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Taylor Swift takes her cat photos to Tumblr

“Taylor here. I’m locking myself in my room and not leaving until I figure out how to use my Tumblr.”

 

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

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Posted on Sep 16, 2014   Updated on May 30, 2021, 2:15 pm CDT

Taylor Swift may not seem like an ideal fit for the slightly hipstery world of Tumblr, but she’s getting the hang of it. Slowly but surely, her blog has become precisely as adorable and self-aware as you’d expect.

Case in point: unironically reblogging fanart of her cats, and then changing it to her phone lock screen.

Photo via taylorswif/Tumblr

Taylor Swift already has a very personal social media presence, particularly on Instagram where she comments on individual fans’ photos, often with supportive messages if they’ve been going through a bad time. Over on Tumblr, this attitude is translated into her confusedly asking fans how to navigate the site (“Taylor here. I’m locking myself in my room and not leaving until I figure out how to use my Tumblr.”), a sentiment that will be very familiar to anyone who has ever set up a Tumblr account and then discovered that there is no instruction manual.

The Washington Post confirmed that Swift runs her own Instagram account, and either her Tumblr blog is just as genuine, or it’s controlled by an incredibly good ghost-writer. She may not be as much of a natural Tumblr user as her pal Lorde (who is seven years younger and has been using Tumblr since before she was famous), but she’s found an extremely Swiftian niche: girly photoblogging where she reposts soft-focus pictures of cats, inanimate objects and, of course, selfies.

Plus, a handful of text posts that are honestly just beyond parody, such as this love letter to the wonders of Fall, including “ANKLE BOOTS.”

Photo via taylorswift/Tumblr

Yes, of course Taylor Swift is a passionate member of pumpkin spice flavor fandom.

The most convincing argument in favor of this Tumblr being operated by the real Taylor Swift is that it makes no effort to be cool. Obviously she’s a beautiful millionaire pop star with a ton of celebrity friends, but she’s also a slightly mom-like awkward homebody who likes to post hundreds of pictures of her cats. Taylor Swift is nothing if not dedicated to her love of objectively boring stuff like monogrammed pillows. She is the pumpkin spice flavoring of social media.

Also, after using Tumblr for more than six months, she’s still asking questions like, “how do I get GIFs?” and “How do I have one of those convos you always see screenshots of on Instagram? Is that by re blogging or is there some sort of conversation board on here?”

No, Taylor, there isn’t any easy way to have a conversation on Tumblr, and there probably never will be. But honestly, you seem to be doing fine so far.

Photo via Eva Rinaldi (CC BY-SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed

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*First Published: Sep 16, 2014, 12:10 pm CDT