Nobody is shaking this off: Pop superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Instagram on Tuesday, and the likes exploded like pyrotechnics at a concert. The post broke Instagram’s record for reposts, even though, to be fair, reposting just started on Instagram in August. Still, the post hit 1 million reposts in less than 6 hours and earned 14 million likes in just the first hour. 

By Wednesday, it had topped 30 million likes, vaulting it to number eight on Instagram’s list of top non-soccer posts.

«Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,» Swift and Kelce wrote on an Instagram post showing multiple photos of the proposal. In the first photo, Kelce is kneeling in front of Swift in a breathtaking floral garden. The second photo shows them standing and holding one another. The next is her hand with an enormous diamond engagement ring, followed by two more of the couple embracing.

The post also features a dynamite emoji and the audio of Swift’s 2024 song So High School. The snippet cuts off with the lyrics, «Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me?» (Let’s hope it’s the first or second option.)

Instagram post is already climbing into the millions 

As you might expect, the Instagram post delivering the engagement news shot into the stratosphere as soon as it was posted. A representative for Instagram confirmed to CNET that Swift and Kelce’s engagement announcement earned over 14 million likes and 452,000 reposts in just over an hour.

That’s a huge audience, but it will be interesting to see how high up Swift and Kelce’s engagement news post lands on Instagram’s all-time most popular list.

Right now, the most popular post ever on Instagram is from 2022, when soccer star Lionel Messi posted an image of himself hoisting the World Cup he’d just won. That post has more than 74 million likes. (Swifties, keep it going if you want to send the Swift-Kelce post to the top.) 

The Instagram representative didn’t immediately comment on whether Swift and Kelce’s post is climbing at the same pace as Messi’s. Messi also has the third-most popular post, again showing him and the World Cup trophy, this time snuggled up in bed together.

But it’s not just soccer photos that top the Instagram most-viewed-ever list. The second most-liked post of all time is a photo of a plain, ordinary egg, posted to the social network back in 2019 as part of someone’s experiment to see if such a mundane image could go hugely viral. I interviewed the person behind Eugene the Egg back in 2019 and am shocked to see it’s still in the No. 2 spot six years later, with more than 60 million likes.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the post had reached 30 million likes, and was sitting at number eight on Instagram’s list of top posts that aren’t soccer-related. If it can garner 900,000 more likes, it can jump into seventh place, passing a reel of a smiley baby.

Details on the ring and outfits

According to The New York Post, Swift is wearing a blue silk-blend Polo Ralph Lauren dress in the photo, and Kelce is wearing a navy cable-knit Polo Ralph Lauren sweater. The Post also reports that Swift’s new engagement ring is «an old mine brilliant-cut diamond in a gold bezel setting, which was designed by Kelce himself with the help of Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry.»

Old mine refers to a historic diamond cut popular from the early 18th century to the late 19th century. Such diamonds are square with rounded corners and have 58 facets, making them anything but a «paper ring.»

The Post delved into everything else Swift had on, including her cognac-colored Louis Vuitton sandals, $18,000 diamond-studded Cartier Santos Demoiselle watch and her «TNT» friendship bracelet by Wove, which was a Christmas gift from her new fiancé.

To no one’s shock, the $400 dress Swift is wearing is selling out fast. Just imagine the excitement when the wedding details start trickling out, and Swift begins to «pick out a white dress,» as Juliet does in Swift’s hit song Love Story.

Memeing the marriage proposal

Until we have more information about the upcoming wedding, fans will have to content themselves by creating and sharing memes because, well, it’s 2025, and that’s part of how we communicate these days.

The Instagram account belonging to the Prince and Princess of Wales even liked the post. (No surprise, really, they hung out when Swift played London.)

Even coffee giant Starbucks got into the act, making a joke about pumpkin spice lattes and posting, «Are we supposed to keep posting about PSL like nothing happened?» The company also noted in the post’s comments that «the long list of Starbucks lovers just got a +1.» («Starbucks lovers» is a sly reference to a lyric in Swift’s 2014 song Blank Space. Swift actually sings, «got a long list of ex-lovers,» but almost anyone with working ears mishears it as something like, «all the lonely Starbucks lovers.»)

One meme post on X showed Paul Revere’s famed ride, captioned «me telling everyone I know that Taylor Swift got engaged.»

One Bluesky user wrote, «Very interesting that Taylor Swift got engaged mere months after I did. Get your own thing.»

