Taylor Swift crammed so much excitement into one bracket that the rest of us must now celebrate her new single with a full stop.
Taylor Swift's announcement of her new single "Patient Zero" used so many exclamation marks that the world has run out. The Global Punctuation Reserve has brought in rationing, and fans are coping with capital letters. Officials fear what happens when the song comes out on Friday.
Birthday cakes are being piped with a full stop. Bakers across the country report that "Happy Birthday" can now end only in a flat, final dot. Sources close to the frosting describe the mood behind the counter as "quietly devastating."
The cause, according to people who study this for a living and many more who simply refresh their phones, is Taylor Swift. Her announcement of a new single, "Patient Zero," out Friday, included one bracket packed with a dozen exclamation marks.
Experts now believe that bracket held the last of them.
"We'd been running low since the Eras Tour, frankly," said Dorothea Quill, deputy director of the Global Punctuation Reserve. "Then she spent a dozen in one go. By lunch we had three left in the vault, and one of those was bent."
The Reserve has brought in rationing. Each adult may now use three exclamation marks a month, and each must be logged. Group chats have been hit hardest. Sports commentators have been told to shout in lowercase and trust the crowd to understand.
Nobody has asked Swift's team about any of this. Reporters tried, but nobody could phrase the question without sounding too excited, and every draft failed inspection.
The fans are coping
"We're a resilient community," said Brendan Ashcroft-Nye, president of a fan collective called the Bracket Society. "We've moved to capital letters. We've moved to typing the word 'screaming' in full. Some of us have started simply lying on the floor, which translates well to video."
The stakes are high because there is so little else to go on. Apart from the title, date and a pre-order link, few other details were announced. Fans must decode a medical-sounding title with no working way to gasp about it in writing.
Emergency measures are on the table. Engineers at the Reserve are testing whether a question mark with the curl sanded off could pass in dim light. An interrobang, the question-mark-and-exclamation hybrid last seen in 1960s advertising, has been cleared for use in weddings only.
Forbes covered the news with admirable restraint. Insiders say it did not have a choice.
Quill warns the worst is still ahead. "The announcement was only the announcement," she said, polishing the bent one. "On Friday the song actually comes out. If it's good, millions of people will want to say so. We simply do not have the infrastructure."
