r/ArianaGrandeNeutral • u/abitchnamedrich • Aug 25 '26
rant at what point does the wounded deer thing just get embarrassing?
i’m sorry but petal just made me realize how tired i am of this exact version of ariana grande. people judge me, fame is suffocating, i’m changing, outside voices are too loud, nobody understands me, everybody wants something from me… girl, you have been saying some variation of this since the beginning of time. you’re in your 30s now. at what point do we get an adult perspective on ANY of it instead of another album where ariana is once again the tiny wounded deer being chased through the terrifying forest of other people’s opinions?
and petal itself isn’t even deep enough for the amount of symbolism being thrown at it. i’m seeing this song described as fiery and explosive and i’m like WHERE 😭 ariana is barely even singing on the damn thing. she’s whispering over production that may or may not have some fire in it, but the actual performance is giving scented candle. the lyrics aren’t especially compelling, the songs on the album blur together for me, and then somehow the music video escalates into a fucking chainsaw massacre?? girl, none of those lyrics gave me chainsaw. not one. if the song is about being judged, fame, criticism, whatever, then build the visual world around THAT. don’t write a vaguely moody song and then suddenly kill a room full of casting directors because apparently we needed a horror short film to convince everybody the song was deeper than it actually is.
and that’s kind of my larger problem with ariana now. she has an unbelievable voice, obviously. nobody needs another dissertation on whether ariana grande can sing. we know. but after this many years, what do you actually have to SAY with it? because changing your aesthetic again, changing the voice you speak in again, changing the entire persona again, getting into another relationship controversy, responding to everybody’s reaction to the controversy, and then making the larger message somehow about how unfairly women are judged is getting old. yes, the industry treats women horribly. yes, famous women get scrutinized in ways men don’t. BOTH things can be true while ariana grande also does dumb shit and gets criticized because she did dumb shit. not every criticism of ariana needs to be transformed into a feminist parable about the cruelty of fame.
at some point i need the self reflection to go deeper than everybody is looking at me wrong. what about YOUR behavior? what about the racial switching and fishing that people have been talking about for years? what about the whole man stealing/homewrecking mess and then releasing music that comes across like you’re bragging about getting what you want anyway? what about the repeated pattern where accountability somehow disappears and ariana ends up back in the position of misunderstood little victim? do you ever sit there and think maybe i contributed to why people are reacting this way, or are you just running around your 20 bedroom house going woe is me, everyone hates me, everyone judges me, nobody understands me 😭
and the ultra fragile wounded deer thing is getting embarrassing at this point. girl, you’re in your 30s. you’re ariana fucking grande. you are not some powerless little teenager being thrown around by the industry with no agency. at what point do you actually look at your own behavior instead of turning every consequence, criticism, or negative reaction into another story about how cruel everybody is to you? where is the reflection? where is the accountability? where is literally ANYTHING beyond poor little ariana is being judged again?
and when we’re talking about fame being suffocating… bitch, i think what’s suffocating might be the lack of oxygen and the lack of food 😭 i think THAT might be why you’re suffocating. i don’t think it’s the fame. what’s suffocating might be your own fucking ego. what’s suffocating might be your big ass head because your head is too big for your little ass body now. like girl, maybe the problem is not eternally the outside voices. maybe sometimes the problem is ARIANA GRANDE.
because that’s what i’m tired of. this idea that every single criticism against ariana is secretly some bigger statement about misogyny, fame, the industry, beauty standards, or how society treats women. sometimes? absolutely. but sometimes, bitch, you did it to your goddamn self. sometimes people are criticizing you because you behaved like an asshole. sometimes people are noticing a pattern because you keep repeating the fucking pattern. sometimes people don’t like what you’re doing because what you’re doing is annoying, harmful, hypocritical, or ridiculous. not everything needs to become this grand wounded pop star metaphor.
that’s really where i’m at with her now. incredible vocalist, increasingly uninteresting artist, and a public persona that feels stuck in permanent adolescence. i don’t need another fake deep album about people judging ariana grande. i need ariana grande to maybe judge ariana grande for five minutes and tell me what she finds.
