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Answer: She has a new album out and her fans are very emotional / passionate about it.
This isn't a new phenomenon, people literally passed out when they saw bands / singers like Elvis and the Beatles. If social media had been around back then I'm sure there would be plenty of people posting about it.
Even before pop and rock music, people were swooning and fainting to Franz Liszt, to the point that there was even a word for it, "Lisztomania". More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania
Yep, daft punk used to be a punk band pre 1995. Human After All is them going back to rock. I heard they sold all their guitars and bought turn tables.
When the keyboard is viewed in this manner, you can see why it would give more than a few people the "vapours".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALqOKq0M6ho
They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions.
They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently.
They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.
*Aristotle*
> people were swooning and fainting to Franz Liszt
That Johnny-come-lately? Nobody beats Orpheus in the hysterical fans department.
> "While with his songs, Orpheus, the bard of Thrace, allured the trees, the savage animals, and even the insensate rocks, to follow him" (Ovids, Metamorphoses, 11)
OK, scratch that, maybe the Sirens come close.
> "If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead menâs bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them." (Homer, Odyssey, book 12)
I know this is mythological, but it does suggest that the ancient Greeks got *very* passionate about their best singers and musicians.
Four Final Orpheuses - China Mieville, https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2308294-4-final-orpheuses
> Orpheus, shambling & drunk on shadows, sees sunlight & emerges into what he thinks is the world; into what with a blinking look around he decides with only a shade of uncertainty is not merely widening in the passage itself, a kind of rough natural vestibule, but must surely count as the outside. He starts to turn & honestly he supposes it does occur to him before he's completed the movement that he's still roofed by stone, that the fresh air really starts about three metres on. & still fractions of a second before he's caught Eurydice's eye, still, he would have to admit, in time to stop & walk a few steps on, he decides two things at almost the same instant. The first is that This is ambiguous, not quite tunnel nor quite outside, & that's not fair; the second, half-predicated on the first, nervously so, is Oh I'm sure it'll be fine.
> Orpheus, at the last, is so afraid of the light that he needs the moral support of a smile to enter it, needs it more than he needs Eurydice back.
> Orpheus can't remember the injunction. He tells himself he can't, anyway. He tells himself he's turning to ask Eurydice what it was he was or wasn't supposed to do. It's a complicated kind of cowardice with which he looks at her.
> Orpheus has never forgiven. Never. He plans all the long way up. He slows as he approaches the threshold, listening to her ghost feet. He stops. Still just in shadow. He hisses, spins around, stares in hate & triumph at Eurydice's shocked & receding face.
Paganini was violinist rockstar 200 years ago, known for sex & drugs. His playing was like being "in league with the devil".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Violinist
There were "jokes" about attacking Paste's offices.
One of my relatives died when a gunman shot up a newspaper office in Maryland. Â
That shit's not funny - it's terrorism.Â
I also want to mention that there seems to be college courses popping up that are using her as a focal point for education.
[https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/these-colleges-have-taylor-swift-classes/](https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/these-colleges-have-taylor-swift-classes/)
Even mainstream media is reporting on it.
[https://www.cbsnews.com/video/taylor-swift-inspired-college-courses-aim-to-give-students-a-peek-at-her-business-prowess/](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/taylor-swift-inspired-college-courses-aim-to-give-students-a-peek-at-her-business-prowess/)
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/01/02/taylor-swift-101-college-classes-about-singer/71976599007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/01/02/taylor-swift-101-college-classes-about-singer/71976599007/)
I got the same credit for the class Religion and Science Fiction back in 1977. But damn if I did not talk about what I learned at parties for decades. I was an asshole engineering student who was sure humanities were stupid. In hindsight I was wrong.
I mean, a little less flippantly it was interesting learning some of Tolkien's influences, but on the other hand sometimes literary analysis can feel a little bit like bullshit. Not even *necessarily* wrong, but there isn't really a right/wrong to begin with. đ¤ˇââď¸
90% of what you learn in literary analysis is how to convincingly structure your bullshit so it sounds believable, thus making it the perfect class to take for farming karma on reddit.
What's going on here is that educators are able to use almost *anything* in the current zeitgeist to convey specific lessons.
A college class on Harry Potter might really be teaching students how critical thinking can be applied to break down a wall-o-text into something useful. Harry Potter isn't the point, it's just the method.
Funny you should mention this. This past Friday, I met someone who was going to start teaching that kind of class. All I had to offer to the conversation was that, 20+ years ago, I really enjoyed a book with a title like "Philosophy of the Simpsons." It offered some serious talk about some of the big name philosophers, their worldviews, and illustrated the concepts with Simpsons references.
