27

Tuesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Dec 29, 2023 10:05 PM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included Taylor Swift, elite colleges losing significance, a boyfriend who wants his own child, and wanting to transfer from an Ivy League university.

The most active thread yesterday was one originally created back in September 2022, but revived recently. Titled, "Taylor Swift is awful (and her music isn't even very good)" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, the original poster linked to an article in the Daily Beast that he (I'm guessing the poster is a dude) said summed up everything that he doesn't like about Taylor Swift. Notable about the original post is that that the poster is extremely defensive about his dislike of Swift and provides three bullet points defending his right to criticize her. The first of those points consists of several sentences providing multiple arguments that it is not misogynistic to criticize Swift. It looks like this thread reached 31 pages before it died down and was dormant for almost a year, brought back to life by a post in early October. It lost momentum again only to be revived again in mid-December by an all-caps poster proclaiming his dislike for Swift. Since that time, the thread has more than doubled in length and is currently 67 pages long. If this thread can be viewed in parts, the most recent pages can be considered "Swift Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Swifties". I am obviously not going to read 67 pages or even the 13 pages created yesterday (which made this thread the most active of the day). But, from skimming a couple of pages, it looks like the posts are a combination of criticisms of Swift and her music, criticism of Swift's fans, and rejections of those criticisms. Like the original poster from more than a year ago, many posters are defensive about their criticisms of Swift and complain that they will be attacked by Swifties for voicing negative opinions. A common theme is that Swift presents herself and her music as representing all women. Therefore, criticism of her or her music is interpreted as criticism of women generally rather than Swift specifically. More than one poster argued that Swift has cleverly created this situation and are determined to pierce the shield of femininity with which they believe Swift protects herself. Beyond that, several posters take issue with the quality of her lyrics. One tactic was to claim that they are simply rip-offs of other artists and lack originality. One poster who was brought to my attention thanks to a thread in the "Website Feedback" forum claimed that a Swift song was a knock-off of a U2 song. Ironically, the poster making this allegation also claimed not to be familiar with either U2 or Swift. Needless to say, his argument was not overly convincing and was accepted by virtually nobody. One tactic employed by Swifties to counter the criticisms was the most Swifty thing imaginable: quoting Swift's lyrics.

read more...