Hey, I'm Maya.

I'm a YouTuber, but as people also like to refer to me these days, a content creator.

Hi, I'm Hannah.

I'm a content creator.

But as people like to refer to me these days, also a pathological liar.

Nice.

And this is Rehash, a podcast about the social media phenomena that strike a nerve in our culture, only to be quickly forgotten.

But we think are due for a revisiting.

This season is on The Public Theater, which is all about our collective fascination with a good public villain.

Music which is all about our collective fascination with a good public villain. I'm going to tell you about one of the most famous women in the world and the niche subgroup of fans she has pissed off recently.

Maya, you're probably at least somewhat familiar with Taylor Swift already. Never heard of her.

Well, she's the country-turned-pop megastar known for chronicling her romances with famous men in song.

She's also, according to a dedicated faction of her fan base, not so secretly queer.

So the division within Taylor's fan base between fans who believe she's gay,

aptly named Gaylers, and fans who do not,

given the derogative name Hetlers, it has recently come to a head, and we're going to talk about it.

Ooh, cute theme song. I want to start this off with a question for you, Maria. What, in your opinion,

is the public's perception of Taylor Swift? Hmm. I think it's a hard one to kind of track down

because she's changed so many times over the past few years. And I think she's also,

she's the subject of really intense public attention, really. She's kind of gone from being

like a victim to a hero to a villain to a hero again and maybe a villain again in the span of

her, honestly, pretty long career for a young person. And it's kind of based on whatever era she's in. So yeah, I don't know. It's kind of hard to know for the public who aren't really her dedicated fans. People acknowledge that she's talented, I think, for the most part, but find her a bit of a cringy millennial and also a bit of a white feminist. And that's kind of how I've come to understand her as we should be clear about this. I'm a non-Taylor fan. I don't love her.

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