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When she learned of a new Taylor Swift<\/a> album, Kaeli Dance posted a video of herself in a full clown costume.<\/p>\n “Actual footage of me clowning for TS12,” reads the text on Dance’s video.<\/p>\n The pop star’s website featured a countdown to August 12 at 12:12 a.m. EDT<\/a> to announce her 12th studio album<\/a> “The Life of a Showgirl<\/a>.” In the hours that fans waited, Swifties were “clowning”<\/a> \u2014 a word that has become folklore within the fandom.<\/p>\n “Whenever we would talk about another Taylor Swift album<\/a>, the word clown would immediately be used,” said Dance, 26, a Swiftie and content creator. She initially posted the clown footage<\/a> in February in a video that wasn’t even about Swift \u2014 but Swifties arrived because of the word “clown” \u2014 and the video got 2 million views. She’s reused the footage since in other videos explicitly about Swift (and gotten millions more views).<\/p>\n “That’s how ingrained the clown concept has become in the Swiftie fancore,” said Dance, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. “The comments section is where the culture is created…. There’s a real language and terminology here.”<\/p>\n