Let’s travel back in time to Sunday, July 17, 2016. It’s late. You’re about to crawl into bed and dream about work being canceled the next day, when all of a sudden your phone starts blowing up. “Kim exposed Taylor,” 19 people texted you simultaneously. What!? WTF does that mean? Exposed what? Exposed how? Were these people referring to Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift or just two random people named Kim and Taylor? So many questions, but you’re too tired to find the answers.
You begrudgingly log onto the Internet, and that’s when you see it: Kim’s lengthy Snapchat Story, which features her husband, Kanye West, and Taylor having a detailed phone conversation about his song “Famous.” You’re immediately reminded of the drama connected to this phone conversation: Taylor claimed she didn’t approve of Kanye calling her a “bitch” on “Famous,” but both he and Kim said the opposite. According to them, Taylor absolutely green-lit the lyric — and she was excited about the controversy.
Kim published this phone conversation to set the record straight, but it honestly didn’t confirm anything one way or the other. Yes, Taylor and Kanye talked about “Famous” during their chat, but not the “bitch” lyric specifically. All this proved was that Taylor knew about the song in general, but not the details.
Of course, this didn’t stop the Internet from praising Kim for “exposing” Taylor. The hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty quickly popped up on Twitter, and fans started spamming Taylor’s account with the snake emoji to show their disdain.
Why the snake emoji? That’s what people were using at this time to bully Taylor. This started happening after Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Calvin Harris, went on a Twitter rant about her, but it really ramped up after the Kardashian drama.
But now Taylor is fighting back. On Monday (August 21), she started dropping mysterious snake videos on her Instagram page. These clips led to the announcement of her new album, Reputation, which seems to be a clap-back to everyone who trolled her last year — including the people who called her a snake.
Now Taylor’s fans are using the snake symbol against Kim. Just look at this recent message Kim posted to Twitter; several Taylor fans replied to it with — you guessed it — snake emojis.
🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍
— Agata Sadowska (@agataswift13) August 23, 2017
Is this petty? Absolutely. Kim, though, still isn’t standing for it. According to BuzzFeed, the reality TV star has blocked the snake emoji from her Instagram page — which means people can’t use it in her comments section. A BuzzFeed staffer tested it by writing the snake emoji on Kim’s page but then found it had disappeared when he tried to view it from a different account. Interesting.
Apparently, this is a thing you can do. If you go to Instagram’s settings and select Comments, you can set a filter that prevents certain phrases from appearing on your page — including emojis.
