Taylor Swift has always been a pop culture Rorschach test. Every song Swift releases, every single she performs or awards show she attends, every candid photo of her is up for everyone’s interpretation. What people see depends on how they feel about her.

To some, she’s a ruthless capitalist who crisscrosses the Earth on her private jet, yells at her sweet professional football player boyfriend, and doesn’t have the integrity to take a side in the upcoming election. Plus, she might have ignored Celine Dion at the Grammys.

To others, she’s the greatest songwriter of her generation, a feminist who isn’t afraid to be successful or even misunderstood — because everything she does is for her fans.

Extreme interpretations could never fully capture the totality of Taylor Swift, but they offer a portrait of her gravitational pull on pop culture. The clearest thing about Taylor Swift is that no one can stop talking about her, and that when it comes to the pop star, it’s impossible to remain neutral.

Ahead of her album release — The Tortured Poets Department on April 19 — Swift has become exceptionally famous, and in doing so she has maybe broken all of us. She’s always been successful and thrived in the spotlight, but over the last few years she’s seemingly achieved a rare level of celebrity that makes her and the attention swirling around her feel inescapable, even for Swift.

“Whatever’s happening and whatever she’s doing, it’s working. Her persona and cultural dominance feel more saturated than ever,” DJ Louis XIV, a fan of Swift and host of the podcast Pop Pantheon, told me. Louis has adored the star since 2008’s Fearless but says he could do without the constant debates surrounding her.

“As the biggest star of the moment, it can feel like Taylor Swift devours 80 percent of our entire pop cultural discourse. But there’s also an element of that dominance that is not even necessarily her fault,” he added.

It’s impossible to avoid everyone’s feelings, ideas, criticisms against and adoration for her, and even more difficult to remain impartial on Swift. Like a Rorschach, some of that’s by design. But some of it is a peek into how efficient social media has become at crushing any kind of nuance.

Taylor Swift has become........

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