New writing: Taylor Swift (again).

it's cool it's fine it's like that u and i book except instead of john updike it's taylor swift

Over at Slate I have a short piece about the weird-to-me level of personal investment people had in the Taylor Swift–Matty Healy relationship and the slow death of “your fav is problematic” type of criticism (and also hopefully its twin, You Wouldn’t Say This If X Were A Y):

A cultural preoccupation of the 2010s was trying to figure out the moral relationship the average audience member had to the art and entertainment they chose to read, watch, and listen to. People were rightfully disgusted to realize the degree to which cultural production had been used to whitewash brutality and abuse, particularly in industries like Hollywood and music, where a few people really can and do act as kingmakers. They felt betrayed to realize that people who had crafted sensitive and insightful pieces of art simply seemed not to care about real actions in the real world. But in the 2020s, this impulse has mostly run aground, exhausting itself. Decisions about what music to listen to, or movies to watch…