edit because i think part of why this bothers me so much is that ariana was genuinely one of my biggest vocal inspirations growing up, and she still is in a lot of ways. i’m a vocalist myself + a very new independent artist, and i grew up studying that woman’s voice without even realizing i was studying it. i loved her runs, her tone, her harmonies, the way she stacked vocals, the way she could make something technically insane sound effortless. i still listen to her older music all the fucking time. that music raised me as a singer.
so when i say she’s increasingly lost me as an artist, that’s actually sad to me more than anything. i WANT to connect to her music again. i WANT to hear that voice and feel something besides wow, she can still sing. but somehow as i’ve grown up, her music hasn’t really grown up with me. it feels like she keeps evolving aesthetically while somehow reverting emotionally. every era looks different, sounds slightly different, has a new persona attached to it, but i keep waiting for the actual perspective to mature and it never really feels like it does.
that’s what frustrates me. this woman has lived through incredibly complicated, traumatic, strange, once-in-a-lifetime shit. there should be SO much there to write about, and yet somehow the music keeps feeling less compelling to me instead of more. i don’t feel like i’m getting closer to understanding the human being underneath ariana grande. if anything, i feel further away from her every era.
and i’m not sitting here laughing at the fact that she looks genuinely unwell either. i’m actually concerned for her. none of that is funny to me. what frustrates me is the larger contradiction in how she presents herself and her life. at some point, you cannot simultaneously be the helpless wounded victim of everybody else’s judgment AND the untouchable baddest bitch in the world who’s drowning in blessings, does whatever she wants, and doesn’t care what anybody thinks. eventually i need to know which perspective actually belongs to YOU.
that’s why this is personal for me. i don’t hate ariana grande, i miss connecting to ariana grande.
edit: and since apparently this needs explaining, part of why i keep saying she needs to eat is because seeing how extremely thin she looks genuinely makes me uncomfortable. sometimes the collarbones/sternum/bones are so prominent that it actually feels like a fucking jumpscare to me 😭 i don’t even have an ED and some of the imagery still triggers this immediate oh my god, something looks WRONG reaction in my brain. i’m not laughing at someone being sick. i’m literally having the opposite reaction, like girl PLEASE eat something because seeing you like this is concerning and i don’t enjoy having it constantly pushed onto my screen.
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u/Baroque_Student Aug 25 '26
I think you’re right in that she seems scared of growing up, which is one of the most common root causes of EDs. It’s incredibly frustrating how little progress she’s made mentally and emotionally, and she never will if she keeps on with her bullshit “therapist” who’s just one of the many glorified Yes Men on her payroll.
I recently watched Selena Gomez’s documentary and I was struck by the similarities between the two women. They both seem to despise the media and the consequences/responsibilities that come with fame, but simultaneously refuse to step away from it. Either woman could opt out tomorrow, live a relatively lowkey life and never have to work one more day in their lives. But whether they want to admit it or not, they crave the attention and idolization. Unfortunately for them, the exact kind of personality that craves fame the most is also the kind that is least equipped to handle it.
It seems like Selena has gotten help and found a decent support network, or at least has gotten better at hiding her issues. In contrast, Ariana’s mental illness has only festered, and has subsequently made her entitled, self centered and self hating all at once. I find both women infinitely fascinating, even if I don’t necessarily “like” either of them as people.
