it's still bait even if you know it

yeah yeah we sent katy perry to space

Katy Perry went up into space and everybody was sort of hoping she’d die. She did not die so everybody is having a lot of fun skewering how stupid it was that she went up into space, how this is not a victory for feminism, and so on. It is certainly not a victory for feminism, that’s true enough. But ultimately, what a lot of this is about is that Katy Perry is an obnoxious person who makes obnoxious music, some of which used to be good or at least fun, but which now is not even really that. For various reasons, most of which are her own fault, she is a completely safe person to vent your spleen on in the discourse. There are no stans who will SWAT your house.

So here’s (for instance) Pitchfork feeling its oats:

Despite her commitment to putting others first, Perry seems to have gleaned a lot from the whole endeavor. She says she “couldn’t recommend this experience more,” which is useful information for those of us deciding between space travel and booking a basic economy ticket on Spirit that doesn’t let you carry on any luggage so you have to wear 13 layers of clothing onto your flight.

You can write this stuff about Katy Perry because absolutely nobody cares about her. Well, you can write whatever you want about anybody unless you’re commiting libel. But you know what I mean. And do I want to defend Katy Perry? No. I’m not even going to, honestly. Go ahead, hit that pinata. It’s all true: she is rich, out of touch, seems quite shallow, and so on.

But I was running a mental experiment when reading that Pitchfork piece, which was imagining a version of this story where the woman in the rocket was somebody people generally like (Stevie Nicks, let’s say) or else all—I dunno—kindergarten teachers. That is, do we object to Jeff Bezos sending Katy Perry up into space primarily because:

• we find Katy Perry personally noxious, or

• because we find Jeff Bezos himself objectionable, or

• because we find the privatization of space exploration objectionable, or

• because we think space exploration itself is kind of dumb and wasteful?

The truth is the version of this stunt where Jeff Bezos shoots a bunch of teachers into space bothers me a lot more. Katy Perry is the consumer base for private space travel, to the extent such a thing exists, and the function she’s performing is to hype the experience to those who can pay for it (while also taking the heat). Sending school teachers into space would be entirely about what a great guy Jeff Bezos, personally, is: see, he loves teachers!¹ He’s probably even pet a cat from time to time.

And if I reflect on what bothers me, it is really that it feels like we did this crazy thing—we went to space and the moon—as a public project. And now, suddenly, that project is most visibly associated with people like Bezos and Elon Musk. How could that happen?² Mankind has been obsessed with getting to space for thousands of years. How could we let it become a toy this quickly? Those are the emotions I’m actually feeling. They don’t have much to do with any of the people on the flight itself.

But it’s a lot easier to talk about how much we don’t like Katy Perry, how she seems stupid and doesn’t really deserve space because she can’t even be spiritually improved by the experience (as the Pitchfork piece does), how blah blah girlboss bad blah blah, than to talk about the machine behind her. It’s certainly more fun! And it’s true that a woman bragging about putting the ass in astronaut strikes no blow for women, women’s rights, feminism, or anything else.

But, like… who is Katy Perry? She is a washed-up pop star with multiple failed comebacks behind her. She sold out the one principle it seemed like she actually was willing to stick to—refusing to work with alleged sexual predator Dr. Luke—to chase a hit, and that didn’t even work. She sucks! She’s one of a handful of people for whom the general BDM Industries principle that “attention is attention” is not actually true, which is why she was not really able to survive the success of Teenage Dream. The moment you start paying attention to Katy Perry, you don’t like her.

And for this reason, she’s kind of a nobody. A wealthy nobody. Whatever societal ills this space jaunt represents, she’s not really their cause, or even their primary symptom. She’s just… irrelevant. Irrelevant to pop culture, to space, to politics. That’s probably the worst thing to be, from her perspective, but from mine… well, it would way be worse to be relevant to this mess, frankly.

1. If a second rocket bearing a teacher blew up I’d personally find it a convincing proof we’re being monitored by some kind of alien intelligence that’s really afraid of teachers.

2. If you come in here and talk about Operation Paperclip at me I’ll punt you to space myself.