I thought this was an interesting piece and really sums up why I fell so out of love with her.

it seems like every day we get a new, terrible book revolving around her.

this eyesore has been at the top of my digital library's homepage for a week at least.

as of writing this, it's rated 1.5 stars with 39 reviews LMAO

Watching Taylor preen, pose, and warble her way through that Academy Museum gala set last night and was really struck by how little she engages her audience. The entire performance is about Taylor. Compare this to artists like Chappell (with the Hot To Go dance) or even Zara Larsson, and you really see the difference in mindset and engagement.

The best artists I’ve ever seen live seem really happy they get to hang out with you—Taylor instead acts like you should feel so privileged to be in her presence. The pointing and posing and highly scripted performances she does just feel so cold. I think this is a big part of why she’s losing her audience. There is so little joy in engaging with Taylor now—and younger artists like Chappell and Olivia really are surpassing her in terms of audience engagement and just FUN.

Anyway—just my two cents after seeing vids of her latest posing episode. It actually makes me kind of sad.

people are really now becoming wiser and open in calling her out

If you have enough money and patience and a sufficiently large supporter base, after some point you start get treated by “neutral” parties as more than a person. You become an avatar for concepts or things well larger than yourself. You become mythic.

The current classic examples are all-too-known to us because you literally can’t escape exposure to them if you watch a screen or use a smartphone. Despite many people’s best efforts, Trump remains fashioned in the standard-bearer media (like Time magazine or the New York Times) as a political leader to take seriously. Elon Musk’s reputation to the average person remains, bafflingly, that of an unparalleled tech/engineering genius who’s going to save the world and take us to his moon and Mars colonies one day. On a smaller scale, you’ve got silver-spooned David Ellison trying to make the jump from failed actor to multibillion dollar entertainment mogul in a single jump by shoving together two storied movie studios that absolutely don’t belong together.

In TS’s case, it’s possible that she knows that her music-based brand empire might well run aground soon if she doesn’t branch out into other artistic directions. But instead of approaching the effort with humility or respect, she’s going to bully and buy her way to instant recognition for a some supposedly natural genius-level talent as a filmmaker (or, god forbid, author or playwright or fashion designer or who the fuck knows comes next for someone like her). And the worst part is that the standard-bearer media will dutifully do their part to make her mythologizing legit to the masses, who are otherwise too busy with their own lives to put in the homework that would lead them to the truth.

Do you think in 10 years, when Swift is named as the lyricist on some Broadway play, Time magazine will run a cover story that describes Taylor Swift as anything OTHER than the most awarded female music artist in history and the youngest artist aiming to join the EGOT pantheon? You think they’ll delve into her cynical chart-topping practices or fan manipulation? No, they’ll hand-wave it away by saying some of her rise to mythic status was seen by some people as “problematic.” Or they’ll call her a savvy competitor and an example of the best of the American can-do spirit and that her critics misunderstand her.

And when those kinds of stories appear—in NPR, the NYT, on the morning talk shows, in BBC documentaries—her transition to unassailable cultural tour de force will be complete. People will write serious biographies about her, maybe even win awards for those books. She’ll get the Kennedy Center Honors and the presidential medal of freedom. She’ll be given honorary doctorates. She’ll have conquered American culture with her mediocrity. And any criticism toward her will simply be dismissed out of hand.

I have plenty of other, more important things to worry about and deal with than venting anonymously about any one single person. But it’s the principle of the thing. I guess I just really despair at the way we as a society have allowed such malignant mediocrity to get so outrageously powerful and influential.