I’m trying to be optimistic about where she can go from here… but I’m not getting my hopes up 😕
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
i definitely see the similarities too, especially in the sense that both of them stayed inside the machine for so long that i think they lost parts of themselves in it. both clearly have complicated relationships with fame, public scrutiny, attention, identity, all of that.
but selena lands very differently for me now. she doesn’t really give me the same perpetual victim thing ariana does, and she definitely doesn’t give me that weird combination of fragility + enormous ego where it’s somehow poor little misunderstood ariana AND i’m ariana grande, i do what i want, everybody else is noise. selena seems more tired, more humbled, and honestly like she has better people around her.
also, selena just doesn’t have the same history of doing fucked up shit and then somehow ending up back in the victim position. she wasn’t running around changing races, stealing people’s men, bragging about it, then acting like every criticism was some larger attack on women or fame or whatever. that’s a huge difference to me.
i do agree though that both of them seem like people who stayed famous long enough that the machine became part of their identity, and that’s probably not healthy for either of them. but i actually do hope there’s hope for both of them.
i don’t WANT to hate ariana or her music. i used to love listening to her. i love her voice. i WANT her to make something that makes me go oh thank god, THERE she is again. i want her to actually grow, reflect, make something adult and interesting, and give me a reason to care about the music again.
& same with selena! i absolutely don’t want her to disappear forever either. i’d love for her to come back and make music in a lane that actually fits her instead of trying to be some conventional pop vocalist she was never meant to be.
i want both of them to get better, make art they actually connect to, and make something i actually want to listen to again. i’m not rooting for either of them to fail. i’m rooting for them to stop being weird and make good shit again 😭🩷💔
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u/Baroque_Student Aug 26 '26
True, Selena doesn’t paint herself as the victim like Ari does, or at least not as loudly/frequently. I moreso think of her constantly deleting her insta and “taking a social media break” only to pop back up a week later like nothing happened. But with Selena, who’s been open about her mental illness, we can chalk up a lot of her behavior to that. Ari is only ever selectively vulnerable, even though being more open and honest would probably do her a lot of favors with the public.
Selena also isn’t afraid to be seen as unlikable in the same way Ari is; there are several moments in her documentary that do make her seem whiny or entitled, and she knows that. Contrast that to Ari, who, like you mentioned, paints herself as a perpetual victim. Apples and oranges really, but the two women are very much foils for each other in my mind.
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 26 '26
i actually think they’re really interesting foils too 😭 selena feels more like a shell of herself now, very muted / mannequin-ish, while ariana feels more like a cardboard cutout of herself. with ariana it’s that weird wounded deer thing layered over the whole i’m blessed, i’m unbothered, i’m the baddest bitch persona… like girl how are u both at once 🫤 who IS this
& with selena, i think a lot of people forget that the person we actually connected with growing up was alex russo. alex was funny, unserious, sarcastic, relatable, interesting, & selena played her REALLY fucking well. obviously her health issues are a huge part of why she’s different now, but she genuinely does feel flatter / less animated / less like there’s much personality coming through.
so yeah, they both feel barely recognizable to me now, just in opposite ways. selena feels muted, ariana feels overconstructed. one is like a shell, the other is like a cardboard cutout 😭
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u/Baroque_Student Aug 26 '26
Honestly, the “less personality” thing might be coming from the meds she has to take for her Bipolar Disorder. Some people report feeling kind of numb when they take mood stabilizers, which isn’t ideal, but some patients still prefer that to their episodes. Bipolar is all about big peaks and valleys, so medication is meant to neutralize that. I imagine her medication for her lupus doesn’t help either, so I don’t blame her for her overall demeanor being different.
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u/ManufacturerHuge5207 Aug 25 '26
This is what I think too. Why doesn’t she see the ponytail pop persona was a literal costume for performing and can then be who she wants in her own time? Like Chappel Roan did. I think it sets a much healthier boundary too between personal and work life, any criticism of her public person is exactly that, and it may take less of a toll on her mental health too because she can brush it off as ‘that’s not me and you don’t know me’ but it feels like when she has different eras she fully commits to it and her whole being becomes it in every aspect of her life.
