Taylor Swift, hyper-criticism and mean people
This article was originally published on TYCI, a collective for women run by women. They’re awesome. They’re our friends. Follow them on Facebook, Twitter or Soundcloud.
For years now I have been threatening to write about Taylor Swift. Friends, family, strangers, my flatmates cat – they’ve all heard it. It wasn’t until one bitterly cold Berlin night, when I heard Mean again, that I realised: obviously, Taylor is an ideal catalyst for revealing the tangilbe effects of hyper-criticism culture in mainstream society. And her song Mean proves it.
I remember when Taylor’s album Speak Now was released. Critics dismantled her through recycled gossip and attempting to humiliate a 21 year old person about their love life. They assumed a lower intelligence, based on a set of sterotypes they projected onto her. They ridiculed her music. At the time I just remember thinking, what are you doing with your life? This is something you do in your day, critiquing something you don’t have any interest in? Giving me great pleasure to notice though, Taylor herself had prophesied the future for the ‘music critics’ on the spoke of the album:
Someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
As time has passed, Taylor Swift is, Taylor Fucking Swift, and all these other people are, just mean. Taylor in this song, paints the perfect picture of the Critic of Everything/Master of Nothing.
And I can see you years from now in a bar
Talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion
But nobody’s listening
Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things
Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing
We all encounter these people in our day-to-day lives; those who use their lame social biases to comment on someone else’s life. It’s that moment of rude and unsolicited discouragement, in any form, that sticks with you. It’s unfortunate we as humans tend to want to find a reason to dislike something rather than a reason to celebrate the things we like. The cycle is receiving negativity for something someone is supposedly not interested in. But, weather you carry on and try anyway that person is still going to be that person.
And so, the gossip industry influenced the music industry and we were left with an already sour reaction to anything Taylor Swift. But. Maybe we’d have a better music industry if people immersed themselves in the experience of music and critiqued tht instead. If we focused on the work, it is the work that we would see being changed, not the people presenting it. Maybe in focusing on the work that was created we could truly provide merit to people, and wouldn’t active disucssion and broadening of knowledge ignite progression? I’m yet to read a non-bias (either way), indepth analasis of Taylor’s work on any website that prides itself on being a music authority. And, don’t they all?
The process of dehumanising a celebrity is apparently a right of passage for those in the limelight, and is the common defence of Tay haters. “She chose this life”. But, why does being well known for your creative work make you fair game? She made records and the press made stories. Whip out that empathy and morailty you’re so vocal about and excercise it with someone who lives a life nothing like your own, and consider if it’s then worth commenting on it. Music is so often overlooked as an intellectual persuit especially if it’s in the mainstream, and that does not allow us the appreciate the smartness of a creators work and that’s exactly what has happened to Taylor Swift. It’s a weak moment to invest in, but realising all these music intellects and relentlessly silly people have gotten owned by this very same young womans’ Banjo jam? Fucken beautiful.
You, with your switching sides
And your wildfire lies and your humiliation
You have pointed out my flaws again
As if I don’t already see them
I walk with my head down
Trying to block you out ’cause I’ll never impress you
I just wanna feel okay again
One day, vibrantly discussing a concert experience with a fellow fan, a eavesdropper interuppted me,
“You like Taylor swift?”
“Yes, do you?”
“No, I like good music”
WE GOT A LIVE ONE, I thought.
“What’s the definition of good music?” I asked.
He didn’t have an answer, but again, it’s that moment of thinking ‘What are you doing with your life?’ He doesn’t know what good music is, he just knows what he does and does not like. Which is fine. It’s subjective. Music is also something we experience in our own heads, one of the few moments in which we are alone and can drift into a story world. That is the experience for many people. Bruh, why are you an authority on it all of a sudden? And mostly:
At said concert, which I attended in tradition with my younger sister, I saw a stadium full of people – all ages, and lots of youngers girls, perched on their Dad’s shoulders, writhing in delight. Before playing Mean live, Taylor walked around the stage and spoke a little. She said, and I paraphrase to the best of my eager memory: “I want everyone to put your hand up if you’ve ever felt bad about yourself because fo someone else? A moment when you’ve felt small. That’s what this song is about. And I want everyone who put their hand up to remember how that felt, and make sure you never make anyone else feel like that” To see the girls, listening intently to every word, was profound. It was a very real moment, a passing of knowledge in the best possible way. To have them hear that instead of nothing or a superficial, placating speech has to be better, doesn’t it? That has to be a better message – to treat people better, more so than those with fame who simply perpetuate social stereotypes by happily being that for a dollar, the same attitude that leads young girls to believe their value is determined by their tits to hips ratio. Say Taylor fits into that, perhaps, but it’s a case of misperception on the part of an audience, because what she actually puts an emphasis on for herself consistently is not what they’re getting from it. Because, social conditioning.
Hyper-citicism, essentially superficial criticism, is born in what we’re taught to notice and how we’re taught to speak. Hating as it is known nowadays, stems from belief in how something should be. Someone thinks what is right for them is right for someone else. The discussed Taylor Swift saga is a microcosm of this. Often, this ‘right’ is a standard set by ‘society’ and the ‘norm’. For many people, there’s no room in the ‘norm’ for a personal sense of success. There’s no room for progression. Isn’t it sickening to think of every talented human doing something they are not good at nor extract joy from, to survive, unable to invest time or economy into the thing that does? Even if you get it, every day is a small fight to maintain your right to be you.
Success, as an idea, is inconcievable as a subscription-based set of standards. Money and means, all of that. Success, as an idea, must be born from a standard you have set for yourself. That idea will take time though: as in, it would negate all those people who are fighting and who have fought their way into the system, rising steadily as the timeline of their lives could actually suggest. To be outside that system in any way threatens it in every way. In a just world, everyone could be successeful but in our world, success is for the best. It’s concievable that the tides of change could be persuaded by taking genuine responsiblity in defining what success really means to us, and often that entails a chanllenge to ‘the standard’, and actuallt living it. That’s the real part. Deciding it means more to you than someone else’s opinion on you as a successful person and going on tenaciously. If everyone whol felt that way lived like this, sheer mass would swiftly turn the tides, indeed. If anything has led us away from this, it’s hyper-criticism.
Taylor Swift, hyper-criticism and mean people was originally published on Little Joy
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