one of the cringier forms of virtue signalling on tumblr to me is people acting willfully obtuse and pretending that they don't know what a metaphor or basic storytelling devices are (while half their blog posts are humblebragging/complaining about being a 'gifted child') so they can dunk specifically on taylor swift.
like i'll never get over the reaction to the 'sexy baby' line, where she is referencing both a joke in a popular sitcom, and the 'born sexy yesterday' trope that tumblr frothed over the mouth about how succinct and astute of an analysis it was - but then pretended to take it as literally as possible to call a famous woman 'creepy' and 'weird' when she's relating it to her experiences of feeling tall/huge/taking up too much space/being a villain/monster on the hill vs. the expectation of a small childlike innocent young woman who makes herself act like a tiny weak baby for male validation.
and then they pretended the asylum she was referencing was... her childhood home? and not the music industry she was in since she was 15? the one that slut-shamed her, body-shamed her, stalked her, threatened her, created parasocial relationships with her, and expects everything out of her - but no, everyone played willfully dumb so they could call her privileged for thinking her upper class childhood home was an 'asylum' even when it clearly wasn't the intent.
acting like "the man" is talking about every man on earth and not herself but a man. a rich, white, talented, able bodied man. y'know, like leonardo dicaprio, who she directly references. but no no, she's saying her life would be easier even if she was the most oppressed man on earth. yep. ignore every lyric in the song to tell yourself that.
and finally the horribly cringe way they react to her storytelling songs. simultaneously whining that she only sings about her love life, then screaming about how she 'never cleaned up a house so why is she referencing that in her song!!!!' when she's clearly telling a story. like.
does it feel good? to pretend you haven't gone further than 4th grade reading classes so that you can dunk on someone you don't like?
