Taylor Swift Glitchy Snake Gifs thread 2017 - Reputation

boom

I like that take, which recasts her rivalry with the self-consciously awakened Katy Perry in a new light.

Well, "wokeness" is just white people learning the language of progressive politics in order to maintain white supremacy, and Katy is the new best-cultural-example for that idea since Paul Haggis' "Crash", but whatever

hell yes

irony meter just flickered, TH ;)

My lack of ironic quotes around "awakened" was mostly do to me typing and walking, I don't think Perry's "progressive" politics are worth a shit, I think she's just as facile as Swift, and ultimately just as mega pop star neo fascist (in the "We Will Rock You" Queen sense).

but really fgti's take there seems excellent and not just because it justifies my steadfast, never-wavering suspicion and dislike of dead dead dead-eyed taylor swift and her dead-eyed music

I just meant that Swift not saying shit about shit beyond herself is the flip side of Perry saying specifically that she is saying shit about shit beyond herself, even if ultimately both reach the same dead eyed end.

Ha, dead eyed xpost!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUuH4TEmgLo

What is this necessity of people who are not in any way unprivileged constantly extending victim narratives both socially and artistically? It's like, a method of occupying power while ducking accountability. I'm not just thinking of Taylor... this is like a trope in the past decade of songwriting

I also think the idea that Taylor is dead-eyed and a snake or any of this is really stupid also, she's a super-talented songwriter who for whatever reason feels an artistic need to write songs that strengthen her perceived position within the world instead of, like, being about anything that means anything to her listeners

I think the dead-eyed thing comes from how calculated it all is. I disagree that she is a particularly super-talented songwriter, but I do give her credit for writing the entirety of "Speak Now" herself after the usual country route of co-writers and collaborators. Even if there was a ghost writer involved (who knows) she was still willing to take all the credit *before* she knocked it out of the park, so good on her. And then she decided, you know what? I am going to dump this down to earth persona and become a dominating pop star, and I am going to hire literally the biggest hit making team in the world - people who have had great success with singers less talented than me - to do it. I think that's different from, say, someone like Madonna or Beyonce, who seems to care about cred/vision/hip producers. Taylor Swift is just, like, prosperity gospel incarnate.

Some levity:

remember: you can't spell "jack antonoff" without "jack'n off a ton"

— Lmao Del Rey 🌹 (@NOTCHRISTYLER) August 29, 2017

you guys do remember Kanye praised Trump on stage AND visited him at Trump Tower after the election, right? those were things that actually happened.

yeah but he was under mental duress at the time and afaik hasn't been seen or heard much from since

oh good it's the life of pablo thread

Can somebody point to a time when Kanye was not under mental duress?

http://img.usmagazine.com/480-width/kim-kardashian-kanye-west-ice-cream-inline.jpg

"Kanye used his power". Yeah, to publicly support Trump. He then told everyone he made that bitch Taylor famous and put her and other female celebs in the nude in his video to make some grand point, including Rihanna next to her abuser Chris Brown. But Taylor bearing a little grudge over that whole circus is somehow an analogy to female Trump supporters something something.

Misreading Taylor is a long, proud tradition. Despite her debut album's sex-positive lyrics, for a long time she was seen as the ultimate anti-sex prissy virgin preaching abstinence by people who never listened to / read her lyrics. That continued until she'd had enough public boyfriend for the other image to take over. She was both a virgin and a whore and somehow to blame for both.

Maybe she should've spoken out about some big issues. She's never been personal on her social media but maybe, yes, that's something everyone with followers should do. But it's funny that even in this thread she gets more flack for not being that kind of online presence than Kanye does for _telling his supporters Trump's great_. There are many other celebs of various shapes and form who haven't done it but people are getting desperate screaming TAYLOR PLEASE SAY SOMETHING. Somehow she has to endorse all great things and denounce all bad things in this world before she's allowed to sell music and talk about herself. If that kind of demand was aimed equally at every big star, maybe it'd be less silly.

If you want to gauge her real political loyalty, if that's even relevant, she's obviously more entrenched in Democratic cliques than just about any other musician in the USA. Her list of friends might as well be a map of the most squarely Democratic network in young American pop.

Unfortunately Taylor herself has never been interesting to study for her critics, who are getting increasingly hysterical projecting their own image onto the name Taylor Swift. Leading up to this release she's been away from the spotlight more than any other time in her career, and so it seems people have been so impatient to see her again they've simply made up shit out of thin air. Coward. Trump supporter. Nazi queen? Sure why not.

I thought the lyrics to this song were dull and unnecessary on first listens, but maybe there is, now more than ever, a need to collect all her public personas, as in the music video, and mock the chorus of accusations, because the demon visions of "Taylor Swift" are more parodic than ever.

this song sucks

it really does

What makes a pop star A Good Person? Is it tweeting out support for or against movements? Is that the relevant box to be ticked? Is the influence of even a popular star so important, or is twitter an echo chamber? Maybe it makes some difference, but is it the litmus test? Is saying 'Trump's a dickshit' the key?

