I’m tired of Taylor Swift: A Commentary from NDSU’s The Spectrum
And it’s still not because she’s a woman
The last time I wrote about Taylor Swift, I did so from a rather charitable perspective. Even though I don’t like him much as a person, I really like his music, and that gave him a bit of an edge for me. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
I have two main criticisms of Miss Swift: her choices related to private jets and her decision to remain silent on the crisis in Gaza, despite being one of the most high-profile media personalities in the world.
Let me start with the most obvious problem. We all know that Taylor Swift’s negative environmental impact is egregious, and last week her lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to the 21-year-old college student who runs the social media accounts that follow her shows of carbon. The reason was that, theoretically, publishing Swift’s flight information could put her in danger of being harassed, but there are more holes in there than a goth’s favorite fishnets.
First of all, all of this information is public. Its flight records are searchable on Google, because all pilots need to know when planes are in the sky and where in order to avoid a collision. If a stalker really wanted to find Taylor Swift, her public theft records won’t be the final step in the puzzle. Additionally, if it did not want this information to be public, it could easily change it by chartering flights instead of using the planes it owns. Private charter flights do not publicly disclose their passenger lists; the only reason we know Taylor Swift is the one in the air is because she uses his personal plane.
Aside from the fact that it’s ridiculous to do something like this without legal basis, it’s also obvious that Swift only wants the accounts removed because the public’s perception of her is changing — because, frankly, , of the unforgivable use of its assets to make the world a worse place for every living being. It’s easy to get caught up in the music and fandom, or turn a blind eye to Swift’s actions, because so much of the criticism of her is just misogyny. But Queen Elizabeth wasn’t a feminist icon for committing genocide as a woman – she was just a genocide freak. There are real and valid criticisms to be made about Taylor Swift and while the criticism she receives simply for living as a woman is Also objectionable, it is important to be able to distinguish between the two.
The world, and especially the Internet, is an all-or-nothing place today. There is no room for nuance or middle ground, nor for the coexistence of praise and criticism of the same person. Unfortunately, this makes meaningful discourse impossible, because no human being is entirely good or entirely evil. Until we stop seeing everything in black and white, we will not make any progress.
The private jet debacle, however, is honestly one of my least issues with Taylor Swift right now. Here’s the problem: she’s a billionaire. And in the current world we live in, there is absolutely no way to accumulate that amount of money without exploiting people in the process. There simply isn’t any. I wish there was a way for someone to ethically make a billion dollars, but right now there isn’t one. It would bother me less if she devoted her money and efforts to making the world a better place, but that’s not the case.