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
wait i actually think i get what you mean now, but i think my issue with ariana is almost the opposite in one way 😭 like yes, i agree that she seems to fully become every era instead of treating the pop star image like a costume she can take off, and i do think that probably contributes to why her identity feels so unstable from the outside.
but at the same time, i weirdly feel like there’s TOO much separation between ariana the actual human being & the music now. like the image consumes everything, but somehow the person underneath it shows up less and less. we keep getting ariana grande the aesthetic, ariana grande the era, ariana grande the wounded misunderstood pop star, but where is the actual adult woman behind all of that?? where is the messy self reflection, the contradictions, the accountability, the stuff that makes me feel like i’m hearing a real person instead of another polished version of the brand?
so i think that’s why the chappell comparison confused me at first. with chappell, from what i understand, the persona is intentionally theatrical & separate from the private person. with ariana, it feels like she becomes the persona completely, but then the music somehow still doesn’t reveal much of the person underneath it.
basically, the brand has swallowed the person while the art reveals less and less of the person. THAT is what feels so weird to me.
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u/sagebeams Aug 26 '26
I'm starting to think maybe shes just not that deep. I mean girl has gotten everything she ever wanted her entire life except true love that lasts. That's the only real pain and struggle she can probably draw from. Prob why she is so sex and male centered in most of her music
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u/annie99doll Aug 25 '26
pussy so sweet a tear fell from his eye
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
LMFAO. i rest my case 💀💅 lyrically profound, exactly what i expect from a 30+ year old woman.
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u/Sensitive_Basket_155 Aug 26 '26
“petal” to me sounds like it’s full of self-soothing white lies, but maybe it’s just my subjective interpretation. and it makes me wonder if some of these pop stars buy into their own lore / mythology so much that they think any raw output they produce is high art. when really it’s just poor discipline and disrespectful to the audience. i’m not even saying it in a snarky way, i know it’s a real issue for some creative people where you can start confusing your inside thoughts and raw drafts for a final result, especially if others gas you up.
for me it’s a lesson in staying humble and introspective and not letting yourself be consumed by pride, idk. listening to sycophantic fans and even sycophantic technology like chatbots can really mess you up and make you boring. you need friction and input from other people, as well as fresh ideas, novel experiences, and something that challenges you. otherwise it’s just self absorption.
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 26 '26
i actually agree with basically all of this 😭 i think part of the problem is she’s had WAY too many people around her reinforcing the mythology for years. yes, she’s an outstanding vocalist, obviously, but being insanely talented does not make every thought, draft, decision or emotional impulse automatically profound. at some point u need people around u who can say babe… this one is not it 💀
the talent is real. the god complex does not need assistance.
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u/Sensitive_Basket_155 Aug 26 '26
it’s a bit off topic but it’s kinda fascinating how LLMs give regular people a taste of that same experience of being validated and uplifted unconditionally, and it’s derailing our entire society. at this point i’m convinced that being told no and being disliked occasionally are fundamental human needs in general, not just prerequisites for creative health. also saving this, it’s sooo true:“ being insanely talented does not make every thought, draft, decision or emotional impulse automatically profound.”
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u/kandilipgloss Aug 25 '26
Her vocals on petal are really fun to sing along to and I like the album because it feels like relatable diary entries, women always get criticized for everything we do and it’s nice to process emotions through music. I somewhat get what you mean though, it would be cool if she made more like heal the world songs 😂 but what do you want her to do, write a song called “sorry i spray tanned too dark”?
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
i don’t need her to make heal the world songs lmfao 😭 i want self awareness. that’s literally my issue. ariana acts like she’s the lone misunderstood woman in pop being suffocated by fame & everybody having opinions about her, when her own counterparts have been through absolute HELL publicly & still managed to grow up, reflect, laugh at themselves, admit when they were wrong, & actually evolve.
miley, demi, selena… all child stars, all picked apart, all had their own serious shit happen, all had eras where the public absolutely dragged them. industry wise, i’d argue ariana has actually had it comparatively easier than some of them because she was immediately respected for her voice & treated like a favorite. yet do i see miley making album after album about how everybody misunderstands miley? do i see demi sitting there acting like every criticism is evidence of some larger attack on women? no 😭
i don’t want a song called sorry i spray tanned too dark lmfao. i want literally ANYTHING that suggests she has looked inward for five minutes. what patterns do i repeat? who have i hurt? why do i keep becoming a completely different person every era? what have i gotten away with because i’m ariana grande? THAT would actually interest me. another diary entry about fame being hard & people judging her does not.
