Just one more thing...

...on the Taylor Swift saga

I knew Swifties were cultish but had no idea the extent to which people actually lose their minds about Taylor Swift. For the crime of calling a billionaire pop star, created and marketed to the masses like any other product, “boring,” legions of balding, middle aged men called me an ugly cunt, many more Swifties called me a bitch and a hag, and countless feminists took back the feminist card I turned in many moons ago, announcing any woman who doesn’t support Taylor Swift is a misogynist, MAGA, and a liability.

It’s been a wild ride!

Other common responses that interested or amused me included:

“You’re just jealous.”

“You’ve just done this for clicks/to get into the algorithm.”

“You’ve just done this so the boys like you.”

“You’ve just done this for money.”

It’s unattractive and mostly purposeless to defend oneself to those who are intent on misunderstanding or simply hating you, but I guess I’m going to do it anyway. I had presumed that anyone who had followed my work for a year or ten was well aware that I have intentionally made choices in my life and work that demonstrate the following, but apparently that’s not true. So, a few things about me I thought were obvious:

1) I never set out to be a billionaire or a celebrity

2) I specifically cover issues and ideas that keep me out of the algorithm (even banned from social media entirely, the thing I am actually most well-known for), and have taken great risks, destroying any possibility of a conventional career, by speaking out about things like gender identity, the Covid response, free speech, and the sex industry.

3) I am a writer. No one chooses to be a writer because they want to get rich and famous. I am a writer because it is what I love to do, because I can’t help it, and because it is how I process my thoughts and the world around me. I am very lucky that I can do this for a living, and have spent well over a decade working at this “job,” despite the fact it is very unlucrative. I worked and wrote for free for many, many years before I started to get paid for my writing. I will be a writer for the rest of my life. Please think for a moment about what that means, both in terms of my financials and my values.

4) I have no idea how to make money on social media (if I did, my content would look very different, and I would be much richer). It’s not something I have focused on much or am particularly interested in. I use social media for work purposes, because I am independent and have to, in order to reach an audience and attempt to make a living. That is to say, I use social media so people can follow my work and consume it. I don’t literally make money from these apps. They are a tool I must and do use, whether I like it or not. I do genuinely like X, which is why I’m on there so much. I make next to nothing from using it, and made no more money from my Taylor Swift posts than I do any other month (which is generally around $100). I do not know how people make thousands on Twitter. If anyone knows, please share.

5) My choice to move away from feminism led to a loss of income, not a gain. I was actually making a reasonable (albeit humble, which is fine with me) living before I started focusing more heavily on free speech, civil liberties, and the Covid response, and before I became more critical of feminism. I am very grateful to all the feminists who have supported me over the years, and would never have been able to keep my head above water during the endless attacks and cancellation campaigns aimed at me over the past decade+ without support from the feminist movement, but I also am burdened with an inability to not say what I really think and a commitment to independence.

At a certain point I started to feel limited by feminism, the ideology and the movement, and could tell that a lot of women wanted me to simply repeat the same message, over and over again, for all eternity, regardless of whether I believed it in or if it felt intelligent and rational to me. I was being treated as though I were a thing owned by feminism and the feminists who supported me, rather than as an independent being and thinker. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like what I was seeing in the movement, which was extreme cruelty and hatred towards other women, endless cancellation campaigns, a demand for cult like devotion to certain political parties and views, an aversion to critical thought and punishment of those who did attempt to ask questions and think outside the box.

Once I started being more critical of feminism, the left, and ideology in general, I lost a ton of support and income, that, despite claims from the virtual peanut gallery, was not replaced by right wingers. For a bunch of women who claim they “support women” (and demand I “support Taylor Swift,” lest I be deemed an enemy to feminism), feminists are among the most cruel, misogynistic, and hateful of all my detractors. Get defensive about that if you like, but it’s the truth and it’s your hypocrisy.

The most common retort, though, informing me that most internet users are either literally in high school or got stuck there, intellectually, was that I am “jealous” of Taylor Swift.

I am not generally a super jealous person, at least not on the superficial level. The people I am envious of (and I honestly hate to admit I feel envy at all, but I do…) are people who are either better writers than me, more productive than me, or more successful at what I do than me. If I had to name actual individuals I feel “jealous” of, they would be, like, Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson (and that’s not only because of how successful they are, but because I think they are genuinely very good, humble, hard working, consistent, ethical, happy people — things I also strive to be). I won’t bother with the list of writers and thinkers I am envious of, because it’s long.

