This is, sorry, way too many Taylor Swift posts in a row, but something genuinely and troublingly weird is going on with The Life of a Showgirl, reception of. There is a persistent attempt out there, particularly on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok, to paint this album as very racist, even as flirting with neo-Nazi imagery. So many new talking points arise that the rhetorical effect is that you want to end up conceding some of the minor charges just so that you can seem reasonable when you say “no, a necklace with lightning bolts on it is not winking toward the SS.”
And I don’t really think that these talking points are getting much purchase. It’s more that there are a lot of them and they keep popping up. But ever since the affair of Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni I have felt a bit suspicious of anything where suddenly a lot of people all seem to dislike a woman for constantly shifting reasons.
So I am just going to say this: I don’t think this reaction is organic. I think somebody is seeding these ideas. By the time it reaches Substack, yeah, people do actually think whatever it is they are arguing. But wherever it’s starting is another story. And I do not think this is starting with people who actually think these things.
That does not mean: anybody who doesn’t like this album or Taylor Swift’s music is a bot.
It does not even mean: anybody who thinks Taylor Swift is a racist is a bot.
But… these things?
That’s different.
Let’s say I’m right. (My favorite assumption.) Cui bono? There is in fact one person at least who is pretty invested in Taylor Swift’s downfall. That is the actual president, Donald Trump, who would like to be able to say after she endorsed my opponent, her career tanked. He has in fact already said that but you know he would also like it to be true.
But in fact I’m not sure that whatever is going on here has much to do with Taylor herself. I think it has to do with trying to politicize previously “apolitical” things in stupid ways. Taylor is a nice girl who likes her football player boyfriend and bakes sourdough. Both she and Travis are normie Democrats who avoid political statements unless absolutely necessary. That is just true.1
If you toss out the idea that “I was in the dark ): but now I’m in the sun :)” is racist, you will get some people to agree with you. People will just ignore it if they don’t agree. I always just ignore this kind of thing, because my rule here is, as previously stated, don’t have stupid conversations, and this is very stupid. It isn’t even a conversation. If you think any of the accusations in the screenshot above are valid, just… unsubscribe from the newsletter.2
So this stuff gets tossed out there, things snowball, skeptical people continue to opt out of the conversation, and while literally none of this is affecting Taylor Swift herself or her music,3 what it is doing is painting a lot of people as hysterical lunatics. Or, possibly more accurately, a lot of people have been offered the chance to paint themselves as hysterical lunatics, and they are going for it.
In either case, there is a clear opening for other people to say: wow, look. Even being “on their side” isn’t enough for These People. If you don’t anticipate their every whim, they’ll still turn on you. And in the world in which I am correct and what is happening here is not entirely organic, I see that as the basic benefit of creating this conversation around Taylor Swift. She herself is incredibly unlikely to say anything. She almost certainly will just let it pass. It is mostly contained to the parts of the Internet where journalists still hang out, like Twitter, and it only leaks over into reality if somebody lets it.
Still… I really think people need to be a little more skeptical. I went back and forth a lot about whether or not to post this at all because it is frankly kind of crazy to say “you know, I don’t think this is organic.” And again, this doesn’t really affect Taylor herself, who will be fine regardless. But I can’t really shake the feeling a well is being poisoned here. In the best case scenario, in which this all is organic, I think people who excel at seizing attention for themselves are abusing the general desire, in others, to be conscious of racism for their own self-aggrandizement.
I have switched off comments on this one because… I really can’t argue about it. If you think I’m wrong just put me down as a bad person and move on. We’ll all survive (until we die).
Also: Many, many fans of Taylor Swift are not white. You can go on TikTok and find lots of Black fans who are bewildered and angry at this inane conversation. Treating these people like they don’t matter and don’t exist because for your arguments only the white fans really count is, in my opinion, actually racist.
Prior to Travis dating Taylor, I don’t think anybody considered him some sort of covert MAGA figure. It was only after they got together that this weird narrative started.
I mean that. We aren’t going to get along. You should not support me, because if you are right and I am wrong, I am either culpably blind to racism or actively colluding with it.
taylor please do not write a song about this