Taylor Swift and the cult of personality

I've tried my best to see the whole Taylor Swift phenomenon as a positive thing. I mean she's pretty wholesome and sensible, isn't she? A pretty good role model for the hordes of pre-teen, teen and even adult Swifties who follow her every move and word? A bit vapid and Barbie-like perhaps, but even Barbie has her redeeming facets.

But I don't know. Seeing the gathered masses as they attend or travel to her Eras Tour performances, it's a little bit scary. That kind of obsessive single-minded group activity reminds me of the Muslim hajj, or maybe a mass personalty cult (and we know how those usually turn out).

The other thing, of course, is the fact that ISIS and other groups have established her and her followers as a terrorist target. Ms. Swift has not made any anti-Muslim statements that I am aware of, nor even any pro-Christian ones for that matter. So, why would they see her as a legitimate target, unless they see her as the head and deity of a new upstart religion, or maybe just the glaring apotheosis of Western decadence and hedonism.

Sometimes it does seem that way. Seeing the reverence on the faces of these (mainly) young girls, and the way in which people are willing to travel huge distances and pay huge sums of money to see her, it does have some religious overtones, with friendship bracelets and sequins replacing crucifixes and hair shirts (a slight improvement, I guess).

Maybe it's no different from Beatlesmania (and maybe Presleymania, Michael-Jackson-mania, BTS-mania) at its height. Pictures of screaming, swooning fans of that era are also pretty disturbing to watch. I guess any phenomenon that is quite so successful (commercially, emotionally, whateverly) is never quite comfortable to watch. One always thinks of other charismatic, but much less wholesome, historical figures - think Hitler, Stalin, Manson, Trump - even if the circumstances are quite different.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into this, but I'm far from the only one who sees cult-like qualities in Taylor Swift's fandom. Her passionate, uncompromising and uncritical supporters have generated many online analyses like The Cult of Taylor Swift (and why we keep worshiping at her altar), The Terrifying Cult of Fandom - a case study in Swifties, The Modern-Day Cult of Taylor Swift's Fandom, Are Swifties In A Cult?, etc. and many fans and ex-fans talk about how they extricated themselves from the toxicity of the Swiftie cult (often suffering a backlash from the faithful). 

As a billionaire faux-feminist with a ruinous carbon footprint and a rather half-hearted political conscience, there is a lot to criticize in Ms. Swift. But if you try doing that in a public forum, you will be pounced upon by legions of oblivious fans and stans who believe she can do no wrong. If that's not a cult, I don't know what is.