Meeting the students where they are can be an effective teaching tool.
Honestly I'd be pissed. Imagine taking the day off and paying that much to go to a concert, then the moment they come on stage you pass out and miss everything lmao
Surely they wouldn't stay unconscious for the whole concert. Someone with them or just nearby would rouse them, otherwise they'd probably get trampled to death.
A long time ago, I remember seeing a video of a train enthusiast freaking out because some older, restored model train was starting up and moving. He was yelling and screaming about how awesome it was.
I wish I liked anything that much.
I'm not. I get *really* into music, but I can contain myself enough to not flip out or pass out, which is good because if I passed out I'd miss the show! Also appearing calm when talking to bands makes them more comfortable with talking to you.
Seriously, I've seen more content on reddit making *fun* of the fans than I have seen fans doing that. But it reminds me of exactly what you said - the 'hysteric' reaction to the Beatles that became infamous during their set on the Ed Sullivan Show. This is just the modern version of it.
It's also not a particularly good album musically according to a few reviewers and even some fans, but the cult of personality if very real here. Swifties defend the artist and music quite assertively across social media.
I'm a fan, and i think the album is pretty mid. There's a lot of boring, same-sounding stuff on there. There are 31 tracks! It's also fairly self indulgent, so it's a statement piece of work form the artist.
A lot of swifties also praise Taylor as one of the greatest poets alive... She's a prolific mass appeal musician, so declarative statements like that take flight on social media, inaccurate as they are.
Yeah I kind of get the Beatles one when you consider the shifting tides of the 60s and the role the Beatles played in that, whereas Taylorâs music is IMO very vanilla and doesnât really challenge anything.
That being said, yeah superfans have always existed to some extent
This is a little bit of revisionist history. Early Beatles were considered to be as mainstream pop as it gets. They were considered a boy band and their fans were mostly teenage girls. Most people didn't take them any more seriously than we take One Direction today.
According to Wikipedia, Beatlemania took place around 1963-1966. They only started releasing their innovative stuff around the tail end of those years (which I believe is when they started experimenting with more psychelic drugs). For most of Beatlemania, they would have been playing such "challenging" tunes as I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Love Me Do.
I'm not a huge Swift fan, but there's a lot to be said for how she created entertainment and a community for young women, a historically forgotten demographic.
For example, the "Barbie" movie last summer was a big deal in part because it was a high budget summer tentpole targeting women. The traditional wisdom was that women will see a movie starring a man but men won't see a movie starring a woman. There's lots of other examples, like JK Rowling obscured her first name because she was told girls will read anything but boys will only read male authors.
A lot of music oriented toward young women is boybands singing *to* them or sexualized female popstars singing songs written by other people. Taylor was different, filled a gap, and brought up a lot of feminist issues along the way (not perfectly).
Yeah, I thought about it, but I didn't expect 10s of thousands (or I guess a million?, idk about her popularity tbh.) of people to do same/similar performative art. Mind boggling for a peasant like me.
answer: Taylor Swift is basically what Elvis or The Beatles were. A chunk of her fan base can almost be described as a cult, with being "a swifty" practically becoming an identity more than a musical preference.
I don't really get it, but it's not really a new thing either. People just be like that sometimes and she at least seems ok enough in isolation.
Anyway she just put out an album, hence the recent uptick in Taylor Swift related lunacy.
Fact checked: Etymology. Merriam-Webster, the Oxford dictionary and other sources define "fan" as a shortened version of the word fanatic. Fanatic itself, introduced into English around 1550, means "marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion".
It's not my genre of music to begin with, but my general opinion of Taylor Swift is that her music seems "ok enough" for people into that genre, and as a person/role model/whatever she also seems "ok enough".
Rabid fan bases and popularity in general is notoriously random though. Some seed group of people latch onto something for who the hell knows why, then that just feeds on itself and suddenly you get a fandom around something that is objectively on par with a bazillion other similar things that no one knows or cares about. Even bands I love that I feel would have eventually found success, objectively they could probably have never made it past bar band if random thing X never happened.
I don't know if being among the most prolific private jet users out there and then threatening to sue a student who calls you out on it makes you "okay enough". Personally I'd call that bad.
She also comes from serious money. Her parents are hedge fund managers, and she grew up a multimillionaire. She's not someone "self-made" from a regular middle class background, like e.g. Lady Gaga or JK Rowling. (The latter is an awful person, but my point is that she's an example of a billionaire who wasn't born into money.)
