Taylor Swift becomes the internet troll she loathes

Taylor Swiftnew album, The life of a showgirlTo a massive problem – an amazing lack of self -awareness.

Of course, this Swift review is not new. For years, Swift Critics discussed that she sees herself as a perpetual victim – Manipulative lovers, traitor friends, pardon enemies and unscrupulous musical frameworks. They also observed that Swift sometimes seems to punish cruelly and publicly those who betray it or slight it, in particular by its writing.

This representation could sometimes be convincing. After all, some of Swift’s greatest successes, such as “Bad Blood”, “Mean” and “Karma”, concern the score. However, Swift also managed to balance his desire for revenge with honest vulnerability or real growth of songs like “Anti-Hero” and “The Manuscript”.

Not this time. Showgirl Understands a song (“elder girl”) which seriously rejects the toxic internet culture, but also two other songs (“really romantic” and “canceled!”) Which channel the worst parts of this culture, including mockery, humiliation and hot taking that has badly read the gravity of the political moment.

The songs offer Swift criticisms new evidence that their evaluation of the billionaire pop star is correct, at least sometimes. Unfortunately for Swift, which seems really nice when it is not indebted for a grievance, the brutal contrast between these songs demonstrates that it can easily become the troll itself that it decrees.

How did we get here, Taylor?

There is an engaging scene in the new Swift album release film, The official party of a showgirlWhere she explains the premise of the piano ballad “eldest girl”. The song, she says, concerns the way Internet is a space that rewards cheap and callousy shots, a state of mind that can distort our lives and our relationships.

She writes: “Everyone is so punk on the Internet / everyone is otherwise that they are not / All the jokes are just lagging fishing and the memes / sad as it seems, the apathy is hot / everyone is cute in the comments / Each hot plug is cold like ice”

Swift wants to make a promise, probably to her fiancé, Travis Kelce, that she will never treat him so negligently. Cue the mainly tender refrain: “But I am not a bad slut / and it is not wild / but I will never let you fall / I will never give you aside / so much traitors / smooth operators / but I will never break this wish / I will not leave you now, now”

Swift can regret the terrible choice of racial coded words of “Bad Bitch” and “Savage”, but the sincerity of the song in the context of the cultural wickedness that it describes in “Daughter” elder “is welcome.

However, Swift’s commitment is clearly just for Kelce, because “in fact romantic” could not be a more ugly song if it was trying. It is designed for shame and mortifying its target, The singer and winning producer of a Grammy Charli XCX would have. His sin? Apparently writing a song, according to the rumors of Swift, on a girl who “hits my insecurity”.

The song “Sympathy is a Knife” appears on the SMASH 2024 album by Charli XCX Kidwhich also curiously includes a song entitled “Everything is romantic”.

Charli XCX does not consecrate “sympathy is a knife” to ruthless insults, even if she does not like the girl in question, and root for her breakup (referring ostensibly to the disappearance of Swift’s relationship with the leader of the years 1975, Matty Healy). Instead, she is struggling with a “spiral” of unleashed emotions being near this person.

Charli XCX sings, alarming, to commit suicide graphically, adding: “Volatile at war with my dialogue / I would say that there was a God if they could stop this wild voice tearing me / I am so worried now”

As a journalist who wrote on the intersection of suicide and digital culture for more than a decade, I can think of little more representative of the toxic internet than someone who says to another person who feels suicidal or without value that they are in fact insignificant.

“In fact, romantic” may not explicitly reference the despair of Charli XCX, but he continues to methodically humiliate his subject:

“I hadn’t thought of you for a long time / but you continue to send me funny Saint-Valentines / And I know that you think it becomes vicious / But it’s precious, adorable / like a chihuahua toy barking on a small handbag / That’s how much

Swift said in a Interview with Amazon Music The fact that the song consists in realizing that someone engages in a unilateral contradictory relationship with you and that negative attention can be a form of flattery. But in the song, she also suggests a sexual motif (“It looks like you flirt with me”), and declares: “No man has ever loved me like you.”

Perhaps involuntarily, Swift revives a sometimes popular homophobic trope among college and secondary students that if one girl does not like another, it is because her aversion is a disguised crush.

But even if “really romantic” does not concern Charli XCX, Swift spends two and a half minutes to give cheap photos nasty – a more lyrical version of the genre that you would find between two people at war with each other online.

An explanation of Swift’s behavior could be the first line of “really romantic”, in which she reveals that the subject of the song called her “boring Barbie”. The other half of the enigma is buried in “The eldest girl” when Swift sings: “I was afflicted by a terminal uniqueness / I die just trying to appear cool”

If you have spent your personal and professional life by aspiring to popular and critical acceptance, the “Boring Barbie” insult could feel painful. It may not be in the nature of Swift to move away from the task of a quarrel, but if it had done it? Or what happens if, instead of trying to minimize, she wrote a song in the vein of “the eldest girl”, exercising empathy or compassion towards someone who suffers clearly? “The eldest girl” could make you believe that it is the kind of world that Swift wants to live.

Cancel’s armaments! culture

Unfortunately, Showgirl Offers competing visions of this world.

In the song, “Cancelled!” Swift tries to transform a hot plug to be at the center of the scandal, real or not, into a anthem for people who experience public anger.

Social media has guessed who could have in mind for this track. Maybe she is the actress Blake Livelywhich is currently involved in a Sexual harassment trials Against the actor and director Justin Baldoni. Maybe it’s for Brittany Mahomeswife of the teammate of the heads of the NFL of Kelce, Patrick Mahomes publicly support President Donald Trump in 2022.

Anyway, “canceled!” Look at the controversial concept of canceling culture and seems to adhere to the story that any effort to hold a public figure responsible for their words and its actions is equivalent to rejecting them from the company. “CANCELED!” I cannot be disturbed by reality that some people are called or questioned for a good reason. Instead, the song deals with cancellation as a badge of honor, and a path to personal empowerment and dark camaraderie.

Swift sings: “Now they broke you as if they broke me / but a broken glass is much more lively / and now you know exactly who your friends (you know who we are) / We are those with matching scars”

Fast said she considers this song As a history on the navigation of terrible periods of lower control and to come out stronger, but the point of view of Swift on the so-called cancellation could not be warmer. He misjudged a serious moment in political and pop culture, because the Trump administration threatens and tries to silence the speech he hates.

If fans are waiting for Swift to recognize how the armament of cancellation culture has played in this dynamic, then align with fundamental human and democratic rights, as She has point of view in the pastIt seems that they will wait a long time.

Swift is right for which the internet is often ugly. But on ShowgirlThe rejection of Swift of this culture only seems useful when it serves its interests and its vendettas.

This article reflects the opinion of the writer.