Taylor Swift fans trying to relive the memories of the “Eras Tour” shows they attended have been dumbfounded by the blank space in their minds.
Jenna Tocatlian, 25, of New York, saw Swift perform at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro in May, but she can’t seem to remember the specifics of what she witnessed.
“Post-concert amnesia is real,” Tocatlian said in an interview with Time. “If I didn’t have the 5-minute video that my friend kindly took of me jamming to it, I probably would have told everyone that it didn’t happen.”
Tocatlian told the news outlet that she started trying to recall the show as she waited in line to exit the stadium, asking her friends, “Did she really play that? How much of it did she play?”
So what’s behind this peculiar happening? Tocatlian blamed it on sensory overload and the great deal of anticipation that she felt in the lead-up to the show.
“It’s hard to put together what you actually witness,” she told Time. “You’re having all these emotions while your favorite songs are playing, and you’re like, ‘Wow, where am I?’”
There is a giant Redditt thread dedicated to concertgoers who have shared similar stories of post-concert amnesia.
“Anyone else experiencing this? I waited half a year for this moment and now that it’s over my brain seems to be trying to convince me I wasn’t there?!,” one user wrote of her Swift experience.
In an effort to get to the bottom of what these Swifites are dealing with, Time spoke with Ewan McNay, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany.
“This is not a concert-specific phenomenon—it can happen any time you’re in a highly emotional state,” McNay told the news outlet. “If you’re slightly on edge, with a little bit of excitement, you’ll actually remember better...But too much excitement pushes you over the edge in terms of memory formation, and you’re unable to make memories.”
Hundreds of thousands of Swifties have attended Taylor’s stadium shows in recent weeks.
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