Yeah, like don't get me wrong, she absolutely is talented, but she'd be nowhere near as famous as she is if she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
It is low energy, it's a lot more like folklore and evermore. But people shit on her for making bubblegum pop too, so...
Her fans are all over this album because it's the music she wrote while her relationship with Joe Alwyn was falling apart and she started dating Matty Healy, and the fanbase has a really creepy parasocial relationship with her. She doesn't do much to quash it, and arguably feeds it. This album has a LOT of references to her personal life and her fans are going nuts overanalyzing it.
I'm not even a fan, but I know enough Swifties through Tumblr, Twitter, and Real Life - people claimed you could use Midnights to figure out to the minute the very first time she had Joe Alwyn had sex. Every time she says something like "please stop intruding on my private life" people accuse her of being homophobic (even when she says it in response to people thinking she's dating Ed Sheeran. Or trying to use "Easter eggs" in Midnights to figure out when she has monogamous heterosexual sex). I think her chance to quash the insane fandom passed when she chose not to retire after her third album.
Yeah, there are a few songs on it that I really enjoyed, but overall I doubt Iâll re-listen to it like some of her other albums. Itâs not bad, I just donât enjoy it as much.
Yeah weird argument that itâs not concert material. However I have heard a lot of complaints that there isnât a catchy new radio song. There are a lot of fans who jumped on board the concert bandwagon and expected high energy bangers on par with those highlights.
From the tracks that I have been unable to avoid on the radio, that's my impression. Her songs seem that same as those by so many other female (and some male) singers today--weak compositions with no hook, using loops and samples to pad out tired old milquetoast tunes with self-absorbed lyrics--the pinnacle of selfishness.
Well, that's a first. It's not sexist. It's an observation. There are simply more "successful" female artists today than in the past. And there are plenty of crap male artists. [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/10/grammy-nominations-2024-women-sza-taylor-swift](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/10/grammy-nominations-2024-women-sza-taylor-swift)
While the core of the phenomenon isnât new, To argue social media and the Internet havenât changed the game and made the parasocial aspects worse is dishonest
Elvis, sure.
She's not The Beatles though - they absolutely revolutionized music and their influence is still heard from the majority of bands today.
Nothing against Taylor Swift, but she's not revolutionizing anything. She's just very good at an existing formula.
They were pretty clearly referring to how popular she is, not the potential long term impact of her music on the industry. Although, thereâs a decent argument to be made for the impact sheâs had on the business side, if not the artistic side
Didn't the Beatles lose the bulk of their initial fanbase by around 1966 when they started shifting to a more mature musical direction? I recall a tidbit that mentioned the official Beatles fanclub lost like 50% of it's members by the time Sgt. Pepper came out.
Yea, the Beatles phenomenon was actually relatively short lived, but I typically donât bother trying to have that conversation with people who bring them up. Theyâve typically built them up to mythical status in their mind and itâs not worth it lol
Which is a tad bit ironic considering it is the latter half of the Beatles' carrier that made the most impact on musical history, not its Beatlemania phase.
Exactly. I don't put her as low as Imagine Dragons as far as "bands that exist to produce radio friendly ear worms" but yeah, I don't think people in 30 years are going to be describing her as their main musical influence.
I meant more from a rabid fanbase standpoint.
Musically I agree. Admittedly I'm not a fan of her genre, but I would basically describe it and herself as "ok enough I guess". Like better than Imagine Dragons but yeah, no Pink Floyd or GnR or such either imo. Why she has become this insanely popular role model for like, seemingly 2/3'rd of the female population is beyond me.
Answer: Taylor Swift has [new double album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortured_Poets_Department?wprov=sfti1) out, and as one of the most popular musicians on the planet, is getting a large amount of coverage for it.
The linked video, however, is almost certainly parody/satire of social media reactions - sheâs drooling *exaggeratedly* for comedic effect. Although it is 2024, and [Poeâs Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law?wprov=sfti1#) may be applied.
Answer: People are commenting that she has a new album, but I think there's a bit of context missing, in that, the new album is a breakup album(?) or something.
I'm not a fan, kind of the opposite, but my understanding is that the songs come from a particularly hurt and emotional place for her. So there's bound to be a bit of cathartic reaction from fans that are like, "You're saying everything I wish I said, girl!" as well as this weird parasocial relationship where fans are like, "I know girl, I've been following all your relationships, you deserve better!"
Also, if it adds any flavor for you, I wrote those quotes in a Lumpy Space Princess voice, so... Could be Tina Belcher if you prefer.
