Internet Pranksters Win a Taylor Swift Concert for School for the Deaf

But Taylor gets the last laugh.

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Steve Marcus / Reuters

Taylor Swift performs during the second day of the 2012 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada September 22, 2012.

Attention, denizens of the Internet: As countless ex-boyfriends could have told you, Taylor Swift always gets the last laugh.

Thousands of Facebook users banded together in recent weeks to hijack a contest in which the grand prize was a live concert by the Grammy-winning country singer.  And with some 14,000 schools participating, the runaway winner appeared to be the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Boston.

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During the voting, Horace Mann principal Jeremiah Ford said he wasn’t offended by the attention, instead noting that his students love live music and any chance they had to interact with Taylor Swift was a welcome one. Plus, the top five schools all received $10,000 — so even finishing as a runner-up would have been welcome.

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But with the fix appearing to be in, contest organizers eventually removed Horace Mann from consideration. However, the story doesn’t end there.

While Taylor Swift won’t be playing a concert there, the singer has offered to personally donate $10,000 to the school — a donation which was quickly matched by contest sponsors Papa John’s and Chegg, a textbook company. American Greetings and Cover Girl got in on the act, upping the school’s windfall to $50,000; VH1’s Save the Music program added an additional $10,000 worth of instruments.

For those students disappointed they won’t get a Swift concert at their campus, Taylor has offered free tickets to any Horace Mann student for her next Boston concert.

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