taylor derangement syndrome

on losing the normies

this is my desktop background right nosw

I was trying to figure out if I had anything to say about the very weird conversation going on about Taylor Swift in the world of chronically online right wing commentary. “Trump Allies Pledge ‘Holy War’ Against Taylor Swift,” and so on. The general thrust of this conversation is that Taylor Swift is (1) a psyop being pushed by the FBI and (2) old, haggard, dumpy, slutty, and so on.

Here, for instance, is a guy who is (incredibly to me!) Christina Ricci’s ex-fiancee weighing in on how Swift is “very low quality for any successful male”:

Now, if I was a guy theoretically interested in drumming up support for a candidate and a party unpopular with women, the thing I would not do is (1) look at one of the most popular singers in the world (2) whose fans are well-known for over-identifying with her and (3) start insulting her. What I would do is ignore Taylor altogether or else do things like praise her business acumen. But then I’m a 34 year old woman so my brain has probably started to go.

On the level of PR, I’m not sure these people being weird misogynist little freaks does anything but help Taylor out. She is frequently dinged by her left-wing fans for being apolitical—which she is—and now she is being treated as if she actually popped up on stage every concert singing it’s been a long time coming, but / all cops are bastards without actually doing anything different. Assuming she’s not bothered by any of it, this is great for Taylor, who now receives a certain level of political credibility without actually risking alienating anybody.

The funny thing is, if Taylor did decide to throw her weight around in 2024, it almost definitely wouldn’t matter. She has entered into politics in a major way twice—coming out against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee and backing the Equality Act—and both of those attempts ended in nothing. She didn’t move the needle. She has basically backed off to reminding people to vote sometimes.¹ Her cultural clout just does not translate over to politics.² I do not think she could hand an election to anybody.

Her fans will eagerly mobilize for her, whether for her perceived benefit and/or honor, but they will not therefore do whatever she tells them to do. It has to be about her. They will bring her the head of Kim Kardashian if they decide that’s what will make her really happy, they will switch in lockstep to buying and streaming new versions of her old songs even if they like them less, they will buy out anything that she wears, but it’s all very Taylor-centric. The only way you could maybe trigger major swiftie electoral energy is if you—I don’t know—declared a “holy war” on Taylor Swift, such that you basically made voting for Biden a stan war thing.

But the bigger reason that I find all this a bit pathetic is that Taylor is… normal. That’s her whole thing. Her brand is that she’s a sweet blond lady who loves her cats, her family, baking, and making music. Her fans are normies. She doesn’t do drugs.³ She’s a canny businesswoman and (as far as anyone knows) a good employer. Her dad is, last I checked, a Republican who until recently shared various Boomer Republican memes on Facebook, and she remains extremely close to him. She’s just a middle of the road kind of gal, vaguely socially liberal but otherwise, in her words, “just too soft for all of it.” Maybe in her private life she’s very different; maybe she writes all sorts of fat checks to all manner of causes; but her public political statements basically died after 2020. Either she just couldn’t handle it or she checked out after Biden got elected or it was something she only ever meant to do for one album cycle—take your pick.

In short, she is basically the kind of celebrity that the very online representatives of Conservatism Inc should love. But they sure do not love her. They like (in my experience) Lana Del Rey, probably because she sings about female abjection.⁴ Lana is a bad girl, and that makes her easy to like, because you can feel like she’s paying for her choices. It is Taylor’s good girl–ness that makes her intolerable to this very specific type of person.⁵

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Taylor is a normal person and that’s why she’s a Democrat. That’s the reality created by people who make weird Sonnenrad memes trying to pump up Ron DeSantis. You lose the normal people. They don’t want to find out what a longhouse is and they don’t want to be part of your ironically fascist meme party. They just want to vote and check out until they have to vote again.

So for these specific people, Taylor is a reminder: you don’t have the normies, you don’t know how to talk to normies, and in fact, the normies actually actively don’t want to be taken for one of you. Taylor just wants to write love songs and chill. On the American political spectrum, there’s only one place she gets to do that.

1. I guess she baked cookies for Biden but I am not counting that.

2. I would suspect she has more influence as a very wealthy person than as a celebrity.

3. Except for weed, of which she does seem to partake.

4. I mean not only that, but you know. (love u lana… rootin for u and sza and taylor at the grammys)

5. One thing I encounter sometimes is that if I mention some kind of weird online thing to conservative people who are not themselves very online, they think I’m just kind of making it up (or am misled by somebody who is making it up). It is, in my experience, almost impossible to explain to somebody who isn’t online how much Online Conservatives are not out there representing a movement of normal people. Which is one reason I’m dividing the Very Online here out as a group.