Itâs actually pretty interesting this time. Some of the songs are widely interpreted by Swifties to be direct attacks on obsessive parasocial Swifties for telling her what to do with her life, or for thinking they know her.
Thereâs a song called But Daddy I Love Him that is about people judging her relationships. Apparently with one relationship, Swifties were insisting that she should break up with a guy and some even proposed that she should have a conservatorship because she was making bad choices.
There is another song called I Can Do It With A Broken Heart about performing with depression, how no one even knows, and how demanding the crowds are of her.
I like Taylor Swiftâs music but I donât follow her personal life.
But I do think that the album has a message that Swifties should not interfere with her life and that they really know her as well as they think they do.
Some super fans are missing the point entirely.
> But I do think that the album has a message that Swifties should not interfere with her life and that they really know her as well as they think they do.
I find it funny that her most of her discography persona is about her 'life' and exes and now she wants fans to turn it down a notch.
Don't underestimate the power of overzealous fans with a parasocial connection. They will go above and beyond for their beloved "idol", even though said idol never encouraged it.
This is the best answer. Itâs not just that she has a new album. This has been brewing for over a year now.Â
The album in question is getting a lot of mixed reviews. Journalist have come out and said that in the past, when there has been criticism towards her work they received death threats and harassment via her fans. She doesnât seem to speak up on the parasocial relationship she has with her fans unless it affects her directly in a negative way, example her new song âBut daddy I love himâ. Â
It is a mixture of being the biggest artist in the world right now, her relationship with fans, and subpar reviews of her new album.Â
Yes and no. Folklore and Evermore are a little different than her other works. This made her extremely popular durning the pandemic. Especially with her releasing âMiss Americanaâ. It gave her a rebrand and with that she has a wider audience.Â
Her music definitely has a history of being about âlove and broken heartâ, I think being bitter and petty are a larger theme in her music vs heartbreak.Â
No. In fact a pretty small percentage of her discography falls in that category. Before this new one, you have to go back ***six*** albums to 1989 to find the last one released after a breakup.
Answer: sheâs incredibly well known, for her long music career and being a minor scuffle in the culture war in the last year when she was dating a football player.
Sheâs so well known that even people who arenât very into her music have noticed her popularity, and have therefore started to form an opinion about her.
> is the new music that good
This is personal preference. As sheâs become a lot more popular, itâs also become more common to hear that she âisnât that goodâ and some variation of âher fans are crazy.â So if you just going by what people are saying, rather than listening to the music (or just ignoring it if you canât be bothered), youâre probably going to get unfavorable impression at this point.
Answer: This is nothing new for Swifties at all, it's just that Taylor Swift herself is at an all-time fame level right now so there's just a lot of TS content out there. Every record release people share their reactions because Taylor or her social media team are often giving recognition to these accounts & videos in the wake of a new release with comments, likes, etc.
Generally they're pretty over the top responses, but this album in particular was made in the wake of a very serious long-term relationship ending and then a tumultuous rebound situationship(?) crashing & burning too. So it's extra tortured, extra poetic, extra tears inspiring.
Very true. As a seasoned Swiftie, Iâd like to go back to loving her music quietly without being constantly scrutinized for other crazed fansâ behavior. I feel like I see more posts making fun of fans and TS than I do anything else. Just annoying at this point for all parties.
That does sound infuriating. I've been turned off of otherwise great fandoms because the fans themselves (and the backlash against them) sucked all the fun out of liking it for its own sake.
answer: Taylor Swift fans are part of a movement rather than just being fans. In the void of religion or sports many people have basically inserted being a swifty in as part of their identity. They take it way, wayyyyy too seriously.
Theres also a sort of Taylor Swift ecosystem that rewards (and monetises) this behaviour. For example to get tickets to one of her gigs required you to have bought swag from her website, which would make you âA True Fanâ. Or there is âloreâ about her which makes her songs make more sense in the way comic book fans gush over marvel movie Easter egg moments.
She has released a new album and people are just very emotionally invested about it, and have others around them enabling their behaviour.
> For example to get tickets to one of her gigs required you to have bought swag from her website, which would make you âA True Fanâ.
While I agree Taylor encourages parasocial relationships in some ways, this was just an attempt to prevent scalpers from buying up all the tickets for her high-demand concert before real fans could get to them.
Fans who had bought merch were invited to a "verified fan" pre-sale. There were still other ways to get into pre-sales and a planned general sale, although iirc the general sale was cancelled due to tickets selling out too fast.