The jealousy accusation mainly came from the Swifties (of all ages, including the balding middle aged men), as well as from the feminists.

Whenever feminists go after me, I’m always astounded by the misogyny of their comments, which inevitably accuse me (or whoever their female target is) of saying whatever it is they are saying to gain male attention or of having lost the ability to think, having been brainwashed by the men around us. It boggles the mind how women who claim moral high ground above all others, on account of their opposition to sexism and hatred for Donald Trump, can at the same time determine that any woman who doesn’t repeat the same mantras they do or who see things differently than they must be stupid — so obsessed with men they can’t think straight. I have never in my life needed to seek out male attention, and can only assume that women who think of me this way don’t actually have any men in their lives, and can’t imagine what it’s like to have organic male friends or to move about in the world in a way that treats men as equal human beings, not caricatures. I do not, as evidenced by my social media accounts, seek validation of my desirability from strange men on the internet, because I am a mentally healthy woman who values her self-worth and likes herself.

I cannot imagine what would be going through the head of an adult person to think that another adult person would be “jealous” of Taylor Swift. I suppose that they are jealous of Taylor Swift, and can’t imagine that those around them aspire to something greater than that.

Needless to say, having actively worked against being someone like Taylor Swift and being a person who has never valued anything about that life, personality, or look (obviously), the conclusion is strange.

Back to the hypocrisy.

Feminists, like progressives in general, view themselves as being not just more moral than all others, but more intelligent. This is a surefire way to limit your intellectual abilities, access to the truth, and critical thinking skills. This is demonstrated very clearly in the rabid feminist defense of Taylor Swift and knee-jerk accusations of “misogyny,” hurled at any person who dares express dislike for a fucking pop star.

Am I taking crazy pills? We all remember that this person we are talking about is a celebrity. A completely unimportant and uninteresting person manufactured by corporate America for profit. That is the only point of Taylor Swift. She did not rise to fame organically or through the power of her own hard work and talent. She was made and marketed.

Not only did the music industry create an incredibly lucrative product, but they have millions of people voluntarily fueling the machine in their rabid devotion to the cult of Taylor Swift. Feminists, at that, many of whom probably consider themselves to be (lol) anti-capitalist.

~~~

There are a bunch of things that have depressed me about the Taylor Swift phenomenon, not least of which being that no one cares about or makes good, original music anymore. It would be one thing if we all saw pop stars like Taylor Swift for what they are — junk food, essentially — but we don’t. Taylor Swift is treated not only as a brilliant musician, but as a feminist hero and a political leader. I was told not only that I was obligated to “support” her “as a feminist” but also in opposition to “MAGA,” as though whether or not I like listening to fucking pop music has anything to do with feminism or who I vote for. Imagine thinking you are a part of a radical movement in opposition to The Man and saying with a straight face that this entails fawning over a billionaire pop star. What a joke.

The algorithm accusation is another thing that made me a bit sad within all this, because it reveals how many people now believe this is the sole motivation for saying or producing anything. No one believes anything is authentic anymore. And for someone who values authenticity above almost anything else, this is depressing. We’ve created a world wherein “breaking the internet” is incentivized, so it’s true that many do and say whatever they have to in order to get engagement/profit. This is why TikTok exists. This is why being an “influencer” or “Instagram model” is a thing. This is why the Kardashians are among the most powerful people in the world. This why a douchebag like Andrew Tate is rich and famous. But for those of us just trying to sort out the world around us, live a life with integrity, seek truth, and connect with people to be lumped in with all that when we are trying to do the opposite and who fucking hate that shit, it’s a bit of a mindfuck. I often wish I were the kind of person who could do that and not hate myself, or at least that I had any idea how to do that, but I’m not and I don’t.

I realize this post is a bit glum. This whole experience has not offered a positive view of the world, that’s for sure. But I also would like to remind myself and everyone reading this that the world is not the internet, and when I went out into the world to hang with friends in my community last night, to laugh and chat and have some drinks at my local karaoke night, not a single person mentioned (or sang) Taylor Swift.

For those still committed to the cult: Taylor Swift is not your leader. She’s not anything. She is not your friend. She is not a thought leader, she does not speak truth to power, she is not a political dissident, she is not creating good or important art. For all intents and purposes, she is a hologram. She is not real to you.

This is a trick and a distraction. Stop funding a campaign that exists to keep you dumb, blind, and amped up with emotions about a thing that isn’t even real.

It’s you, you’re the problem.