(CNN) It seems Taylor Swift may be about to reveal something big and "Swifties" -- as her fans are affectionately called -- suspect it's a new album. 
 
 The pop star has wiped out her internet presence -- her Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and website have gone black. 
 
 The purge arrives on the three-year anniversary of the premiere of "Shake It Off," which served as the chart-topping lead single to Swift's last album, "1989." 
 
 Coincidence? Possibly, or perhaps the musician is the latest victim of hacking. A rep for Swift did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment. 
 
 The dramatic move sent fans into a frenzy on social media, using the trending topic "#TS6IsComing" to announce their anticipation for Swift's sixth studio album. 
 
 Swifties: *Had 3 LONG years of preparing and waiting* 
 
 
 
 Taylor: *does something for just an hour*#TS6isComing 
 
 
 
 Swifties: pic.twitter.com/RO6rmozFCX — #TS6isComing (@TheMomentIKnew) August 18, 2017 
 
 miss swift is coming to end careers left right and centre #TS6ISCOMING pic.twitter.com/ir9eAmlxbX — jasmine (@kiingbiebah) August 18, 2017 
 
 HIDE YOUR FAVES. HIDE THE AWARDS. HIDE THE CHARTS.#TS6IsComing — TS6 IS COMING (@slaylorstan) August 18, 2017 
 
 #TS6IsComing I CANT BREATHE GOD HELP ME HELP US ITS HAPPENING FINALLY HAPPENING OMG pic.twitter.com/yHzvrPgHeo — Sara 🌹 (@SaraMaliha27) August 18, 2017 
 
 NO IM NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING #TS6IsComing pic.twitter.com/uOmlYkByjv — Taqfia Muskaan (@taqfia111) August 18, 2017 
 
 Read More ||||| Christopher Polk/Getty Images 
 
 No longer a blank space. Taylor Swift returned to social media on Monday, August 21, just three days after wiping her Instagram and Tumblr posts, deleting her post-2011 Tweets and changing her official website to a black screen. 
 
 
 
 Shortly after the drastic disappearances from Swift’s social media platforms on Friday, fans were quick to notice that the blackout occurred exactly three years after the announcement of 1989, the Grammy-winner’s most recent album. 
 
 A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Aug 21, 2017 at 8:00am PDT 
 
 Swift shared a video to her Instagram and Twitter accounts on Monday, however the return is just as mysterious as the disappearance of posts. In the 10-second clip, a snake-like figure slithers as the lights flicker. 
 
 Director Joseph Kahn, who worked with the singer on her “Bad Blood” video, quoted Swift’s tweet with the clip and added a smiley face. Shortly after, he wrote on Twitter: "In 30 minutes, as a show of power, @taylorswift13 will blot out the sun.” 
 
 Us Weekly exclusively revealed in May that the singer has been quietly recording a new album during her time off, despite keeping a very low profile in recent months. 
 
 "She's aiming to release an album this fall,” a source told Us at the time. "She's continuing down the pop route because 1989 was a huge success and fans really gravitated toward that album. She knows there's a demand for a new album and has really started focusing on making that happen for fans. She's just excited to get back out there.” 
 
 See the best reactions to Swift’s video teaser below: 
 
 
 
 
 
 #SolarEclipse2017: A complete eclipse only happens once every 30 years, everyone will tweet about this- 
 
 
 
 Taylor Swift: pic.twitter.com/R5Jv2w0dFY — summer (@slaylorstan) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 Haters: Taylor Swift is a snake 
 
 
 
 Taylor: *Embraces it* 
 
 
 
 Hater: pic.twitter.com/ToX7gdGgOp — Dayton / 7 (@hesotall_) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 eclipse: "finally, 38 years later it's my time to shi—" 
 
 taylor swift: pic.twitter.com/5Q9Y1DsanD — Maxwell Dunn (@maxwdunn) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 RT IF YOU’RE PROUD TO SAY THAT YOU STAN A LEGENDARY SNAKE NAMED TAYLOR SWIFT 🐍🐍🐍🐍 — ‏َ (@idwlfdeluxe) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 Taylor Swift deleted all of her social medias because after a snake sheds it's skin, it comes back better than before. 
 