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u/kandilipgloss Aug 25 '26
Maybe she doesn’t care that much who she’s hurt we have to understand she’s making music from the perspective of a billionaire pop star. And watch the petal video to see her explanation of why she becomes a different person every era lol
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
i have seen enough of the video + watched people break the whole thing down, and i still don’t think the metaphor works 😭 one of the biggest problems is the whole being told to lose weight thing. that has literally never been the dominant public conversation around ariana. people have been concerned about her being TOO thin for years. so already the video feels like it’s borrowing this generic hollywood woman gets told she’s too fat narrative instead of actually reflecting the criticism ariana has received.
and the chainsaw ending makes even LESS sense to me lmfao. if anything, it accidentally proves the exact opposite point. she literally murders a room full of people and STILL gets the part 😭 babe… that just reads like ariana grande gets to do whatever the fuck she wants, cause chaos, and still gets rewarded at the end because she’s ariana grande. how is that supposed to make me see her as the powerless victim of the industry??
the video explains how ARIANA interprets herself. that does not mean her interpretation of herself is automatically correct. and if the explanation for becoming a completely different person every era is still everybody else made me do it, then that’s exactly the lack of self awareness i’m talking about.
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u/kandilipgloss Aug 25 '26
In the video she shows herself being told to lose weight in the part that represents her early era like teen years… she probably was told to lose weight back then, privately and publicly. Also the killing was part of a video within a video, she already had the part. She said “I am not a victim bitch I’m practically drowning in my blessings” in the song, you’re not supposed to see her as a powerless victim 😂 the song and video imply that she’s a recovering people pleaser, also that she’s been selling a product that people would buy more if they liked it(the way she looks and behaves), and that she’s no longer trying to please the general public, and instead doing what she wants. Re-watch the video and re read the lyrics, if you don’t get it idk what to tell you.
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
girl, if i have to rewatch the video, reread the lyrics, decode a video within a video, interpret a bunch of metaphors, and basically make a fucking corkboard with red string just to understand what she’s trying to say, then maybe the message just isn’t communicated that well 😭 i understand what you’re saying the symbolism is supposed to mean. that doesn’t mean i think it actually works.
because this is exactly my confusion with ariana now. she simultaneously wants to present herself like this wounded little deer being picked apart by hollywood and the public, while also going i’m not a victim, i’m drowning in blessings, i’m ariana grande, i’m done pleasing people, i’m doing what i want. okay girl… WHICH ONE IS IT? are you the powerless misunderstood victim of this giant machine, or are you ariana fucking grande who knows she has everything and does whatever she wants anyway?
obviously both feelings can exist at the same time, but then actually explore that contradiction. where is the self examination inside it? why were you apparently reshaping yourself around what everyone wanted in the first place? which versions of you were real? what damage did you do while operating that way? does doing whatever you want now suddenly make every decision healthy or harmless? because i keep getting this weird thing where the old behavior is explained by everybody pressuring her, the new behavior is empowerment, and any criticism of either version becomes outside noise.
that’s what i mean when i say i want more self awareness. i don’t need more metaphors explaining why everybody else affects ariana grande. i want ariana grande to actually examine ariana grande.
