I’ve already forgotten the vast majority of my life

October 20, 2024 2:58 PM

This had to mean something. I thought about the prophecies of ruined cities in the Bible. Nineveh and Babylon, empty of human life, inhabited only by birds: “The cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the lintels; their voice shall be at the windows; desolation shall be at the threshold.” Ruined granaries where a few sparrows still peck for the last wedged-in flecks of grain. Most of the people around me walked in silence. Ahead of us, in the distance, the Arc de Triomphe gleamed in the darkness of the city like a pulled molar. I wondered how many of these people were suddenly realizing that they couldn’t actually remember anything that had just happened. How the blaring brightness of fame and the oblivion that’s coming turned out to be exactly the same thing. from Forgetting Taylor Swift by Sam Kriss
posted by chavenet (15 comments total)

NERO WORLD TOUR.
Parthia- 57
England- 59
Judea- 66-67
Greece -67
posted by clavdivs at 3:23 PM on October 20 [2 favorites]

I tried, but I eventually just skipped down to the last few paragraphs. This is some highly evolved hating, the kind that betrays a deep understanding (I guess) of the lore of the hated subject, and it is kind of funny but the part that resonates with me is asking why this kind of fan reverence isn't doled upon PJ Harvey or even Lana Del Rey, someone a little more substantial. The idea that what makes Taylor Swift appealing is all the (I'm sorry) blank space that the wispy work allows fans to bring their own stuff to it is...well, actually, that makes a lot of sense, because on its own it's some pretty basic pop music. Devoting this much verbiage to it seems insanely extravagant, and I say that as someone who is, after a week, currently 5% into Robert Caro's The Power Broker.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:35 PM on October 20 [3 favorites]

Taylor Swift is a cult leader
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:36 PM on October 20

I'm not sure if the entire essay is worth it, but this paragraph will live rent-free in my head until I forget it:

The first thing you need to know about Taylor Swift is that she’s a distance predator. She evolved to chase down gazelles on the Serengeti, to run after them for hours until they collapse from sheer exhaustion, at which point Taylor Swift snaps their necks between her jaws and settles down to feed. You can see it in her long, rangy limbs, with which she lopes efficiently up and down the stage. It’s in her forward-pointing eyes. Her sculpted pantherine face. When she smiles you can see the canines gleaming in her mouth, and her eyes squint like a raptor’s. This creature chews down raw meat with her back teeth.

posted by brook horse at 3:43 PM on October 20 [6 favorites]

Here is a guy with some real hang-ups about fat people, no doubt with some bullshit comp lit justification which goes over very well in a sort of n-plus-1 milieu where even the chubby people feel they have to laugh along.
posted by Frowner at 3:45 PM on October 20 [1 favorite]

I spent a lot more time than I’m proud of trying to figure out why I just don’t get Taylor Swift, because plenty of people I love and admire think she’s a generational talent and kind of a genius. And I have a soft-spot for pop music.

Ultimately I realized I was wasting my time. That it was fine not to get things that people I love care deeply about. I mean, I don’t get football or Christianity or the appeal of marshmallows or minimalism or reality television or SuVs or camping or sci-fi either. But that doesn’t mean that those things are bad or inexplicable or that there is something bad or inexplicable about the people that like them. It just means they’re not for me. I dare say many people don’t get as excited about tulle cocktail dresses and dense post-modern novels and drinking gin and tonics while listening to semi-obscure woman fronted post-punk bands on a Sunday evening porch as I do but I won’t judge them for it (porch is open though and the Au Pairs, as always, sound great).
posted by thivaia at 3:49 PM on October 20 [5 favorites]

Alex sounds like a Mefite.

The writer sounds like an asshole and isn’t funny enough to make up for it. Like what the actual fuck are you doing, tall dude, pushing your way to the front. The woman who told him no is a hero. Seriously doubt he’ll be trying that kind of assholery at the Oasis reunion.

Speaking of which, editors at The Lamp, send me to the Oasis reunion! I promise I’ll deliver some truly bonkers clickbait filled with all the Britpop hot takes I’ve been holding on to for decades along with some gratuitous references to Kierkegaard.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:02 PM on October 20 [4 favorites]

Jesus Fucking Christ. If she's not your thing, you know you can just, like, not listen to her music or go to her concerts. It'll be okay.
posted by chasing at 4:06 PM on October 20 [2 favorites]

I love Sam Kriss's writing, but this is not the best essay Sam Kriss has written. In fact it's not even the best essay Sam Kriss has written about Taylor Swift. The best essay Sam Kriss has written about Taylor Swift is this one: Taylor Swift does not exist.
posted by verstegan at 4:22 PM on October 20 [2 favorites]

you can just, like, not listen to her music

Sure, but that way I don't get to learn about the Au Pairs, which was fun. The article has strong "I ain't reading all that" energy. I tried to parse it, then I just went and in honor of music people may possibly not care for, put on Low Numbers instead. I've been to the catacombs in Paris, and maybe Robespierre would have liked You Belong with Me, or maybe not - it was not a major concern. Taylor Swift is fine, the kids are fine. It's all fine.
posted by 1xdevnet at 4:46 PM on October 20

Okay, that essay. Consider this:

Anyway, it strikes me as very obvious that something similar is happening with the Taylor Swift fans: that they are, in a sense, female incels; that their manic love for and obsession with this woman is also screening an equally intense lack of desire. Taylor Swift is just the name that has been given to a certain blankness in the world.

