You Feud, You Feed.

“Traylor” Haters Feuding and Feeding the Algorithm Monster

The definition of a rabbit hole: A path into a bizarre world, where everyday rules do not apply. Welcome! Because that’s the hole we live in when we enter social media. This rabbit hole is one the majority of NFL fans have skipped down, and here’s why the NFL (and social media moguls) love you for it.

You’re perusing your social feed of choice and see a photo, reel, meme, or article featuring the several-month-long coupled up Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. Your thumb stops. You click, you read, you watch, you engage. And while you self-declare to be in one bucket or the other – for their affair or against it – you’re all definitely in another bucket that is one and the same, and it’s called the Taylor effect.

Players gonna play… likely with good sportsmanship. You might engage with enthusiasm or positivity, or perhaps you do nothing at all because you don’t really care. Or maybe you’re actually a decent human being who doesn’t say anything because you don’t have anything nice to say (ahem, kindergarten manners still apply in adulthood, no?).

And oh, how the haters gonna hate… But this is where it gets fun, and I’m not wrong. I’m guilty myself of spending more time than I care to admit reading comments – some good, some bad, and some downright ignorant. And don’t get me started on the comment replies and heated debates and arguments, sometimes threads in the hundreds. It is the epitome of the literal reason why the popular Michael Jackson popcorn meme exists.

This season, the official NFL Instagram posted hundreds of photos and videos of the two stars just doing what they do – playing a game, watching a game, and celebrating, respectively. Although the couple’s romance has fueled many fires across avid fans of all 32 teams, the NFL has seen a whopping 53% increase in fan following amongst female audiences thanks in part to this behavior. ?

Hate it or love it, the Traylor ‘Era’ has brought an additional $331.5M in brand value for the Chiefs and the NFL. In other numbers, the NFL experienced a 20 percent increase in sponsorships, has a massive surge in adult female viewership of all age brackets, and teenage girls taking new interest in NFL has an insane increase of viewership – 53 percent!

Here's what’s funny and why the NFL is laughing all the way to the bank… If you’re one of the haters, you’re the target demographic of social media algorithms. Let me explain how this works (for those of you who don't already have it figured out) and why you’ll need to change your habits if you really do “hate, hate, hate, hate.” I secretly think you love it, though.

If you see a post from the NFL, or any other source, (whether it is in your feed because you follow them, it’s sponsored, or in your discovery feed), and you engage with it AT ALL (this means a like, a comment, a like to a comment, a reply to a comment, or even a share or save), Instagram remembers your action. It learns from your action (and no, it doesn’t read your obligatory ‘we don’t care button -->’ comment) and stores it to your individual feed preference algorithm. What does this mean? You’ll swiftly begin to see a lot more of Travis and Taylor’s Love Story.

And just like that, you yourself have become part of the Taylor effect. Whether you wanted to or not, you did. If you want to remove yourself from the TNT bomb, you need to ignore, unfollow accounts, and disengage. Because even if your disapproval prompts you to post on your OWN feed about it, you're still saying "I care." Because if you didn't, you wouldn't. Also, Tabasco would like to thank you for promoting their product.

I personally find it entertaining to see grown ass people arguing and fighting all over social media, turning an innocent and wholesome situation into a knockdown, drag out “Traylor Park” fight. I’ve read so many words of disgrace and disdain from both men and women alike (faceplant), I’m embarrassed for these people.

The psychology behind the pissed off people’s behavior is simple: It’s working. You’d be doing yourself a big favor to just Shake It Off and scroll on.