Taylor Swift Fans Had a Totally Reasonable Reaction to Olivia Wilde's Mom Joke

By Alberto Cox Délano | Celebrity | October 12, 2023 |

By Alberto Cox Délano | Celebrity | October 12, 2023 |

Olivia Wilde just started a joke, but perhaps she should’ve known better from her own experience.

The suggestion didn’t come from her mouth and/or typing fingers. She merely shared a tweet from another person on her Instagram stories, which is in the field of sharing ideas you endorse; it’s slightly less zero-effort than a retweet. It was the following:

It was a joke, nothing but a witty observation, as the NFL is seeing an unexpected surge in interest since Taylor started dating Travis Kelce. It’s the only bit of positive publicity the NFL has had since… probably Prince’s Super Bowl Halftime show. Come on! We all know Taylor isn’t going to date a scientist any time soon. She is in her Himbo phase! Her previous boyfriend acts like he’s gotten punched in the head multiple times, while the current one gets paid to get punched in the head multiple times.

This tweet is the definition of a mom joke, the kind of white jokes mums would share alongside praises for coffee and red wine. More specifically, this is what we call an MSNBC-mom joke, or the kind of mum/dad jokes we Millennials will share to annoy our future offspring.

But of course, this being the internet, people cannot just let go of a silly joke, especially if the joker happens to be a woman hated by certain fandoms. And it just so happens that Olivia and Taylor have shared the same (DUSTIN: ALBERTO, NO!)… ex. They share the same ex, Harry Styles. So, while the Swifties took this as a bitter ex dissing one of Harry’s first public romances, the fans of Styles simply pounded on her for making a joke that tangentially involves their beloved.

If you search “Olivia Wilde” now, as of October 12, 2023, the feed will be flooded with the two fandoms relentlessly pounding on her for (checks notes)… being a Bad Feminist (granted, she’s very much a white feminist, but she was just making a joke), clout chasing (as opposed to nobody else in Hollywood) and … not becoming a climate scientist herself. Sigh, cringe with me:

Girl, no…

OK, this one’s funny.

There were some arguments that actually made sense:

I get this point, but when the lay is that good … the planet can be damned. And it seems clear that Olivia and Harry were getting some very good lays. Didn’t it double the production budget of Don’t Worry Darling or something?

And among the reasonable voices … this woman said exactly what I’ve just said, and I swear I found this tweet after I wrote the first paragraphs:

Fandoms are the worst, but at least there was one upside to all of this: Not a single far-right, blue tick trying to chime in with their Babylon Bee-style jokes and their brute misogyny, even though Olivia’s joke was a prime case of actual, liberal virtue signaling. Probably because they didn’t find out.

Alberto Cox does wonder if the Swifties and the Harriers fight each other or they just work on carefully divided territories, like the New York mafia families.