 #TS6ISCOMIMG pic.twitter.com/IK83bPghqt — Demisus🌙 (@ArianaFenties) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 Y'all can have the eclipse I'm just gonna be watching @taylorswift13 social media all day. 🔮👀 Bye. — Justin Mikita (@JustinMikita) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
 Taylor swift announces game of thrones cameo pic.twitter.com/drnWuJaaSA — Shitty Watercolour (@SWatercolour) August 21, 2017 
 
 
 
 
 
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 For the latest celebrity entertainment, news and lifestyle videos, subscribe to Us Weekly's YouTube Page. ||||| Is Taylor Swift releasing new music? Her mysterious snake videos hint yes 
 
 CLOSE Taylor Swift shared a cryptic video snippet Monday across her social media accounts of a snake. USA TODAY 
 
 Yep, it's a snake. 
 
 Taylor Swift continues to tease fans with mysterious videos on social media, her first posts since wiping her accounts on Friday. 
 
 Just after 11 a.m. ET on Monday, Swift posted a ten-second video of what appears to be a snake's tail on Instagram and Twitter. 
 
 On Tuesday, around the same time, she posted a second clip of the snake. 
 
 On Wednesday, the snake finally reared its head in an additional, heavily-CGI'd video. With the tail, middle and head of the snake all represented, fans were left guessing whether Thursday will actually bring new music. 
 
 The posts are the first updates on Swift's social media sites since her official pages were blacked out (including Twitter, Instagram and her own website) prompting speculation of a new album announcement. 
 
 Coincidentally, last Friday marked the three-year anniversary of Swift's Shake It Off release and 1989 album announcement, hinting that her much-anticipated sixth album may be around the corner. 
 
 More: Taylor Swift erased from social media and fans can't shake it off 
 
 Joseph Kahn, Swift's go-to music video director, quoted her tweet with a smiley-face and cracked a joke about Monday's solar eclipse, with many Internet commenters speculating that the two events were related. 
 
 In 30 minutes, as a show of power, @taylorswift13 will blot out the sun. — Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) August 21, 2017 
 
 Tswift trying to eclipse the eclipse https://t.co/0fThmqPB6n — Sydney Esiason (@sydneyesiason) August 21, 2017 
 
 Only Taylor Swift could out hype a solar eclipse💁🏻 https://t.co/ZvGP8mlRxR — Brooklyn and Bailey (@BrookAndBailey) August 21, 2017 
 
 As fans have pointed out, Taylor has been associated with snake imagery since her drama with Kim Kardashian last year. Right around the time Kardashian "exposed" Swift on social media, she tweeted a string of snake emoji, which fans interpreted as her taking shots at Swift. 
 
 And earlier this year, Swift fans commemorate the anniversary of the drama by celebrating "National Snake Day" on July 17 as a holiday in Swift's honor. 
 
 Twitter had plenty of jokes about Taylor embracing the snake. 
 
 Instead of being very much excluded from this narrative, I guess she's owning it https://t.co/WhxLTA4FUv — Phillip Picardi (@pfpicardi) August 23, 2017 
 
 No way...is Taylor Swift leaning totally into her supposed "snake" role people love giving her?! HERE FOR THAT!! Give it to em good, Taylor! https://t.co/azmocrQC7Y — Jeff Benjamin (@Jeff__Benjamin) August 21, 2017 
 
 Queen of taking the hate and turning it into art. 🐍 https://t.co/e6ZfI5Rcj4 — Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) August 21, 2017 
 
 i see a snake? im guessing her album is self-titled https://t.co/tRzFVOs8M1 — san (@duarxgui) August 21, 2017 
 
 Oh yes, a smart business woman using self deprecation to her advantage https://t.co/CBlF5l5jNF — nick (@touchnick) August 21, 2017 
 
 "Snakes shed their skin to allow for further growth and to remove parasites that may have attached to their old skin." #TS6ISCOMIMGhttps://t.co/ymiMvoniFK — Katie Krause (@Katie_Krause) August 21, 2017 
 
 Viewers also thought the video's mysterious tail resembled a dragon, prompting a flurry of Game of Thrones references. 
 
