To some, like Cassy Simmons, who drove to the listening party from San Diego Saturday morning, the group’s love for Swift is no different than rabid sports fans’ enthusiasm for their favorite teams.

“What’s different about us going to a concert dressed up with our bracelets? That’s the same thing as you going to a football game and putting a mask or body paint on,” Simmons said. “Leave us alone. Let us enjoy it. It doesn’t mean you have to.”

The Swiftie culture that these fans know and identify with, as opposed to guard-dogging and Twitter doxxing, is one that has fostered a vibrant community and lifelong friendships for them.

“Swifties are my life,” Agrawal said. “I don’t have other communities outside of this — it’s harder to connect with people. With the Swifties, I can be a total stranger to someone and then be able to have something in common with them. Taylor is probably the biggest part of my life. I’ve dedicated so much of my life to her and I’ve seen so many other thousands of people have done the same and it’s so easy to connect with those people.”

Saturday’s celebration, designed to bring together local Swifties, also boasted a robust agenda: a game of bingo related to the new album, a fashion show featuring the themed outfits of attendees, a “sad poetry” open mic and a dance party to close out the evening.

Even with the busy docket, much of the fan base’s attraction to Saturday’s celebration was to hear from Reagan Baylee, the host of the popular “Swifties School” podcast. The digital content creator led a “Taylor Talk” discussion as a part of the four-hour day, and came prepared with a notebook full of thoughts on the album, theories about its meaning and questions to pose to the group.

The interactive discussion involved the group “getting into the trenches” of the album’s symbolism, decoding the Easter eggs hidden in last week’s library installation at the Grove and even doing the “flight math” to see if the singer can make it to the Met Gala in May before her Paris stops on the Eras Tour.

“I love when we get crazy,” Baylee said to the group as they threw out numbers and theories.

Baylee says the Swiftie community brings together people of all ages and music tastes, given the rich lyrical and musical diversity of Swift’s discography.

“Either you get it or you don’t,” Baylee said of the fan base culture. “People live a lot of their lives online these days and don’t realize this translates offline for a lot of people. What I hope to do with my content is cultivate that same community and feeling that Taylor’s done but through my own life experiences and our shared love of all the songs and things Taylor has done in this world.”

That sense of community was in full force at the celebratory gathering, with several fans saying they felt a “sisterhood” or familial-like bond with their fellow fans.

Brooke Muschott, a tortured poet in her own right, fittingly summed up the artist’s impact on her and her fellow Swifties at the evening’s poetry open mic.

“I can pour my heart out to a room of strangers because you did it first,” she said. “We survived because of you.”

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