The Swift-Kelce engagement isn’t remarkable because it happened; it’s remarkable because of how we organized around it. The real story isn’t the ring; it’s the reminder that communication doesn’t just reflect culture, but also shapes it.

We treat these moments as entertainment, but they’re also lessons in digital organizing. Fan cultures aren’t “just fans”—they’re decentralized, resilient publics that brands and institutions learn from. Swift & Kelce didn’t just get engaged; they activated an organizational collective.

What fascinates me is how networked publics instantly co-produce meaning: Swifties deploy numerology, NFL fans meme the Chiefs, and brands scramble for relevance. It’s a live case study of participatory organizing: distributed labor creating coherence (and chaos) simultaneously.

Caitlyn Jarvis and I talk about this in our 2021 paper on ‘conservative chimeras.’ But seriously: BIG YIKES.

Because of course…when I first started the line of research around red pill ideologies, it was relatively siloed into parts of the Manosphere. In a little over a decade, the language and logic has gone from the corners of the internet to being a “legitimized” form of political organizing.

My reaction:

It might be the one aspirational thing I would acknowledge about TFG.

I think about spaces like Western KS that are in legitimate media deserts, and the importance of offering that type of VfA…this typically happens online through communities that are increasingly being policed/censored by the tech broligarchs.