A man paying $4,000 to smash a guitar signed by Taylor Swift was already a weird story. It got even weirder today and then again one more time for good measure.
The saga began when a signed Taylor Swift guitar was up for auction in Waxahachie, Texas, just south of Dallas, during the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner to support agricultural education for local kids. The guitar was donated by a third party and sold for four grand.
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The man who won it immediately smashed it with a hammer as onlookers cheered. Videos of the smashing went viral, quickly racking up millions of views across the Internet.
While no clear motive has been publicly stated, the 67-year-old guitar smasher said he didn’t mean anything by it and that “it was just a joke.” The auctioneer undercut his statement by suggesting it was “a political thing.” Given the context of an older man smashing a Taylor Swift sign guitar deep in the heart of Texas as everyone else cheered him on, one can assume it has to do with Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the race for the presidency, but who knows.
But then, days later, the Huffington Post got word from Taylor Swift’s merchandise team that the guitar was not authentically signed by the singer, nor was it an official instrument used by her at any point. The source said that signed guitars usually come with certificates of authenticity, which was not displayed at all or even spoken about in any of the reports on the weird Boomer-ass display of misplaced aggression and impotent rage.
Swift’s rabid fans corroborated this finding by going into sleuth mode and determining that none of the markings on the guitar were consistent with any of Swift’s branding. So, for a bit there it seemed like the guy paid $4,000 to smash a quote-unquote Taylor Swift-signed guitar that wasn’t even signed by her.
But then TMZ chimed in earlier today with an update, saying that “a certificate of authenticity confirms Taylor did sign the instrument” and that “the buyer paid for the item and chose to smash it up himself.” That last bit conflicts with what the guitar smasher previously stated: It wasn’t even his idea, he just went along with a “joke” that someone else at the auction suggested.
TMZ’s update doesn’t specify whether its reporters have seen the certificate of authenticity themselves and confirmed its, uh, authenticity or if they’re just taking the organization’s word for it. So there could be yet another twist to this very stupid and kind of sad tale of elder rage.
