Swilce? Tayvis? Traylor?

I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce, star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. You probably have heard this, because it’s created a perfect storm of American popular culture, combining the hype of football and the ubiquity of pop music. The Yin and Yang of American culture have been suddenly pushed together, and both sides are acting kind of awkward. 

As someone who watches football, but shies away from popular music, I’m only seeing part of it. But the football half is pretty embarrassing. On the one hand, a lot of people want to talk about it, but aren’t really sure how, so they just make a lot of bad puns on Swift’s songs. And that got old really fast. I don’t know if something similar is going on in the pop world. Oh God, I just realized, they must be making endless “tight end” jokes. My condolences.

It’s also embarrassing the way the football world is acting like a nerdy kid who gets a chance to sit at the cool kids’ table. That’s a bit surprising, given the grip that football seems to have on American culture. But even football has room to grow, and suddenly getting exposure with a young and female demographic has them seeing dollar signs. So now the NFL is passing notes in class asking if the cool kids have said anything about it.

But more than anything, this incident shows how we, as a society, still haven’t figured out how to handle the current culture. The celebrity industry wants to make this the story of the century, but many of us have got the message that obsessing over people we don't know is a bad idea, even when we are fans of them. The fact is, there isn’t much for any of us to say about two people dating, when we personally don’t know either one. Whether you’re a fan of one or both or neither, there’s not much of a reaction you can have, other than wishing them luck. Again, the football world is demonstrating this well, with football analysts suddenly being asked to say something about the couple, but not really having anything to add, and instead just making the umpteenth "Blank Space" joke.

Part of the problem is that we just don't have universal touchstones in society anymore. There are few things that everyone cares about, but the media keeps excitedly hoping it will find one. Even Swift on her own is a good example of it. Her fame has reached a level where the media is assuming she is a universal obsession. But we don't really have universal obsessions in a world where we're so free to choose our personal culture. The most anyone can hope for is fandom from a dedicated and large minority, like Swift has. (Or, for that matter, football has.) But that still means that most people don't have a strong connection. So although you’ll see some examples of fans crossing over into both cultural worlds — like those who famously flooded retailers with orders for Kelce’s jersey — more people are just aggravated with the expectations to suddenly care about the other side of American culture.