 Taylor Swift, the real Mother of Dragons. https://t.co/SYpIVkj4hq — Brandon Davis (@BrandonDavisBD) August 21, 2017 
 
 Is this like a Game of Thrones reference? TSwift's the new mother of dragons, y'all. https://t.co/OxVid1KPLE — Brian Truitt (@briantruitt) August 21, 2017 
 
 is this a dragon? did she just start watching game of thrones? so many questions I'm dying https://t.co/wc8bIGsOlE — sania (@jacobpercIta) August 21, 2017 
 
 the mother of dragons we deserve 😩😩😩 https://t.co/QJBYqH0D2T — Randolph (@rabdolph) August 21, 2017 
 
 One date that Swift fans should keep in mind: Sept. 30, the end of the eligibility period for next year's Grammy awards, which would give the singer a hard deadline if she wants any new music to qualify. 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wqK0Qs ||||| There’s got to be an aggregate limit to how much the world at large — or that large part of the world afflicted with an incurable, chronic weakness for pop artifice, anyway — is willing to buy into the Taylor Swift phenomenon, and we might finally be nearing it. Taylor Swift isn’t going away anytime soon, of course. As I write these words during the early-morning hours of Tuesday, Aug. 29, the garishly “meta” video clip for her new single “Look What You Made Me Do” — a shrewd mix of winking self-satire and prickly, coded (and thus subsequently much de-coded call-outs to such tabloid-rumoured foes as Kanye West and Katy Perry that premiered to typically calculated multi-platform media hysteria during Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards broadcast — has already surpassed 50 million views on YouTube on top of the nearly 23 million streams already logged by the audio version on Spotify and the more than 46 million looks given to the original YouTube “lyric video” since they were first posted on Aug. 24. 
 
 An opulent image of Taylor Swift from her new music video "Look What You Made Me Do." ( Philip Zave / via YouTube ) 
 
 Yet another state-of-the-art electro-earworm from America’s reigning chart queen, “Look What You Made Me Do” is not going anywhere for a while, nor is the unquenchable public interest in all things Swift likely to drop off completely during the run-up to the release of her sixth album, Reputation, on Nov. 10. Swift is highly adept at keeping herself in the headlines. Many of us appear powerless to prevent ourselves from reading them. Nevertheless, even the Swift-iest of “Swifties” are having a hard time putting a positive spin on the singer’s pre-tour marketing campaign for her forthcoming Reputation stage show: a partnership with Ticketmaster that purportedly allows super-fans to “beat the bots” to the best seats at her future concert dates by registering with a service called “Taylor Swift Tix powered by Ticketmaster Verified Fan,” divulging a bunch of personal information and participating in “unique activities that advance your spot in line” when tickets eventually go on sale for the still unannounced Reputation tour. Those “unique activities”? By the looks of things at present, none more exotic than pre-ordering copies both digital and physical of Reputation from iTunes, Target and Walmart, summoning as much Taylor Swift merchandise as one can afford from the online “Taylor Swift Official Store” and then coercing as many friends as possible into doing the same for the vague privilege of jockeying “up and down” for position in the queue for “Taylor Swift tix” versus the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of other fans who will also presumably be emptying their virtual wallets into the site over the next three months. According to a promotional video unveiling the scheme — designed, we’re told, with the intent of thwarting automated ticket-scalping software and the subsequent astronomical resale prices that find their way onto sites like StubHub — it’s “a new way of buying tickets: a better way, a fun way . . . made for you, the fans.” Read the fine print on Swift’s website, however, and you’ll see that participating in this fun doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get a crack at tickets — and that you don’t necessarily have to purchase anything at all to register for an “access code” that may or may not actually allow you access to those tickets. 
 
