“On the Outside Looking in”: Swifties Reacting to Non-Swifties Reacting to Taylor Swift

This essay analyzes fans’ response to online reaction videos from non-fans listening to Taylor Swift’s music. Extending McDaniel and Warren-Crow’s research on reaction videos as performance, and Morris and Galloway’s research on online Swiftie fan culture, I examine thirty reactors, focusing primarily on self-identified male “outsiders.” Viewers assess a reactor’s perceived attention to detail, emotional authenticity, and respect for the original artist. Swifties not only consume reactions but interpret and reward them through “Swiftvangelism,” strategies designed to convert outsiders. These practices constitute a distinct interpretative subgenre of affective fan labor, forming a parasocial web and offering a perceived discursive justice.