TayTay-enomics: With so many people stuck in the queue, has national productivity taken a hit?

More than 800,000 were in the "lounge queue" at 8.30am, hoping desperately to snag tickets for one of the five shows which, taken together, will only accommodate 450,000 people.

By 2pm, the pre-sale tickets for Sydney were sold out, and those disappointed were told they'd have to wait until Friday for the next batch.

Ticketek's notice contained several cheeky Taylor Swift lyrics - which only added insult to the injury of so many desperate folk willingly and unquestioningly adopted Ticketek's lingo around "lounges" and "waiting rooms".

More to the point, many have actually taken the day off so as to hunch over their computer screens, waiting for their number to come up.

Just as many are in the office, pretending to work and not achieving much. We've heard at least one anecdote of a psychologist cancelling several appointments to maintain their position in the queue, and over in Sydney, a press conference at NSW parliament was delayed to accommodate ticket sales - the Swifties, it seems, prevailed.

Over in Canberra, Legislative Assembly member Emma Davidson moved that question be suspended "due to a definitely not Taylor Swift related scheduling issue" - she was likely only half joking.

What can this be doing to national productivity?

Professor and chief economist at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at the University of Technology Sydney Tim Harcourt says it was hard to pinpoint any immediate effects from this strangest of days.

While actual productivity is unlikely to be affected in the immediate sense, Swift agreeing to bestow her presence on our fair and distant land is good for the economy in general, especially domestic tourism, and those hoping to reap the benefits of an influx of visitors to Sydney and Melbourne between February 16 and 25.

It's a positive sign that even in the midst of a cost of living crisis, many are still willing to spend objectively large amounts of money on something that will bring untold happiness.

But, said Professor Harcourt, there were other, less tangible benefits, like the general bump in happiness levels for those who do eventually score tickets for themselves and their (specially chosen) posse.

"You'll be popular, so that could be positive for productivity, and I assume there'll be some multiplier, knock-on effects from the tourism," he said on Wednesday.

But even he acknowledged there would be more plummets in happiness than bumps; most people in the queue would have been hoping to score multiple tickets - citing safety in numbers rather than greed.

It's been a day of highs and lows, despair and elation.

A day of hilarious memes and sizzling hot takes, electrifying in the moment but hard to explain to an alien from outer space, or a time traveller. Or, you know, someone who isn't a massive Taylor Swift fan.

But if you are - and there are many, many out there - the existential horror of what's expected of you today is obvious.

But Professor Harcourt suggested those who were disappointed should just ask themselves - what would Taylor do?

"One thing I do know about her is that she's a wonderful employer," he said, optimistically.

"At the end of her tours, she takes her entire orchestra - there must be a couple of hundred - on fully expenses paid trips to Hawaii and Tahiti and places like that. She's a very benevolent employer, I've heard, so she's a good example to employers out there. If you're making profits, in this time of inflation, pass it on to your workers, like Taylor."

So much for what he calls TayTayenomics - the panic and rage in the air was palpable, peaking around mid-afternoon.

Horror stories have abounded; some people logged on casually at 10am and scored tickets within half an hour. Others diligently joined the "waiting room" hours before the 10am entry and were still waiting, with lunchtime long past.

Ticketek - surely the least blameworthy in this whole saga, and spare a thought for the staff and website developers who surely only want the best for everyone - were being accused - understandably! - of gaslighting, thanks to the blue line that keeps filling up to update the page every few minutes, only to hover at the end and return to the start once more.

Over on Twitter, in amongst the waggish memes, the experience was being compared to the various stages of migraine, horrific purgatory and actual hell - hyperbolic, for sure, but what else is the internet for while you're hanging, with thousands of unseen folk, in an internal waiting room?

It was definitely not the time to tell those who'd missed out to "shake it off", nor should anyone have been talking about "bad blood" or "blank pages".

That said, someone should write a song about it - and that someone is clearly Taylor Swift. This is a woman who wrote a hit song about loving a street she was living on so much that she wished fervently she would never break up with anyone while living there because it would mean she would never be able to walk that street again.

This is complicated, meta stuff and she would have a field day if she could only see the effect she was having on people's psyches today.