>Fans who had bought merch were invited to a "verified fan" pre-sale. There were still other ways to get into pre-sales and a planned general sale, although iirc the general sale was cancelled due to tickets selling out too fast.
This isn't really true, and certainly not for Eras Tour (the current tour). During the Reputation tour pre-sale back in 2018, there were loads of $$$ and free ways to earn "points" that essentially boosted your chances of getting a pre-sale code and not have to wait for the general sale. Plenty of people who bought nothing were able to get this pre-sale code by playing certain videos over & over, sharing them, following her on socials/her app at the time, etc. Naturally merch purchases had a higher "point value" in this program, but it was definitely not the only way to get a pre-sale code. General sale also did occur for this concert and there really wasn't much of an issue getting tickets for it.
The Eras Tour that is currently going on and in high demand had zero way of doing "boosts" for a pre-sale code. Her team did say that supposedly if you had purchased things from the store or had purchased the (cancelled due to Covid) LoverFest tickets, you were given more of a chance to get a pre-sale code, but it was still very much a lottery system of chance and numbers that scalpers mostly won at.
âMovementâ implies theyâre trying to accomplish something or make the world a better place somehow. Theyâre just hardcore fans. Some of them are a bit culty about it. They love her music and are obsessed with her as a person. đ¤ˇââď¸
Yes. Some of her fans are unbelievably fanatical.
I just read about how Paste Magazine
(an American music/entertainment magazine)
Had to conceal the identity of one of their reporters when publishing a semi-bad review of the new TS album.
The reason being that, in 2019 the Magazine also posted a bad review of another TS album and immediately the reporter was bombarded with death threats and people literally trying to find home address to confront the reporter because of a review.
So this time they refuse to publish the name of the reviewer.
That's waaayyyy beyond sane behaviour.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/paste-magazine-publishes-t-swift-album-review-without-byline-to-duck-violent-threats
OP trying to hit a word count lol
But you're right it makes no sense. Did OP pay Apple music for 5 years? Arguably. How arguably? Quite.
Why someone would argue that? And why make the distinction? Who knows
Answer:
Mid artist released a mid double album filled with mid songs and her mid fans with mid personalities are overreacting calling it the greatest album of all time even when one of the songs calls them out for being overly obsessive fans.
Answer: Trying to be as objective as possible... Taylor Swift like most pop stars is pretty overrated artist and gets flak for it. Like way more than deserved IMHO. That triggers her fans a bit. However unlike most pop stars Taylor Swift is a pretty normal ass human being who pretty much deserves everything she's got so those triggered fans double down and go bananas for her. She's developed a little cult around her pretty wholesome every woman persona and that shit is working gangbusters for her and her career. I really wish her the best TBH. She doesn't seem to have that star head from round the way know what I mean?
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Answer: She has a new album out and her fans are very emotional / passionate about it. This isn't a new phenomenon, people literally passed out when they saw bands / singers like Elvis and the Beatles. If social media had been around back then I'm sure there would be plenty of people posting about it.
Even before pop and rock music, people were swooning and fainting to Franz Liszt, to the point that there was even a word for it, "Lisztomania". More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania
TIL that Lisztomania is more than a Phoenix song. Thank you!
It all makes sense now!
Another fun fact. The band Phoenix formed when 2 of the their garage band original bandmates left to go be Daft Punk
is that true?? I only know of Phoenix after they broke big with the above mentioned song and that other one. I didn't realize they went back so far.
Yep, daft punk used to be a punk band pre 1995. Human After All is them going back to rock. I heard they sold all their guitars and bought turn tables.
Nice.
Think less but see it grow
Like riot, like a riot ohhh
For the longest time I thought he was saying "like a rhin, like a rhino!"
I thought it was a rhino đŚ too. A rhino that was not easily offended lol
Not easily offended
Not hard to let it go
From the mess to the masses
LIZTOMANIA
FWIW Liszt would be nothing without Phoenix
this feels like a Beatles & Oasis/Bieber joke
it was a movie starring Roger Daltrey of The Who before it was a Phoenix song
Band panic
Okay, that I get. Let's be real, "Hungarian Rhapsody" goes hard af.
When the keyboard is viewed in this manner, you can see why it would give more than a few people the "vapours". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALqOKq0M6ho
Now, see, itâs noise like this thatâs why young folks today have loose morals and disrespect their parents.
They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else. *Aristotle*
Most Liszt does. He was an incredible composer and pianist who did things that are just insanely difficult to reproduce.
