22

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "Taylor Swift album Tortured Poets Department leaked early?" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. You may not have heard of Taylor Swift or her new album titled "The Tortured Poets Department", but Swift is a budding young artist who, despite being somewhat media shy, has been getting increasing attention. This thread was started Thursday evening by a poster concerned that Swift's latest album, which was due for release on Friday, may have been leaked in advance. She questioned whether a true Swift fan would listen to the album before it was officially released or flood the Internet with fake links to mislead others. But it soon became clear that most of those posting in the thread have indeed listened to the album. As a result, posters begin analyzing the lyrics as if they were the latest issuances of the Oracle of Delphi. Many posters view the lyrics as strictly biographical and draw sweeping conclusions from the simplest of lines. For instance, the line "you sacrifice us to the gods of your bluest days" is suggested as proof that a former boyfriend suffers from "major depression". Several posters were preoccupied with guessing which songs were about which boyfriend. Then the thread turned to posters offering opinions about their favorite songs from the album and other aspects of the music. As you would expect at this point, there is some pushback from those who believe Swift is overrated. Some complain that the songs all sound the same. There were also complaints about Swift's tendency to release multiple versions of an album and whether that is a simple cash grab. This proclivity was especially egregious in this case because Swift released the album and two hours later released an "anthology" version of the same album including more songs. A number of posters complained that anyone who had pre-ordered the album would have to now purchase the second version. But, as anyone who has had even the slightest contact with Swifties will know, criticism is not warmly received and most of it was roundly rebutted. To be fair, some of the critics do appear a bit foolish. The anthology version of the album has 31 songs and some posters, as well as the New York Times, complain that a shorter, better album could have been created instead. I am not sure how deep in the sand one's head needs to be to have missed the entire controversy about the shorter version of the album, but that's just lazy criticism. After reading a considerable number of the 40 pages that currently make up this thread, my conclusion is that many posters a decade or so ago were bitter over breakups and found solace in Swift's music which tends to focus on being bitter over breakups. Now, those same posters are married, have kids, and are well over any past breakups. Yet, Swift is still singing about them. So a gulf has developed between Swift and many of the posters in this thread. On the other hand, there are plenty of young women who are currently bitter about breakups so Swift's albums still sell in droves.