The internet, that great museum of modern inanity, is once again ablaze with the kind of triviality that would make Caligula blush. Taylor Swift, the pop chameleon and master of the art of calculated ambiguity, has set the hive mind buzzing with rumoured wedding plans. Fans, armed with magnifying glasses and spreadsheets, are parsing Instagram posts for hints: a white dress in a photoshoot, a friend's offhand comment, the alignment of the stars.
This is not merely gossip. It is the death rattle of a culture that has abandoned seriousness for the shallow worship of celebrity. We live in an era where the private lives of entertainers command more analysis than the fall of empires.
The Victorians, at least, had the decency to fetishise royalty and public figures of substance. Swift's nuptials, if they occur, will be a spectacle of breathtaking emptiness, a wedding of the machine to the market. The real tragedy is not that we care, but that we have nothing else left to care about.
The Romans distracted themselves with bread and circuses. We have Instagram and album drops. Progress, indeed.
