Taylor Swift Will Not Be Trolled

Photo Credit: Eva Rinaldi via Flickr

The results are in after internet pranksters hijacked a contest that would send pop star Taylor Swift to a school with the most Facebook votes. Users of web forums like 4chan decided in August to vote en masse to send Swift to the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Allston. Now that the contest is over, Swift announced she’ll be donating $10,000 to the school and offering its students tickets to her next local show. The joke was supposed to be on Swift — an internet-wide suggestion that her music is best played for those with no hearing ability — but it gave her the opportunity to look like a real class act, so we’ll judge this prank a big, old “backfire.”

The Horace Mann principal made it clear back in August that while he wasn’t happy with the way his school was getting used in the crossfire, he definitely wouldn’t mind winning the contest. Now, The Globe reports Swift will be sent to perform at another school (whose votes came mostly from its students), but she’s donating $10,000 to Horace Mann. Even better, several of her sponsors are matching that figure and VH1’s Save the Music program is also donating $10,000 worth of instruments. And Swift is giving all Horace Mann students tickets to her next local show. Basically, Horace Mann made out quite well.

So it looks like this whole business has just become an opportunity for Swift to get some great press. (She could use some of that around these parts after her little Wedding Crashers affair.)  Taylor Swift will not be trolled.