When she learned of a new Taylor Swift album, Kaeli Dance posted a video of herself in a full clown costume.
"Actual footage of me clowning for TS12," reads the text on Dance's video.
The pop star's website featured a countdown to August 12 at 12:12 a.m. EDT to announce her 12th studio album "The Life of a Showgirl." In the hours that fans waited, Swifties were "clowning" — a word that has become folklore within the fandom.
"Whenever we would talk about another Taylor Swift album, the word clown would immediately be used," said Dance, 26, a Swiftie and content creator. She initially posted the clown footage in February in a video that wasn't even about Swift — but Swifties arrived because of the word "clown" — and the video got 2 million views. She's reused the footage since in other videos explicitly about Swift (and gotten millions more views).
"That's how ingrained the clown concept has become in the Swiftie fancore," said Dance, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. "The comments section is where the culture is created.... There's a real language and terminology here."
