People are obsessed with Taylor Swift. We all know this.
You can study her at school. There was a UniMelb “Swiftposium” featuring research from 78 institutions. Fans frequently analyse her nail polish to decipher hints about her next release. A publisher scheduled a mysterious 544-page memoir, and rumours went that Taylor wrote it because 5+4+4 = 13 and, as any Swift worth their salt would know, 13 is Taylor’s favourite number.
My question is… how do Swifties find the time? When did they track down her ancestors’ Mayflower documentation and learn streaming data jargon? Is ranking her boyfriends their 9-5 job?
For Zachary Hourihane the answer is: yes, actually.
Swift isn’t just a pop star — she’s the architect of her own universe, deliberately crafting a world of Easter eggs, hidden meanings, and interconnected storylines that fans can endlessly explore. And with the Eras Tour catapulting her beyond traditional celebrity, there are more people than ever eager to dive deep into Taylor-lore. Which is where Zachary comes in.
The 28-year-old is known as the Swiftologist online, and has been creating content about Taylor Swift for over four years. He’s been featured in HBO’s Bad Blood documentary, has seen her in concert 21 times, and even had the chance to meet her. He has a combined 250k+ followers across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, and recently, he quit his marketing job to work in Taylor Swift content creation full time.
He co-hosts a podcast called Evolution of a Snake, which exists partially wherever-you-get-your-podcasts for 50-100k weekly listeners, and partially behind a Patreon. With 4,000+ Patreon subscribers paying between $3-25 monthly (most opt for the $6 tier), this is his main way of turning Swiftology into a living. Do a little back-of-the-napkin math — 4,000 subscribers, $6 average, split between co-hosts, minus some modest podcasting overhead — and suddenly starting a Patreon doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
But what does being a Swiftologist actually mean? How does someone gain qualifications? What’s it like to interface with possibly the most formidable (insane) fan base around?
I had to find out… so I called him.
What is it like to study Taylor Swift full-time?
It’s 10am in Singapore when Zach picks up. On video call, he’s nice, funny, and quick. But what’s his deal — how did he get so deep in Taylor-space?
The short answer is that Zachary is a writer who found his medium by accident. With a journalism background, his analyses sound exactly like what you’d expect from someone who spends their days close-reading for subtext: thoughtful, articulate, and often surprising.
In a recent video, Zachary announces that he’s writing a book and discusses his literary influences. Among them he cites I Love Russia, Elena Kostyuchenko‘s political reportage of Putin‘s Russia (translated by Bela Shayevich and Ilona Chavasse), which he describes as acerbic and humane.
He’d been part of the online fandom since age 13 — he’s loved her since he first heard “Our Song” — but his career of analysing Swift really kicked off during the pandemic.
“Taylor dropped folklore when reaction videos were really starting to become a thing on YouTube,” he explains. “It was this seismic event in Taylor’s career — she’d never surprise-released an album before. I usually just wrote down my first impressions, but this time, I wanted to record my reaction for posterity.”
He’d been a Swiftie Tumblr poster as a teenager, but 2020 was his first time venturing into video content. The video gained traction, as did his follow-up reaction to evermore. Then came a twist of fate: his journalism job started laying off writers.
“I hated being in a position where something could be taken away from me like that,” he says. “I decided I wanted to own what I did, so around 2022, I started putting real effort into creating Taylor content. It took a good two years of treating it like a full time job [while working in marketing] before it actually was one.”
Zachary Hourihane is an expert Taylor Swift analyst. (Credit: TikTok)
Within the fanbase, though, he’s a pretty controversial figure.
“People misconstrue me wanting to critique her as me being a covert hater,” he tells me. “The communities don’t like it when I don’t say something unilaterally flattering about her.”
He loves Taylor, but he doesn’t love everything about her — which has gotten him into hot water with the other Swifties, particularly after a polarising video essay on her billionaire status.
“[Swifties] are pretty aggressive and creative with their insults. They know how to circumvent platform censorship.”
The death threats he receives are as convoluted as they are disturbing…
Some Swifties describe the way that he should kill himself so that the automated TikTok censors don’t notice that they’re telling him to kill himself for… not being a big enough fan.
Of course, calling Zach not-a-fan is wild. He’s seen her in concert 21 times (by now everyone on this planet is aware just how hard it is to get tickets to one show — now imagine that 21 times). He’s attended secret sessions and met her in person (“it honestly felt like catching up with a friend,” he tells me, “which was bizarre and not true, but that’s how she makes you feel.”)
