hosting a trivia night all about her favourite singer: Taylor Swift.

Friends and family gather around the couch in the living room to watch the hour and a half-long PowerPoint presentation Grimley has made herself for the occasion.

Some guests wear the shirts they purchased from Swift’s recent Eras tour, the closest show of which was performed just under 3500km from her living room in Perth, Western Australia. Other guests’ outfits are an ode to pieces of Swift’s large discography; cowboy hats and boots, floral sundresses with red lipstick, silver-sparkled dresses meant to represent a mirrorball.

It’s an entirely sober affair. No one wants to risk forgetting one of the many facts they know about Swift, on this rare occasion when someone is actually asking.

What is the name of Taylor Swift’s brother? Austin Swift. On what type of farm did Taylor Swift grow up? Christmas tree farm. What is Taylor Swift’s favourite cocktail? The room is split, arguing between the answer she gave in her Vogue 73 Questions interview from 2016 and a drink she ordered on a night out two months before.  

Grimley has been a fan of Swift for almost 10 years now, but says she really rediscovered her love for the artist thanks to a social media ‘resurgence’ from the fan base.

“There was a time when society felt the need to shit all over this woman, and at the time I followed it as well,” she says.

“I think what I love about Taylor Swift is how her range of music is so vast. There’s so much varied content to connect with, it feels never ending.”

There’s always been something about Swift that has ignited a fascination from fans and media outlets alike. The combination of her deeply personal lyrics and her high-profile love interests. Listeners already know the characters and events in her life long before she ever sings about them, and when she does it feels like a late-night conversation with a friend.

“Sometimes I would say yes, I do feel like I know her,” Grimley says. “I think she’s got very high walls and a very particular way of presenting herself, that is not necessarily true. But I listen to all these words that she’s written, and I do feel a sense of knowing her.”

James Cook University senior lecturer Amanda Krause defines this type of connection many Swift fans know all too well, as a parasocial relationship.

“Parasocial relationships are the one-sided relationships we can form, often to celebrities as well as people from the media we consume,” she says.

Dr Krause is a music psychology researcher, with an interest in how we interact with music in our everyday lives, including things like how it becomes part of our identities and how we interact with other people through shared interests and tastes.

“Your brain thinks: ‘if I can further imagine what this person is doing or how they might be feeling or responding, the better chance I have of getting close to them or becoming their friend.’”

An American study from 2008 estimated 51 per cent of people had experienced a parasocial relationship, although only 16 per cent would admit to it, and this number has likely increased with today’s prevalence of social media.

“The rise of social media means we are able to interact with each other, as well as organisations, musicians and celebrities, through different social media platforms. What social media has allowed musicians and celebrities to do in a broad sense, is create opportunities for fans to interact with them. Whether or not that’s authentic interaction is a completely additional question, but these lines between fan and friend and acquaintance and follower become blurred,” Dr Krause says.

Social media users’ shared love for Swift has created a very strong, often overwhelmingly positive fan base of predominantly young women. Many Swifties took it upon themselves to create friendship bracelets for each other to share at the singer’s Eras tour concerts, incidentally leading to an Australian bead shortage earlier this year.

“We bond through music. Music is an inherently social activity, music making, music listening. We share our preferences, and part of our identity comes from the musical tastes and preferences we have,” Dr Krause says.

There are, however, a significant minority of fans whose passion for Taylor Swift manifests in less palatable ways.

One such group refer to themselves as ‘Gaylors’. These Swifties function on the belief Swift is a closeted lesbian; pointing to lyrics, outfits, past female friendships, and other ‘evidence’ to prove their theory. While seemingly innocent, many Swifties believe it sets a dangerous precedent, by pressuring her to reveal a sexuality she has never once claimed for herself.

On the more extreme side of the spectrum is the recent controversy surrounding AI generated ‘deepfake’ porn of the singer. While the issue of deepfake porn has been in the zeitgeist now for years, it was Swift’s immediate response to these images of herself that is being credited for prompting political action on the subject.

Curtin University senior lecturer Sky Croeser says it’s important to recognise how celebrities aren’t just subject to the will of social media platforms, they’re some of the few with the ability to shape it.

“Consider the ways in which people like Taylor Swift have the power to push back against some of these things. Because they have money, and they have cultural power. The way her legal team may approach stuff like non-consensual AI software pornography made of her, might go on to have implications for other users,” Dr Croeser says.

While not indicative of the fanbase, this type of interaction-inciting content often ends up dominating people’s social media feeds, driving conversations and opinions.

“We as humans tend to be quite invested in stories about people and recurring characters, even when those characters are real people. But I do think it can be a bit different for social media because of the ways in which these platforms are built to continually grab our attention,” Dr Croeser says.

“The notifications on our phones, the fact that we carry our phones everywhere, the fact that they can implement changes to how these apps work. This means they can be more effective at grabbing and re-grabbing our attention.”

With so much content being put in front of us designed to pull on our emotions, begging us to start wars with strangers in the comment section, most fans like Grimley still know when to step away.

“I think some people need to leave their phone and their laptop, step outside into the world, take a few deep breaths,” she says.

“Be one with nature, frolic around a little, touch some grass.”