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 Hell, the fine print isn’t even fine. Right there at the top of the terms-and-conditions page, bolded and in all-caps, you’re told flat-out: “NO PURCHASE OR BOOST ACTIVITY IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR RECEIVE AN ACCESS CODE. A PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING AN ACCESS CODE. ALL VERIFIED FANS WILL RECEIVE AN ACCESS CODE. A PURCHASE MAY IMPROVE YOUR POSITION IN LINE TO ACCESS TICKETS.” Further down comes the admission that “code recipients are not guaranteed the ability to purchase tickets.” The scheme to thwart scalpers suddenly reads rather more like the “tone-deaf scam” industry watcher Bob Lefsetz publicly accused Swift of pulling on her most faithful followers last week. “This is a naked dash for cash, an effort to sell albums so she can publicize how successful she is,” he wrote in one of his regular “Lefsetz Letter” email dispatches. “It’s almost a Ponzi scheme, but in this case you buy stuff you don’t really want for a chance to get what you do want, tickets, but you can’t get. The longer this charade exists, the worse it’s gonna be for her.” True enough. Despite a smattering of praise here and there for Swift’s business savvy in the face of declining record sales and an out-of-control ticket-resale market, the general opinion out there in the social-media universe runs more closely in line with the opinion of Twitter user @adomingo2: “Taylor Swift this is f---ed up and money hungry.” Other oft-quoted “quotable quotes” include “Given that a large section of her fans will be kids badgering their parents, this is disgraceful” and “I seriously take this Taylor Swift/Ticketmaster scam as a sign that this new album of hers is going to be absolutely dreadful.” Oops. When you’re one of the few artists still operating at the “multi-platinum” level — Swift’s last release, 2014’s 1989, moved more than six million copies in the States and 495,000 in Canada — the optics aren’t great on such a shady gambit to juice future record sales. Not that Swift is alone in strategically clawing her way to the top of the Billboard Hot 200. Adele muscled her way to something like 20 million in worldwide sales for 2015’s 25 by withholding the record from streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music for seven months, for instance, while Drake’s 2016 blockbuster VIEWS was initially only available for purchase online as a bulk 20-track package, ensuring that every single tune therein would make an appearance on the singles chart. The mainstream music industry, eternally greasy, has very few hugely bankable superstars left to exploit, so exploit them it does. As Billboard itself put it in a recent evaluation of Reputation’s rollout: “Details surrounding the release point to a precision rollout designed to maximize revenues and give hardcore fans (i.e. Swifties) a myriad of opportunities to spend their hard-earned cash on their favourite artist.” The industry will take whatever it can get these days. 
 
 The most maddening thing about the current Swift/Ticketmaster controversy isn’t even its egregious, unapologetic duplicity, however. It’s that, through all of this, Swift insists upon portraying herself as a sort of underdog, as a victim of the very success and paparazzi-baiting notoriety that she has pursued with careerist vigour for the past decade. Yes, the clip for “Look What You Made Me Do” — in which Swift revives and pokes fun at a number of her personas from video hits past to sharply comic effect — is clever and entertaining, but it’s also pretty disingenuous for an Instagram-addicted superstar prone to milking high-profile romances for material to suddenly turn her art into an ongoing lament about the agony of fame. And then to leverage that fame — after variously shilling for Target, Walmart, iTunes, CoverGirl, Sony, Elizabeth Arden, Papa John’s Pizza, Walgreens, Diet Coke, Keds and AirAsia over the years on top of selling millions of records and concert tickets — towards making even more money off the fans who put her on top. “There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation,” she posted on Instagram recently. She might be doing that reputation some damage. 
 
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– Three years after dropping her Grammy-winning album 1989, speculation over when fans will get a new record from Taylor Swift has reached a fever pitch. According to Pitchfork, the pop star mysteriously blacked out her online presence—all photos and posts on Swift’s Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts have been removed, leaving her profiles completely blank. Meanwhile, visitors to the musician’s official site will find a blank, black screen. Per CNN, the “purge” arrived three years to the date of the release of her chart-topping hit, Shake It Off. The move also comes ahead of the MTV Video Music Awards (airing August 27), where Swift is rumored to make an appearance and squash her beef with host Katy Perry. (Swift recently made headlines after winning a groping case against a former DJ.)