I mean, that's arrant bullshit. Thus speaks someone who doesn't talk to regular-degular people. We like this paragraph because we like the paragraph above it knocking on incels, but the obvious falseness of this paragraph ought to cast doubt on the other one.

Like, come on. Do you really think that all those Taylor Swift fans who like her music and go to concerts with their best friends and their moms and so on are "in a sense, female incels" whose fandom is just a scrim over an "equally intense lack of desire"? And that they can't explain why they like her music?

It so happens that I know a Taylor Swift fan - not a super duper fan, but someone who genuinely likes her music and goes on kicks of listening to it. She can explain why she likes Taylor Swift's music - she's a musician herself and has some music reason, and she really does struggle with depression and likes the upbeat songs because they are so effectively upbeat. She also likes classical cello and a bunch of other fancy music that is opaque to me, a musical illiterate.

Like you can't just make up shit - you can't just decide that fat people are weird and unsettling and slightly gross symbols of what is flat and banal about America, you can't just decide that fans of Taylor Swift are symbols of the failure of desire, you can't just look at actually existing people and say "I won't even talk to you (if you're a woman - I might make an exception if you are a dude at the concert) but I have this theory about what you represent. " Or rather you can, but while it's a great way to run a substack, it's not a very good way to understand the world.

The rest of that essay is extremely antic and engaging but for pete's sake, you'd think that there had never been Madonna fans, Boy George fans, Garbo fans, etc. Fandoms run by women that don't center on male approval are not new, but they never cease to freak certain people out. These can certainly be toxic fandoms, yes, but they aren't some weird unique sign of the breakdown of essential psychic currents. These are probably the best written "Taylor Swift fandom shows That Something Is Very Wrong" essays I've read, and yet they totally fail to convince me.

I do honestly wish I liked these essays' approach better but (and I did actually poke around on the substack for other stuff, and look at the old blog) there's just so much distance, like it is not remotely worthwhile to find out if the people around you have anything to say for themselves - you just read them according to what you think they mean.
posted by Frowner at 4:46 PM on October 20 [7 favorites]

The first thing you need to know about Taylor Swift is that she’s a distance predator. She evolved to chase down gazelles on the Serengeti, to run after them for hours until they collapse from sheer exhaustion, at which point Taylor Swift snaps their necks between her jaws and settles down to feed. You can see it in her long, rangy limbs, with which she lopes efficiently up and down the stage. It’s in her forward-pointing eyes. Her sculpted pantherine face. When she smiles you can see the

This boils down to — or more properly billows up from — ‘She’s a Maneater'.

I wonder how much of the rest of this essay consists of a patchwork of fantasias on the tiredest of misogynist cliches about women which the author is arrogant and stupid enough to think people won’t notice.
posted by jamjam at 4:56 PM on October 20 [4 favorites]

I’d hate it, obviously, all this bland depthless pop music, but sometimes hating things is fun.

It sure didn't sound fun. There were plenty of amusing and perceptive lines, but mostly he reminded me of how I think when I'm deeply depressed. Like, no matter where you go, everywhere you look, you just zero in on the worst, saddest things. You go to a park and see kids running around together playing with their toys, and you think about how those toys were made by other kids in sweatshops. You see happy families lined up at the hot dog truck, and you think about cows being slaughtered. You fixate on the trash overflowing the can, the stink wafting out of the public restroom, all the aches and pains of your body. There's no joy anywhere, and it feels like any joy you once felt was a lie.

He went to a Taylor Swift concert expecting to hate it, and he did. I probably would have hated it too, and had a lot of similar thoughts. But I wouldn't have subjected myself to it! Seriously, why was he even there? This wasn't a gleeful takedown of Swift or her fans and it didn't feel like revelatory, on-the-ground journalism. It just felt genuinely despairing, like maybe his friends should check in on him.

I think Courtney Love absolutely destroyed Swift in one line: "She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist." Man, if passive-aggressive put-downs could kill, Tay-Tay would just be a little black stain on the ground.

I'll beat you to it...

Metafilter: There's no joy anywhere, and it feels like any joy you once felt was a lie.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:07 PM on October 20 [3 favorites]

The real test to see if a celebrity is a cult leader is if they can walk through Dollywood unnoticed for 1 hour. If they can go unnoticed, then it has worked, as humility and fresh perspective should restored.
posted by clavdivs at 5:39 PM on October 20

Taylor Swift is the final boss of fandom

Get in with your opinions while you can, we're almost out of time
posted by ginger.beef at 6:03 PM on October 20