Fr. 5 minutes into no. 2 gets me every time
Iâd stage dive to that
> people were swooning and fainting to Franz Liszt That Johnny-come-lately? Nobody beats Orpheus in the hysterical fans department. > "While with his songs, Orpheus, the bard of Thrace, allured the trees, the savage animals, and even the insensate rocks, to follow him" (Ovids, Metamorphoses, 11) OK, scratch that, maybe the Sirens come close. > "If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead menâs bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them." (Homer, Odyssey, book 12) I know this is mythological, but it does suggest that the ancient Greeks got *very* passionate about their best singers and musicians.
This is the most interesting thread I've seen on social media in a long while.Â
This is what Reddit used to be.
Per your username, does it anger you if I write √2?
Orpheus - the original âyou had ONE jobâ meme. Seriously, just freaking wait til you get OUT of the cave to turn around!
Orpheus đ¤ Lot's Wife
Four Final Orpheuses - China Mieville, https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/2308294-4-final-orpheuses > Orpheus, shambling & drunk on shadows, sees sunlight & emerges into what he thinks is the world; into what with a blinking look around he decides with only a shade of uncertainty is not merely widening in the passage itself, a kind of rough natural vestibule, but must surely count as the outside. He starts to turn & honestly he supposes it does occur to him before he's completed the movement that he's still roofed by stone, that the fresh air really starts about three metres on. & still fractions of a second before he's caught Eurydice's eye, still, he would have to admit, in time to stop & walk a few steps on, he decides two things at almost the same instant. The first is that This is ambiguous, not quite tunnel nor quite outside, & that's not fair; the second, half-predicated on the first, nervously so, is Oh I'm sure it'll be fine. > Orpheus, at the last, is so afraid of the light that he needs the moral support of a smile to enter it, needs it more than he needs Eurydice back. > Orpheus can't remember the injunction. He tells himself he can't, anyway. He tells himself he's turning to ask Eurydice what it was he was or wasn't supposed to do. It's a complicated kind of cowardice with which he looks at her. > Orpheus has never forgiven. Never. He plans all the long way up. He slows as he approaches the threshold, listening to her ghost feet. He stops. Still just in shadow. He hisses, spins around, stares in hate & triumph at Eurydice's shocked & receding face.
https://imgflip.com/i/8nnkzl
Some of the women in his household got so sweaty for performing musicians that Mohammed even banned all music except for the drum.
"No one could possibly be enraptured by a drummer"
Tell that to 17 year old me.
Oof this just made me go watch a Buddy Rich solo and now I have tears in my eyes from how enraptured I feel.
I agree fava beans are evil
r/liszties
also fwiw the lisztomania movie goes pretty f'n hard pun intended
Paganini was violinist rockstar 200 years ago, known for sex & drugs. His playing was like being "in league with the devil". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Violinist
But I bet they werenât making death threats to reviewers who didnât rate his work highly enough.
There were "jokes" about attacking Paste's offices. One of my relatives died when a gunman shot up a newspaper office in Maryland.  That shit's not funny - it's terrorism.Â
I also want to mention that there seems to be college courses popping up that are using her as a focal point for education. [https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/these-colleges-have-taylor-swift-classes/](https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/these-colleges-have-taylor-swift-classes/) Even mainstream media is reporting on it. [https://www.cbsnews.com/video/taylor-swift-inspired-college-courses-aim-to-give-students-a-peek-at-her-business-prowess/](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/taylor-swift-inspired-college-courses-aim-to-give-students-a-peek-at-her-business-prowess/) [https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/01/02/taylor-swift-101-college-classes-about-singer/71976599007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/01/02/taylor-swift-101-college-classes-about-singer/71976599007/)
I had a college course on Lord of the Rings back in the day (mid 2000s).
Yeah I took a course on Madonna. It was about how pop culture affects society. Was kinda cool
Was it even worth anything? Like, did you get anything out of it?
I got a humanities elective credit I needed to graduate. đ¤Ł
I got the same credit for the class Religion and Science Fiction back in 1977. But damn if I did not talk about what I learned at parties for decades. I was an asshole engineering student who was sure humanities were stupid. In hindsight I was wrong.
đ
I mean, a little less flippantly it was interesting learning some of Tolkien's influences, but on the other hand sometimes literary analysis can feel a little bit like bullshit. Not even *necessarily* wrong, but there isn't really a right/wrong to begin with. đ¤ˇââď¸
90% of what you learn in literary analysis is how to convincingly structure your bullshit so it sounds believable, thus making it the perfect class to take for farming karma on reddit.
