When Taylor Swift Addressed the Snake-Emoji Controversy During Her Reputation Tour in 2018

Taylor Swift has a “hisss-tory” with snakes. No, God forbid, she hadn’t been bitten by one, but rather someone called her a ‘snake’ on social media. And it wasn’t received well by the Bad Blood singer. Back in 2018, the singer addressed the controversy around the reptile during one of the stops of her Reputation Stadium Tour .

Swift is known to ditch controversies consciously. She hasn’t been the artist who thrives on drama and tries to cash those for their benefit. But this one time, in 2017, she was dragged into one, which led people to spam her social media with snake emojis, as per TIME Magazine. The singer finally enlightened her fans with the backstory and addressed the fuss.

The Karma singer sat at the piano during her Arizona concert at the University of Phoenix Stadium and addressed the fans, “A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media, and it caught on.” She added, “And then a lot of people called me a lot of names on social media.”

She continued, “I went through some really low times for a while because of it. I went through some times when I didn’t know if I was going to get to do this anymore.” However, she eventually fought the “bad feeling” and used her social media trolling to offer words of wisdom to her fans.

“I wanted to send a message to you guys that if someone uses name-calling to bully you on social media, and even if a lot of people jump on board with it, that doesn’t have to beat you,” Swift advised. “It can strengthen you instead. I learned a really important lesson, and that has to do with how much you value your reputation.”

Swift shared her lesson. “And I think the lesson is that you shouldn’t care so much if you feel misunderstood by a lot of people who don’t know you as long as you feel understood by the people who do know you.” The audience cheered on. Apparently, there’s a whole backstory to the snake controversy that dates back to 2016.

It started with her longtime beef with rapper Kanye West. His then-wife Kim Kardashian posted a series of videos through Snapchat that showed West’s discussion with Swift that centered around controversial lyrics- For all my Southside n***as that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Consequently, the Enchanted singer was dissed on social media using ‘creepy snake emojis.’

The trolling fueled up after the SKIMS founder hinted that the occasion was National Snake Day. However, Swift chose to stay silent on the matter at the time but spoke volumes through her work and songs over the years. She addressed the issue personally in 2018 during her Reputation tour in Arizona.

Other celebrities like Harry Styles, Demi Lovato, Hailey Baldwin, Kendall Jenner, Piers Morgan, and fellow Kardashian-Jenner followed suit in dissing Swift in the snake-emoji controversy. Since then, the singer has embraced the legless reptile emoji, owned it, and used it as a savvy marketer.