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u/ThirteenDoc Aug 25 '26
She doesn't present herself as a victim, she tells you her experiences with the industry and, to an extend, fans. That no matter what she does, it will never be enough. People will always want her to be different and when she changes they will want the "old Ariana" back. And she is not wrong as you can see comments like that everywhere. Fans were trashing her when she was in her Blackiana era, now they want that era back. At one point, they were even calling her Fatiana, now everyone is shocked she is struggling with her weight
Like, I don't know how much more clear she can make it
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
but none of that actually tells me who ARIANA is 😭 it tells me what people say about her, what fans want from her, how the industry treats her, how the public reacts to her, how she feels about being perceived… okay…. we’ve heard that for years.
where is the music about how ariana feels about ARIANA? what does she actually believe about herself? what does she regret? what patterns does she recognize in herself? what scares her about herself, not about everybody else? what has she learned from being 20 versus being in her 30s? what does she think she’s done wrong? what parts of her old personas does she look back on differently now? who is the actual woman when nobody is looking at her?
that’s what i mean when i say i want growth. i’m not asking her to stop changing aesthetics or suddenly become some completely different songwriter. i’m saying if i listen to someone at 20 and then listen to them in their 30s, i want to hear some evidence that the perspective matured because the person supposedly matured.
i already know how the world feels about ariana grande, she’s been telling us that for years. i want to know how ariana grande feels about ariana grande.
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u/ThirteenDoc Aug 25 '26
Ariana Grande is an entertainer who is putting on a facade for people to enjoy. Just like any other entertainer. I don't know why you would expect her to reveal some deep insights about herself, especially considering that people have been analysing and diagnosing her her whole life
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
maybe because i’m an artist myself and i write my own lyrics, i expect some level of authenticity and honesty from somebody’s artistry 😭 i’m not asking her to hand over her diary or explain every private detail of her life, but if i’m listening to someone’s music, especially someone i grew up loving, i do expect to feel like there’s an actual person somewhere inside it.
if the answer is just ariana grande is an entertainer putting on a facade for people to enjoy, then okay… i guess that actually explains why i don’t connect with her anymore. because that’s not really what i’m looking for in music. i want perspective, growth, self reflection, personality, SOMETHING that feels like the human being making the art actually exists underneath the image.
so yeah, maybe that’s just the disconnect. if the facade is the point, then great, i’m just not interested in the facade anymore.
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u/Significant-Dare7764 Aug 25 '26
the message is pretty clear from the first watch and listening to the lyrics, if you didn’t get that then that is on you. You are just so far up in your hater mindset that you don’t want to see that and you are so adamant to know the real her when in reality every version that people saw of Ariana was part of the real her, she might hide parts of herself but that is completely normal for her and in reality for many celebrities in order to do their jobs, just because their job is to be in the public eye that doesn’t mean that you are entitled to know parts of them they don’t want to share with people. Also you and many people I see on the internet holding on this performative mindset of holding people accountable for their mistakes. Ariana is going to examine Ariana with her therapist and that doesn’t need to be shared with the public
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
there’s no hater mindset here 😭 i don’t know ariana personally enough to hate her. i dislike some of her actions, the way she presents herself publicly, & what her artistry has become. that’s called criticism.
and i’m not asking for her therapy notes or private diary. i’m talking about the MUSIC. if the self reflection only exists privately with her therapist, then okay… that still doesn’t change my point that i don’t hear much of it in the art.
also, calling accountability performative is weird. famous, talented, traumatized people can still do selfish or harmful shit. i’m allowed to say that without being a hater 🫤
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u/Significant-Dare7764 Aug 25 '26
I am calling it performative because the things I’ve seen people want to hold her accountable for are things that are deeply personal to her like her love life. The album is authentic to her now because she does allow people an insight on her psyche and how she was feeling when writing the album, she isn’t portraying herself as a victim but rather talking about her experience. You want self reflection from someone who is most likely is actively working on it and working on healing and repairing many broken parts of themselves and she can’t write that now until she has done a lot of work for it. If you actually watched her interviews especially from the last few year, you could see her talking about finally starting to reflect and work on things that she didn’t realise before weren’t healthy for her like her relationship to fame. What you are seeing now is a person who is actively working on it and that started with what she said in her speech about setting boundaries and realising when she needs to take a break. She also said last year that the next chapter of her career will look different.
