Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding will not boast the presence of her legion of fans in the audience, but the public's unwavering desire to attend has fueled the selection of "parasocial" as Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year. The world's most popular English dictionary honored this term, partially due to the notoriety it gained from the famous couple's engagement. The dictionary noted in its announcement, "Global coverage of Taylor Swift's announcement of her engagement to Travis Kelce caused a surge in searches for 'parasocial,' as the media dissected fans' reactions. Posts by fans read, 'I'm not being parasocial about it,' and talk about 'a Swiftie being parasocial for 10 minutes straight.'"
Indeed, Taylor and Travis's joint August 26 post announcing their engagement garnered nearly 40 million likes and set a record for the fastest post to reach one million likes—achieving this milestone in less than six hours. When asked about the frenzy surrounding their romance, both Taylor and Travis maintain a sense of normalcy. "Whenever I'm with her, it feels like we're just regular people," Travis told GQ in an August profile. "When there is not a camera on us, we're just two people that are in love."
While the Kansas City Chiefs player acknowledged that their romance "can be perceived as something else because of how much it is talked about," he assures it's no different than any other happy relationship. "It happened very organically, even though from a media standpoint it was being tracked," he added. "It still happened very organically."
Meanwhile, Taylor has expressed her appreciation for how her guy on the Chiefs can weather the fishbowl she's permanently swimming in. "If he's seeing things and he thinks it's funny and it doesn't affect his day at all," Taylor explained during her August 13 appearance on New Heights. "That's going to completely bleed into the way I metabolize these things." As she put it, "It's at a point where my name can be in the actual headline and it can still be none of my business."