His TikTok is full of videos of him sobbing at Eras; he considers her to be the world’s greatest songwriter; and on our call, he tells me that she’s so essential to his identity that “there’s no me without Taylor.”
So yeah, he’s a fan.
And still: he fundamentally believes that a billion dollars is an inappropriate amount of wealth for anyone to accumulate.
You might’ve seen this graphic of Taylor’s private jet flights in a year — if you somehow haven’t here it is.
This isn’t even a touring year, Zach explains in a TikTok, yet her private jet was still responsible for 8000 carbon tonnes of emissions — 1,100 times more than a regular person’s annual total. Sure, security is an issue — but when it comes to 20 minute flights, he thinks she could just “sit in a fucking bulletproof car”.
“Taylor takes a lot of extremely short flights, 20 minutes…You’re Taylor Swift; I understand security is an issue. You can sit in a fucking bulletproof care.”
To Zachary, recognising Taylor as a real human means understanding her as flawed — even if it alienates him from a lot of the fan community.
So the fans are a mixed bag, but what about Taylor herself?
I ask Zachary whether he thinks she’d like his analyses — would she find it fulfilling to be studied so intensely? Or would she rather he go back to the part about how she’s the best songwriter and fuck off with the rest?
He says she probably doesn’t love having her life scrutinised — at least not in that way.
There’s no shortage of Swiftie creators who are invariably supportive, who believe her emissions are really normal and not alarming, who won’t even admit to skipping a song.
And, Zachary notes, it’s clear the Swift machine rewards this type of loyalty. These are the creators who get invited to VIP sections. They’re given handwritten notes about how Taylor really loves the videos where they say she’s the most beautiful genius in the world. Which like — who wouldn’t?
So, no, Zachary concludes, Taylor probably wouldn’t be thrilled with all his work.
“I think my billionaire video really would not sit well with her.”
I ask if he cares.
He says he used to — but, honestly not anymore.
“I used to care a lot about whether she thought I was a good fan or not. Then I went to a secret session and that’s kind of the epitome of being a fan. Suddenly, I had this freedom to not have to watch my ps and qs all the time. I really enjoy analysing Taylor, and I think at this point having interaction from her would burst my bubble.”
Zachary Hourihane in his Taylor Swift merch. (Credit: Zachary Hourihane / Instagram)
His work isn’t all about Taylor the person. He loves her discography, but he’s also interested in her place in the celebrity landscape and the mechanics of the music industry.
She’s one facet of his larger interest: the way we frame pop culture narratives.
“When so many people are interested in something, that tells you something about the way that the world works. Cultural flashpoints that help us track what our culture was doing or thinking at that time.”
I ask what Taylor tells us about how the world works. Obviously, it’s hard to pin down one version of her. Over the past 18 years, Taylor has gone through many — I’m sorry — eras. Still, a particular phase stands out to Zachary.
“For a long time there was a very misogynistic dismissal of art that was created by young [women] for young [women],” he says.
For her first five or six albums, he says:
“She was viewed like, ‘Oh, this is good for a young artist. This is good for a girl.’ There was doubt cast upon whether she actually wrote her songs… this huge disbelief that a young woman could be so in control of her creativity.”
He believes that Taylor’s rise has genuinely shifted something in the culture.
“[Now] artists like Olivia Rodrigo are met on their first album with a gentle hand from the music industry, analysing her work seriously.”
From Taylor, he says, we’ve learned “that teenage girls are important. They’re capable of creating great art.”
When we hang up, I think about this: I like “august” as much as the next girl but I’m probably less interested in Taylor herself than I am in the people talking about her. I like Zachary, but I’m intrigued by all of them: the artists researching creative ownership, the sleuths learning numerology to predict her release schedule.
I’m interested in how we handle the fact that there’s good and bad parts to everyone we admire. Or, when it comes to the subset of fans who would rather you literally die than say “Mastermind” isn’t a banger — how we don’t.
But as potent as the hate is, it’s transient. One day, Zachary’s enemy number one; then he’ll post a TikTok defending her chart strategy.
“This is clearly not the Taylor Swift philanthropic society for other artists who can’t outsell her,” he says.
“The person you want to prop up against Taylor as a real artist who had their accolades stolen by her greed participates in the same processes. She’s just better at it.”
Suddenly, the users who were sending him death threats are back in the comments.
This time, they like him.
The post I Left My Marketing Job To Be A Full-Time Taylor Swift Content Creator, Here’s What My Life Is Like appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