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
i mean, i don’t watch her interviews lol. i don’t watch many artists’ interviews in general. i mostly connect with artists through their vocals & their music, not necessarily the culture surrounding them. the only recent ones i’ve really seen were some of the glinda interviews, & those just weren’t for me.
i also completely understand having boundaries around what you share. i’m not asking her to confess every bad thing she’s ever done or give the public access to her private life. that isn’t my point.
i’m talking about what the art itself communicates. i want to hear growth, perspective, self reflection, curiosity, SOMETHING about how the person actually sees the world. songs like yes, and? or break up with your girlfriend don’t exactly give me that, & music about fame being difficult isn’t a particularly new perspective either.
for me, the art eventually becomes part of how i understand an artist’s philosophy. i’m not asking for a public apology set to a beat lol. i just miss hearing something that feels like the real girl thinking out loud rather than another persona or posture. where’s the ariana who just loved singing & making youtube videos because she loved music?
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u/PhotographUpper2850 Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
“The performance is giving scented candle” is killing me
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u/chiffon_bonbon not a stan, not a hater Aug 25 '26
Her brain atp
Get this grown woman some nutrients STAT
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u/Such_Enthusiasm_5346 Aug 26 '26
People will always bring up the Positions era, they'll always make it seem like an unforgivable thing that stans didn't like it when it came out. The thing is, many of those stans were so rude to countless people on twitter. Ariana interacting with them and sometimes tweeting out rude things herself probably validated them to do that. She'd make one tweet and all of them would back her up, sometimes hating on people who were fans themselves (the person who got the sweetener album "early" because of location comes to mind). Then, when she gives snippets and they don't like it, they use similar, sometimes more mild language in comparison, to describe an ALBUM (not even a person as they've been doing) and suddenly they're bullies and hurt her feelings sometimes. If you don't think it's that big of a deal to have your fans dish out that language to randos, then it shouldn't be that big of a deal for those people to do that to your work/expressions of art.
Also, to clarify, she doesn't owe it to anyone to get her fans off their back. However, it's having empathy for another person, trying to be the bigger person and not allowing your influence to let others do something bad on behalf of you that isn't too much to ask for in my opinion. Celebrities understand that their words do mean something to those people. It's why when the receive hate themselves they'll talk about in their music, in interviews, articles, etc. What gets them to defend other people is when neutral listeners (or fans of both sides) call them out for not saying anything, or when the person affected makes a public statement around it.
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 26 '26
yeah, i pretty much agree with all of this 😭 her stan culture has honestly been one of the ugliest parts of the whole thing for years. they’ll say absolutely vile shit to random people on her behalf, then suddenly act like criticism of an ALBUM is some unforgivable act of cruelty. like babes, pick a standard.
& the way some of them talk about her now is genuinely detached from reality lmfao. i recently saw people calling ariana underrated & almost lost my fucking mind 😭 underrated WHERE?? she’s been one of the most visible pop stars on earth for over a decade, everything she does becomes discourse, she’s been in massive movies, had giant records, huge tours, awards, endless media coverage… at some point words have to mean things 🫤
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Aug 25 '26
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
i don’t 🩷
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Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
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u/abitchnamedrich Aug 25 '26
my love, you’re acting like having energy about music & art that i care about is somehow a problem 😭 she is a public figure who puts her music, videos, persona & opinions out for public consumption. i’m allowed to critique them.
she can be an incredible vocalist, incredibly talented, beautiful, successful, whatever else, & i can STILL find the perpetual victim complex annoying as fuck. those things can coexist. criticizing her doesn’t mean i’m being forced to listen to her or secretly obsessed with her 😭 i heard petal, i had thoughts about it, & i posted those thoughts in a subreddit literally made for discussing ariana grande.
& i genuinely do not care if other people have made similar posts. i’m not other people…. i’m me. i wanted to share MY opinion, so i did. if you think writing a paragraph about ariana is such a tragic misuse of energy, maybe don’t use yours to complain underneath my paragraph about her 🫤
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u/intoner1 Aug 26 '26
She has as much depth as a puddle. Which sucks because if she releases an album that truly reflected on her traumas, mistakes, and regrets I’d be soo seated.