Another joked, «Can’t believe that on July 8th, 2023, @likethe309.bsky.social, Travis Kelce and I all walked into Arrowhead Stadium to attend the Eras Tour and now one of us is marrying Taylor Swift.»

Matt Ufford warned the billionaire bride-to-be and her millionaire NFL star husband to count their pennies, writing, «a word of warning to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: weddings can get EXPENSIVE, fast. Be sure to leave enough in the account for your monthly expenses.»

There were football jokes, of course.

The Detroit Free Press sought a local connection, using the headline, «Tight end for Detroit Lions’ Week 6 opponent gets engaged to Taylor Swift.»

One person questioned the caption about an English teacher marrying a gym teacher, asking, «Why does Taylor Swift think she’s an English teacher and not a music teacher?»

We’re pretty sure this person really does know who Swift is, but their post was funny anyway. It reads, «Okay, I’ll bite: who’s Taylor Swift? What’s so great about him?»

The two 35-year-old celebrities have been dating for two years. It’s a love story, and Taylor just said yes.

It’s been nearly a decade and a half since the last Skate game was released, but veterans won’t have to wait much longer to tear up the streets once again. The next entry in the arcade-y skateboarding series launches into early access on Sept. 16.

The franchise reboot (just named «Skate») was developed by Full Circle, a studio composed of much of the same talent that worked on the original games.

After a long drought, skateboarding game fans have dined well on the compilation remakes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2, along with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4. The Skate series has always been a bit different, emphasizing freeform skating with its unique control scheme of flicking the controller joysticks in different directions to achieve tricks, which has been faithfully rebuilt in the new game.

Even so, many fans of the series who would be otherwise excited for its return have their hackles raised, and I can’t blame them.

That’s because Skate is launching as a free-to-play, mainly online game in the «live service» fashion, with plans to continue releasing content for players to earn or buy. That might be a red flag for fans of the older offline single-player games, who may have grown weary of live service games that pressure players to play with limited-time events and to buy rare in-game items.

But after getting the chance to play Skate alongside dozens of other press members and influencers during an online prelaunch preview, I’m hopeful this might be one of the best examples of how live service games can work for developers and gamers alike. It feels like an experiment that developers poured their heart and soul into.

Community, collaboration and nailing tricks with your friends

The developer Full Circle aims to keep player freedom at the core of the new Skate game. The setting is the sprawling fictional city of San Vansterdam, designed to allow you to pull off whatever trick you want, wherever you want, whenever you want. Every street corner has some sort of attraction that implicitly encourages you to get big air, grind a long rail or climb a building to soar your board through the skies.

The game’s simple promise of letting players make their own fun at every juncture is a return to the series’ roots. The reason it works so well is that you’re surrounded by dozens of other players exploring the world, too.

Dumping 150 players into an open-world sandbox and letting them do their own thing is an inspired way to build a community. Skaters in real life are collaborative — they egg each other on and lift each other up as they work at the next big trick — and that applies to this virtual world just as well.

During my preview time in San Vansterdam, I played with only a couple of dozen other players at any given time, and it was an electric experience. It was awesome to watch skilled players pull off tricks (and then flounder to try and replicate their motions) before peeling off in another direction.

Skate is the rare game where I didn’t feel like I needed an objective to guide my gameplay, mainly because I was having lots of stupid fun on my own. At one point, I discovered players rolling around off their boards, and I joined them in an impromptu tumbling conga line. Another time, I watched a player parkour up a building and followed their lead, discovering an entirely new area to do tricks above the hustle and bustle of the street.

My favorite moment was made possible by the new spectate feature. With this feature, I could watch nearby players do their thing and instantly teleport to them if I decided to join in on the action.

While I was flicking through perspectives, I discovered one player standing on top of a bridge in the northeast corner of the map. They were jumping off and ragdolling toward a bronze anchor statue, trying to thread the needle through the hole at the top.

I took part and made several dozen attempts at the base jump before making it through the hole myself, but not without my character slamming his head into the statue with a comically loud bang.

As Skate gets its early access release, I imagine an emerging community working together to find the most entertaining trick spots in San Vansterdam. The only thing more entertaining than trying to nail a trick is doing so while watching half a dozen randoms (and your friends) flounder around with you.

Will the game appeal to newcomers and veterans alike?

As a Skate first-timer and someone whose skateboarding experience mostly entails watching my brother learn to ollie and kickflip, I was worried that I might be in over my head.

