The idea got tossed out during an offhand Instagram chat:

Is Taylor Swift, the billionaire pop superstar, the champion of women’s empowerment, the cultural dynamo creeping into every corner of American consciousness, actually a government tool for mind control?

True or ludicrous, it made Chris Musina chuckle.

And as a Chapel Hill artist with a knack for making T-shirts with logos that grab attention like a finger to the eyeball, he whipped up a quick design.

In it, the winner of 14 Grammys glowers over her shoulder, eyes glowing read. “Taylor Swift is a CIA PsyOp,” reads the caption.

“I added CIA,” Musina said. “Mostly, it’s funny.”

His jokey creation turned popular, selling well at punk-rock flea markets. The funny thing: Musina’s gag took off months before the real Taylor Swift conspiracy theories started circulating, long before anyone on the political right suggested Swift was a plant designed to hypnotize the nation into voting for President Biden and embracing “woke-ness.”

‘You never know how seeds get planted’

Back in Chapel Hill, where he teaches painting and drawing classes at UNC-Chapel Hill, Musina half-wonders if he accidentally started the whole thing.

“You never know how seeds get planted,” he said. “She’s a billionaire. I don’t think she’s a plant. I wouldn’t doubt that her people and people in the government, Biden’s people, have talked. That seems a no-brainer. … I’m sure Trump’s people are talking to Kid Rock’s.”

But then last week, Musina got a call from a TV crew for Enquête Exclusive — a sort-of French version of “60 Minutes.” Having seen his shirts, they wanted to interview him for an upcoming segment on American conspiracies, and it wasn’t entirely clear from the call if they took the PsyOp stuff seriously or assumed that he did.

“I think there’s a bit of trying to get into people’s heads,” he said. “They’ve talked to Swifties, they’ve talked to former Trump officials ….”

Regardless, Musina put out a casting-call on Instagram: “Want to be part of a French documentary about Taylor Swift being a PsyOp? … Msg if you have any conspiracy theories plz!”

A few people came for the filming, and they made for a pleasant chat — more about the nature of conspiracy than the makeup of Taylor Swift.

Ridiculous conspiracies vs. the truth

The more ridiculous the premise, the more inviting the conspiracy. The truth is never as enticing.

It was much more fun theorizing that Deep Throat was President Nixon himself, rather than the dull truth that the secret Watergate source was just a high-ranking FBI guy nobody had ever heard of.

It was much more fun imagining that Princess Kate had gotten lost in a Willy Wonka theme park or jetted off to Brazil for cosmetic surgery rather than the sad truth that she’d been diagnosed with cancer.

And really, the reason a Taylor Swift conspiracy theory is so delicious to entertain is its utter lack of believability. As Musina noted, the idea is funny because, on its face, it’s preposterous.

“Taylor Swift is almost not doing anything,” he said, “because she has this giant platform and the only thing she offers is, ‘Support the LGBTQ community,’ which most of her fans already do. She’s not doing anything risky. She’s not Madonna. She’s not Michael Moore at the Oscars. She says a little thing, and she does it, and it goes away, and it probably goes through a committee. On our side of it, the PsyOp is kind of placating people.”

People like the shirt, Musina said, because it’s a conversation-starter — in this case, an international conversation. Here I am, 600 words later, still talking about what’s essentially a casual joke.

Unless it isn’t.

Unless I’m not really typing this.

Unless I’ve cryptically encoded the lyrics to “Shake It Off” inside every paragraph. It’s so catchy, isn’t it?