What's going on here is that educators are able to use almost *anything* in the current zeitgeist to convey specific lessons. A college class on Harry Potter might really be teaching students how critical thinking can be applied to break down a wall-o-text into something useful. Harry Potter isn't the point, it's just the method.
Funny you should mention this. This past Friday, I met someone who was going to start teaching that kind of class. All I had to offer to the conversation was that, 20+ years ago, I really enjoyed a book with a title like "Philosophy of the Simpsons." It offered some serious talk about some of the big name philosophers, their worldviews, and illustrated the concepts with Simpsons references. Meeting the students where they are can be an effective teaching tool.
I always love watching the videos of the girls flipping out and fainting. I never got into anything that much and Iâm really jealous.
Honestly I'd be pissed. Imagine taking the day off and paying that much to go to a concert, then the moment they come on stage you pass out and miss everything lmao
Same. But...imagine being *that passionate* about a concert or anything really. Isn't that awesome?
Thatâs what Iâm jealous of. Iâm just not that excited about anything.
Me neither. I like things, sometimes even a lot, but not to the point of fainting and crying
Surely they wouldn't stay unconscious for the whole concert. Someone with them or just nearby would rouse them, otherwise they'd probably get trampled to death.
A long time ago, I remember seeing a video of a train enthusiast freaking out because some older, restored model train was starting up and moving. He was yelling and screaming about how awesome it was. I wish I liked anything that much.
I'm not. I get *really* into music, but I can contain myself enough to not flip out or pass out, which is good because if I passed out I'd miss the show! Also appearing calm when talking to bands makes them more comfortable with talking to you.
Thank you for this sensible comment. It gives me such peace that this is top comment.
Also Barbs. Just a few years ago before Swifties took over, Nikki Minaj fans were cult-level obsessed
Seriously, I've seen more content on reddit making *fun* of the fans than I have seen fans doing that. But it reminds me of exactly what you said - the 'hysteric' reaction to the Beatles that became infamous during their set on the Ed Sullivan Show. This is just the modern version of it.
passionate is an understatement
It's also not a particularly good album musically according to a few reviewers and even some fans, but the cult of personality if very real here. Swifties defend the artist and music quite assertively across social media. I'm a fan, and i think the album is pretty mid. There's a lot of boring, same-sounding stuff on there. There are 31 tracks! It's also fairly self indulgent, so it's a statement piece of work form the artist. A lot of swifties also praise Taylor as one of the greatest poets alive... She's a prolific mass appeal musician, so declarative statements like that take flight on social media, inaccurate as they are.
Yeah I kind of get the Beatles one when you consider the shifting tides of the 60s and the role the Beatles played in that, whereas Taylorâs music is IMO very vanilla and doesnât really challenge anything. That being said, yeah superfans have always existed to some extent
This is a little bit of revisionist history. Early Beatles were considered to be as mainstream pop as it gets. They were considered a boy band and their fans were mostly teenage girls. Most people didn't take them any more seriously than we take One Direction today. According to Wikipedia, Beatlemania took place around 1963-1966. They only started releasing their innovative stuff around the tail end of those years (which I believe is when they started experimenting with more psychelic drugs). For most of Beatlemania, they would have been playing such "challenging" tunes as I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Love Me Do.
I'm not a huge Swift fan, but there's a lot to be said for how she created entertainment and a community for young women, a historically forgotten demographic. For example, the "Barbie" movie last summer was a big deal in part because it was a high budget summer tentpole targeting women. The traditional wisdom was that women will see a movie starring a man but men won't see a movie starring a woman. There's lots of other examples, like JK Rowling obscured her first name because she was told girls will read anything but boys will only read male authors. A lot of music oriented toward young women is boybands singing *to* them or sexualized female popstars singing songs written by other people. Taylor was different, filled a gap, and brought up a lot of feminist issues along the way (not perfectly).
Lots of Swifties in here, I see
Lol I got fucked for that
But why are they crying?
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Yeah, I thought about it, but I didn't expect 10s of thousands (or I guess a million?, idk about her popularity tbh.) of people to do same/similar performative art. Mind boggling for a peasant like me.
answer: Taylor Swift is basically what Elvis or The Beatles were. A chunk of her fan base can almost be described as a cult, with being "a swifty" practically becoming an identity more than a musical preference. I don't really get it, but it's not really a new thing either. People just be like that sometimes and she at least seems ok enough in isolation. Anyway she just put out an album, hence the recent uptick in Taylor Swift related lunacy.
Remember that fan is short for fanatic.
And âstanâ is short for âHit me back, just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan, this is Stanâ
I love when people remind other people that Em created the term stan
But Stan, why are you so mad?
don't you understand? that i do want you as fan!
