Taylor's Instagram Is Flooded With Snake Emojis

In the wake of Calvin Harris' Twitter rant against Taylor Swift on Wednesday, Internet trolls — no doubt rubbing their hands together in excitement, delighted with glee — are determined to take Swift down, one well-placed snake emoji at a time. Because this is how one fandom takes down another in these days of emojis and social media, fans of Harris (real name: Adam Wiles) and probably also Katy Perry have taken to flooding T. Swift's Instagram comments with snake emojis. In defense of their idol, Swifties have attempted to fight back with some emoticons of their own, namely a barrage of heart emojis to show Swift love, not hate. So... why snakes?

Much like the collective of Beyoncé fans known as the Bey Hive, who spammed top "Becky with the good hair" candidate Rachael Roy with bee emojis, Harris and Perry stans are all about the snake emoji to show their contempt towards T. Swizz. It's a pretty obvious choice — snakes represent sneakiness and deceit, which is pretty much what Harris was insinuating about his ex on Twitter Wednesday — and perhaps one that has no more meaning other than that. Fans could've gone with a lion emoji (representative of Calvin Harris in Swift's "Wildest Dreams" music vid) or maybe with a cat (representative of Katy Perry's mascot Kitty Purry), but instead they chose a slithering, hissing snake. Yep.

To recap the reason for the snake emojis in the first place, let's take it back to yesterday, a day when birds were chirping happily as Harris was busy rolling up his sleeves in preparation for the massive takedown of Swift on social media.

In response to Swift's rep's confirmation that Harris' hit "This Is What You Came For" was actually written by Swift under a pseudonym, the Scottish DJ hopped on Twitter to defend himself and to seriously drag his ex in a series of scathing tweets:

The last straw, of course — and the reason for the Katy Perry fans' involvement in this whole mess — was when he inserted the "Teenage Dream" singer into the conversation, becoming the first person close to Swift to seemingly confirm that her feud with KP was a legit thing:

Perry gave what seemed to be her own passive-aggressive response on Twitter, tweeting a well-timed Hillary Clinton GIF and also retweeting herself from 2015. (If shade-throwing were an art form, Perry would win all the awards.)

And while fans could've also gone with a sheep emoji (to represent Perry's infamous "Regina George in sheep's clothing" tweet), apparently it seems like the snake emoticon was the one that fans decided sends the best and most accurate message about Swift — at least in their book.