Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are seen leaving SNL after party on October 15, 2023 in New York, New … [+]
Taylor Swift’s boyfriend is not a role for the faint-hearted, as Travis Kelce recently discovered.
The pop star has ascended into a one-woman franchise that can turn the tides of the box office, even the voting booth; a gargantuan swarm of “Swifties” are always ready to investigate the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s existence, particularly her love life.
Swift’s last boyfriend, singer Matty Healy, appeared on the problematic podcast known as The Adam Friedland Show and was eviscerated by the Swifties, who drew more media attention to the podcast and its hosts than ever before.
Now, Swift is dating Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, which ignited a surge of interest in the NFL as Swifties latched on to their icon’s new favorite sport.
Of course, Swifties instantly got to work digging through more than a decade of Kelce’s old tweets, as meticulous as an army of digital archaeologists.
To Kelce’s (presumed) relief, the Swifties found a treasure trove of achingly earnest, but amusingly basic observations, which resulted in fans affectionately dubbing Kelce a “himbo.”
What Is A Himbo?
It’s a gender-reversed “bimbo.” The term is used to describe handsome, beefy dudes who might not be the smartest, but are positive, loyal and easily pleased; essentially, the human version of a golden retriever.
Famous himbos in pop culture include Kronk from Emperor’s New Groove, the MCU’s Thor, Goku of Dragon Ball Z and every single one of the Kens from the Barbie movie.
What Did Kelce Tweet?
Back before Twitter was renamed “X,” Kelce was a regular user, the kind of guy who was happy to tweet the random thoughts running through his head. Kelce’s tweets are imbued with blissful optimism and peppered with exclamation marks.
Kelce commented on the pleasures of IHOP and Olive Garden, and expressed his desire to never work, only seeking to “sleep in my bed and do nothing with my life!!”
Kelce’s love of “Chipolte,” along with his amusingly consistent misspelling, proved one of his biggest hits.
Kelce’s greatest work, however, was undoubtedly his 2011 encounter with a “squirle.”
Kelce offered a squirrel some bread and observed that the creature “straight smashed all of it!!!! I had no idea they ate bread like that!! Haha.” Kelce topped off his tweet with the hashtag “#crazy.”
Comparisons to Kronk quickly followed, and “squirle” became a meme in itself.
During the initial uncovering of tweets, it seemed that Kelce could do no wrong, and the football player was viewed as a relatable hunk.
Alison Herman, a critic for Variety, wrote that the NFL star was “experiencing the most positive possible version of the internet digging up your tweets from 2011.”
One fan even wrote that Kelce’s posts highlighted the lost glory of Twitter, the halcyon days of “Dudes expressing themselves without fear of judgement during study hall.”
But alas, the honeymoon period didn’t last. For Kelce tweeted his thoughts freely, before internet culture shifted to embrace inclusivity, during a time when humor was more casually offensive.
Hence, Taylor Swift fans also found tweets making fun of “fat people,” “ugly girls” and the r-word, which has since been recognized as a slur against disabled people.
The love died down a little as the internet grappled with the nature of Kelce’s offenses. During the peak of Twitter’s popularity, old tweets often resulted in people losing their jobs, or YouTubers, streamers and random Twitter users swarmed by internet mobs.
Celebrities have been temporarily taken down by their sordid internet history; tweets from former Twitter legend Chrissy Teigen in which she viciously bullied Courtney Stodden resulted in her popularity plummeting (she has since returned to the platform), while homophobic tweets from Kevin Hart prompted the comedian to step away from hosting the Oscars.
Outrage cycles, however, only last as long as the next controversy, and there’s always another coming down the pipeline.
Few have the encyclopedic memory required to keep track of who the public is meant to be mad at, and the nature of their offenses. For as much as “cancel culture” used to be a topic of serious debate, the vast majority of “cancelled” celebrities have managed to move on, unscathed.
Travis Kelce Reacts To His Old Tweets
Travis Kelce acknowledged his old tweets going viral on his New Heights podcast, which he hosts with his brother, Jason Kelce.
Travis saw the funny side of the situation, clarifying that “nobody” followed him on Twitter back then, and that he has “been trying to get all those tweets deleted since” he started playing professional football, back in 2013.
“Sure enough, it came surface level and everybody f–king dove into 2011,” he said. “What a f–king year that was. … What was I even f–king doing in some of these tweets?”
Kelce jokingly commented that he has been “tortured” since the tweets went viral.
Of course, now that Kelce has become part of the Swift brand, his problematic tweets have been deleted (although they have been archived), and internet users have largely dismissed the controversy, again hailing him as a himbo.
Kelce should be safe from the wrath of the Swifties from here; as long as he steers clear of The Adam Friedland Show.