The Gaylor Theory (video essay)

Video Essay
Title:	The Gaylor Theory
Creator:	Indigo F
Date(s):	18th November 2024
Medium:
Length:	1:37:49
Footage:
Fandom:	Taylor Swift
Topic:	Gaylor
External Links:	YouTube Link
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The Gaylor Theory is a video essay by Indigo F analysing Gaylor.

Summary

The notorious "Gaylor" community, which infamously asserts that acclaimed pop singer Taylor Swift is secretly gay, raises a thousand questions: Why do they believe this? How do they intend to prove it? How has the rest of the world responded? And, perhaps most importantly: Is Taylor Swift Actually Gay?!

Content

Three questions are proposed as foundational to the video's analysis: What is Gaylor?, Why is it popular? and Is Gaylor Correct?. To answer these, the video is split into multiple chapters:

0. Intro
1.
  a) The Evidence Era
  b) The Me Era
  c) The YNTCD Era
  d) The Dress Era
  e) The Defence Era
2. The Opposition Era
3.
  a) The What is Gaylor Era
  b) The Belief Era
4. The Conclusion Era

The first chapter relates to the beliefs of Gaylors, the evidence for the theory, and the defensive arguments upon met with criticism of that evidence. The second relates to the responses to Gaylor. The third attempts to articulate what Gaylor actually is, and how that knowledge can be used to better those responses. The final chapter acts as a conclusion to theorise the theory's meaning in a wider cultural context.

Most of the posts included in the video have the OP excluded so as to avoid harassment towards them.

Topics Discussed

gaylor is a conspiracy theory community with elements of fanfiction

• Initial debunking and discussing several key examples of Gaylor evidence.
• RPF
• Comparisons with Larry Stylinson
• Comparisons with wider conspiracy theories such as QAnon and Gender Criticals
• Criticism of Gaylor falling into one of three categories: Beliefs, Motives or Actions, and the validity of each argument.
• Goal to "Keep Believing Gaylor. Make Gaylor Real." using three primary strategies: Zoom In, Deflect Force, Fall Back
• [Insert more examples here]

The essay ends with the final idea:

while gaylor is, in & of itself, a largely unremarkable & inoffensive byproduct of contemporary celebrity & mass media culture, a thorough comprehension of the mechanisms that undergird the community's beliefs, actions, & thought processes can be fertile ground for addressing the incentives, vectors, & epistemologies of misinformation & bad-faith argumentation, both in constructing heuristics to analyze these things and in responding to movements built on them.

Reactions & Responses

[@demitwice]
oh wow just finished watching this video and it was so good! i hadn't stopped to think about it but i think you're definitely right, being a gaylor does come from a want to be subversive while doing something pretty mainstream. it reminds me of the "not like other girls" discourse, where traditional femininity was demonized in media. people realized that and called it out, and then it became a discourse of hyper-valuating femininity. like, traditional femininity was never "in danger". i think it was bad it was demonized, but people these days have been acting as if it's subversive to be a feminine girl when it's not... (not saying that's bad, i am a pretty femme-presenting person and i like pink and shopping etc, i just find the whole thing weird; not to say it links femininity directly to consumerism). anyway, i think i got a little off track here, but i just really think your main thesis was really good. i'm subscribing!!!

[@janlakuse5199]
what a pleasant and thoroughly [sic] excavative piece. kept me company on a most rainy day, thanks again, indigo!