Taylor Swift certainly has an effect on people. In fact, she many times has an unintentionally huge effect. Sure, she wants her music to matter and resonate with her fellow human beings because that is how she makes her living. A very good one at that.
But sometimes people internalize Swift news to too great a degree. It might be easy to forget that we don't really know Taylor Swift. If she does something in her personal life that has no real bearing on our lives, other than to be distantly happy (or sad) for her.
She isn't our friend, though we might still love her professionally. Swift appears to be a good person, though we don't know her really at all.
University of Tennessee viral moment about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce seems staged
Still, some University of Tennessee students recently lucked out when their professor, who was clearly a Swiftie, canceled a class because Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce. (If you missed it, and how could you?, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end popped the question at some point within the last two weeks.)
At least, that is how it seems. The class was set to take a biochem midterm exam, only they got a bit more time to study for it.
In the clip, the professor says, "Hello, class. As you know, we are supposed to have a biochem midterm today. But Taylor and Travis just got engaged. Due to this information, I can't focus. You all can't focus. Class is canceled, get out of here. We gotta go. We need time to process this information."
The problem is that it all appears staged. If you, as a student, walked into a class, sat down expecting to take a test, and then had a professor say class is canceled because a pop star and a football player are getting engaged, you might wait a second before leaving. "Is this a joke?" you might ask yourself.
Instead, the class all gets up at once, without hesitation, and leaves. That isn't how a group of people normally reacts. In other words, it appears the University of Tennessee professor was trying to steal a moment from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's happy announcement and create a viral minute for himself.
Was that truly the professor's intention? Maybe not, but how else would someone know to film what he was saying? Questions abound. But his 15 minutes of fame have now been recorded.