What about being known for giving a lot of money to charities? Does that contribute, or is it just some money out of a lot? If you're starting down that road, it's a question.

People went at her for not speaking out, ie not making a tweet, like some other stars, when Kesha faced her trial against Dr Luke. A powerful woman in the pop industry, how could she not? But then she donated hundreds of thousands at a crucial point in her court procedings, and made a statement that way. Was that more or less important?

She used the suit from an asshole DJ, taking that fight, acknowledging her privilege, using it strategically, made some important points in her case against him, in the age of online harassment and pussy-grabbinbg, then paid big sums of money to relevant sexual harassment victims groups. Is that more or less important than an Instagram post about the women's march?

Silly stuff. But these are the things people work up a rage about. Social media posts. A narrow, very specific way of establishing righteousness.

good post, abcfsk

misreading taylor is indeed a long, proud tradition, practiced by dudes who did not grow up in the South as teenage girls during the height of Swift's country phase

good points in this thread on many sides, many sides

but i do appreciate abcfsk taking the one with far fewer voices these days

Very much so, fgti and abcfsk's takes really add something, and cut through the clutter surrounding this from original sides. I'm looking forward to the album.

This song is still very weak though.

So what about the lyrics make y'all think it's about Kanye? I haven't watched the video – are the clues more explicit? The song itself sounds like any other kiss-off.

Well, "wokeness" is just white people learning the language of progressive politics in order to maintain white supremacy

― fgti

I like this. I'd say woeness = white people learning the language of progressive politics to assuage their complicity with white supremacy

xp "tilted stage" is p explicit

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/cct-kanye-1024-08.jpg?w=620

man i knew "wokeness" was bad but i didn't realize everyone else would realize so quickly

that could be anyone's tilted stage

http://i.imgur.com/73gfwOs.gif

xp

lmao

I like this. I'd say woeness = white people learning the language of progressive politics to assuage their complicity with white supremacy

wait, is "woeness" a neologism you've coined or just a typo?

a typo I've coined

Nice to meet you, where you been?
I could show you incredible things
Magic, madness, heaven, sin
Saw you there and I thought
Oh my God, look at that face
You look like my next mistake
Coining typos, wanna play?

it's funny that Kanye actually supported Trump irl yet TS is 'pop-star exemplar of the white female Trump supporter'

yeah, statement is utterly meaningless. white women 18-29 went 52-40 for Clinton.

citation needed

(not that it's meaningful anyway because Taylor Swift's fanbase is not a 100% overlapping venn diagram with "white women 18-29," but)

evol, you mean white women without a college degree

Flopson otm. Clearly Kanye is the quintessential white female Trump supporter.

if white women went 53% for Trump overall the 18-29 figure quoted above sounds about right

it's funny that Kanye actually supported Trump irl yet TS is 'pop-star exemplar of the white female Trump supporter'

― flopson, Tuesday, August 29, 2017 4:18 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

taylor swift is white tho

I'd make some snarky post ITT about the ridiculousness of Kanye vs Taylor as a political frame, but I don't really want to be part of this narrative.

ya the point is not to debate whether or not TS is or is not a Trump supporter, any more than it's useful to debate whether or not that-woman-in-a-pussy-hat-is-or-is-not-a-TERF...

"Presenting oneself as a victim" is a tactic used by lots of established songwriters once they've achieved some level of success, and they seek to maintain the cultural capital that they've accumulated. I don't think there's functionally anything different between what Taylor is doing here than there was when George wrote "Taxman", or Pink Floyd did "Pigs", or Dire Straits did "Money For Nothing", or [redacted] did with [redacted]. It's people-in-positions-of-comfort-and-privilege building a world in which they are victims. And (instinctively, to my aesthetic radar), it's the same mechanism that turned comfortable white people (and Kanye too I guess) into momentary Trump supporters.

this isn't a "tactic" newly employed by Swift, though ; listen to how she sings the last chorus of "Tim McGraw".

fighting the urge to defend Money For Nothing, which I don't think really fits with those other songs at all

xp Mmm I see what you're saying but I'm not talking about writing cathartic relationship songs as being the same vein of this kind of "victimhood chasing".

Sorry my mind is in overdrive but I've spent the last few years analyzing the lyrics to "You Belong With Me" as a song sung from the perspective of somebody with paranoid delusions, and about how "Wildest Dreams" has enough poorly weighted stanzas to conclude that a Swede was in the room when the lyric was written, I really think a lot about Taylor Swift I guess

Even more obvious to me than white rockers from the 60s and 70s are all the subsequent alternative rock heroes who pretty much all traded in victim-narratives. Somehow complaining about being oppressed by the system gets more of a free pass though, even if the cage in which you are a rat is dripping with gold.