Taylor Swift Removes Deaf School From Competition (But Sends Cash!)

Taylor Swift will not play live at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, despite the institution racking up a serious amount of votes in a competition the country star was running in collaboration with 4Chan and Reddit.

Swift vowed to play a free concert at the school that received the most online votes, though an ironic campaign saw the deaf school in contention. Now, Swift, her management and the contest sponsors have removed the school from the contest because of the way it obtained its votes, reports The Guardian. School principal Jeremiah Ford told the Boston Globe that Swift will instead donate $10,000 to the intuition, adding, “Are we the winner? Absolutely.” The competition attracted attention in August, with some critics accusing organizers of being insensitive towards the hearing-impaired community. Principal Ford publicly welcomed the opportunity for one of the world’s biggest country-pop stars to perform at the school, in a bid to improve awareness. VH1’s Save The Music program has also donated $10,000 worth of instruments to the school.

A far more humorous trolling campaign earlier this year saw rapper Pitbull exiled to the most remote Walmart in the US as part of a contest to get him to perform at whichever store received the most Facebook likes.