Luckily, I was able to choose between the original dual-stick-flicking control scheme and a simpler, modern one that makes it easier to focus on landing tricks. There’s still a bit of a learning curve, but I was able to get on the board and nail some rudimentary moves to get me properly moving around the city after the tutorial wrapped up.

While I wasn’t the biggest fan of how my player character looked (he appeared soulless no matter how hard I tried to meddle with his face), I enjoyed how completing challenges in the open world would directly unlock more outfit options — though I suspect the best clothing will be locked to the purely cosmetic microtransactions that will support the game at launch.

As I donned a tangerine shirt and shorts and stuck a cherry pattern on my board, I felt like I was showing off my in-game experiences to other players. Likewise, their own avatar customization told me a story about their time with Skate.

While the world of San Vansterdam was built with player freedom in mind, the art style doesn’t reflect the Skate games that veterans have come to love and revere. Everything is minimalist, bright and sanitized. The city feels like it belongs in Mirror’s Edge rather than an arcade-style skateboarding game, a genre that embraces the grit and graffiti of street culture.

There are no realistic skateparks or grimy aqueducts to grind down. Gone are the Hall of Meat replays that would highlight gnarly bails and broken bones. And if you’re looking for familiar faces in the world of professional skateboarding, like those featured in the Tony Hawk games, you aren’t going to find them here.

Longtime fans will likely have their gripes with some of these choices, and those aren’t easy fixes. You can’t just change an entire art style on a whim, even if you can sign a deal to license pro skaters to feature in your game.

It remains to be seen if these will be deal-breakers for the vets, but I’ll say this much: Skate is made with a lot of love. The classic flick-it control scheme from the old games was rebuilt from the ground up just to cater to the old heads who want to play the same Skate they’ve known for years.

As an early access live service game, Skate has room to grow and develop according to its fans’ wants and needs. If Full Circle keeps an ear to the ground and addresses any pain points that arise early on, I think this may become a perennial fan-favorite.

Skate will be launched into early access on Sept. 16, releasing concurrently on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC. The game will support cross-platform play and cross-progression.

Although the Nintendo Switch 2 is only a few months old, new games, or at least updated ones, keep emerging at a steady, slow clip.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which was one of my favorite late-era Switch games, got an upgraded edition that’s available this week. The full title, Kirby and the Forgotten Land Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Star-Crossed World, is unwieldy in name, much like the recent Mario Party Jamboree upgrade. But I found this one a lot more worthwhile. 

While you don’t get too much for an added cost, I’ve come to appreciate the entire game all over again. Existing Forgotten Land owners can pay $20 for the extra DLC.

Anyone else would have to pay $80 for the entire game with the extra story mode and upgraded graphics, which feels like an awful lot for a game that isn’t even new. However, spending $20 for the upgrade alone is worth it, especially if you’ve been hoping for improved Kirby graphics and the 12 new stages (only a fraction of what the rest of the game already has). It was a blast to play with my Kirby-loving 12-year-old.

Forgotten Land’s graphics and 3D-level design were already pushing the envelope for the original Switch, and the graphics boost on Switch 2 gives everything a smooth 60-frames-per-second performance and high-res look on big TVs. It’s a welcome remaster.

Read more: CNET’s Nintendo Switch 2 review

Star-Crossed World’s new story involves a mysterious meteor that’s covered the land in crystals. The new stages are basically altered versions of existing levels throughout the game, which play differently with new paths, secrets and «Starry» fragments you have to uncover. 

There are a few new transforming shapes Kirby can suck up this time (Mouthful Mode, which is different from the standard enemy-power-absorbing abilities Kirby normally has, in case you’ve never played this game before). They’re all fun and kinetic, and I loved discovering what they could do. One of the most unique, a spinning gear, can stick to surfaces for some challenging wall-crawls.

The only downside to this new upgrade is that there isn’t more of it. I appreciate what’s there, and anyone with a Switch 2 who likes and owns the original game should give it a spin. Just be ready for a pleasant bonus extension rather than a whole new sprawling game, mainly so you’ll keep your expectations in check.

I’ve been discovering how much the Switch 2 makes me revisit older games as much as new exclusives. There’s a ton of territory Nintendo can mine for future upgrades to the Switch library. Forgotten Land follows the best template so far in bundling graphics and DLC extras, but I want even more. 

Then again, with new games like Kirby Air Riders, Pokemon Legends Z-A and Metroid Prime 4 expected by the end of the year, there will be plenty of other games to lose time in.