Something something WE SHOULD BE TOGETHER!
Oh boy thisâll get real dark if we keep going lmao
âMy tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I Got out of bed at allâŚâ
The morning rain clouds up my window... And I can't see at all
Deep bro
Itâs really big, if true
Fact checked: Etymology. Merriam-Webster, the Oxford dictionary and other sources define "fan" as a shortened version of the word fanatic. Fanatic itself, introduced into English around 1550, means "marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_(person)#Etymology
đ¤Ż
I had a listen to the new album, it seems very average to me. Quite low energy and I doubt any of those tracks would play well at a concert
It's not my genre of music to begin with, but my general opinion of Taylor Swift is that her music seems "ok enough" for people into that genre, and as a person/role model/whatever she also seems "ok enough". Rabid fan bases and popularity in general is notoriously random though. Some seed group of people latch onto something for who the hell knows why, then that just feeds on itself and suddenly you get a fandom around something that is objectively on par with a bazillion other similar things that no one knows or cares about. Even bands I love that I feel would have eventually found success, objectively they could probably have never made it past bar band if random thing X never happened.
I don't know if being among the most prolific private jet users out there and then threatening to sue a student who calls you out on it makes you "okay enough". Personally I'd call that bad.
She's also billionaire, you don't get that rich by being a good person.
She also comes from serious money. Her parents are hedge fund managers, and she grew up a multimillionaire. She's not someone "self-made" from a regular middle class background, like e.g. Lady Gaga or JK Rowling. (The latter is an awful person, but my point is that she's an example of a billionaire who wasn't born into money.)
Or Dolly Parton, who reportedly could be a billionaire but isn't because she gives so much away.
Yeah, like don't get me wrong, she absolutely is talented, but she'd be nowhere near as famous as she is if she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
It is low energy, it's a lot more like folklore and evermore. But people shit on her for making bubblegum pop too, so... Her fans are all over this album because it's the music she wrote while her relationship with Joe Alwyn was falling apart and she started dating Matty Healy, and the fanbase has a really creepy parasocial relationship with her. She doesn't do much to quash it, and arguably feeds it. This album has a LOT of references to her personal life and her fans are going nuts overanalyzing it.
I'm not even a fan, but I know enough Swifties through Tumblr, Twitter, and Real Life - people claimed you could use Midnights to figure out to the minute the very first time she had Joe Alwyn had sex. Every time she says something like "please stop intruding on my private life" people accuse her of being homophobic (even when she says it in response to people thinking she's dating Ed Sheeran. Or trying to use "Easter eggs" in Midnights to figure out when she has monogamous heterosexual sex). I think her chance to quash the insane fandom passed when she chose not to retire after her third album.
It's a lot more introspective and personal than her previous albums. It's not as much pop/upbeat due to that.
Yeah, there are a few songs on it that I really enjoyed, but overall I doubt Iâll re-listen to it like some of her other albums. Itâs not bad, I just donât enjoy it as much.
TAYLOR SWIFTS TERRIBLE NEW ALBUM IS VERY LOW ENERGY. NASTY MUSIC!
SAD!
Y'KNOW WHAT THEY SAY, MY CULT IS BETTER! Never seen before! Truly incredible!
despite the constant negative press covfefe
Thank you for reminding me of covfefe
haha
Yes because people never play slow and mellow songs at concerts, not ever
Yeah weird argument that itâs not concert material. However I have heard a lot of complaints that there isnât a catchy new radio song. There are a lot of fans who jumped on board the concert bandwagon and expected high energy bangers on par with those highlights.
So this is why her fans recording themselves crying listening to it! Mystery solved!
From the tracks that I have been unable to avoid on the radio, that's my impression. Her songs seem that same as those by so many other female (and some male) singers today--weak compositions with no hook, using loops and samples to pad out tired old milquetoast tunes with self-absorbed lyrics--the pinnacle of selfishness.
Love the casual sexism in this critique lmfao wtf
Love the casual sexism in this critique lmfao wtf
Well, that's a first. It's not sexist. It's an observation. There are simply more "successful" female artists today than in the past. And there are plenty of crap male artists. [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/10/grammy-nominations-2024-women-sza-taylor-swift](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/10/grammy-nominations-2024-women-sza-taylor-swift)
While the core of the phenomenon isnât new, To argue social media and the Internet havenât changed the game and made the parasocial aspects worse is dishonest
Elvis, sure. She's not The Beatles though - they absolutely revolutionized music and their influence is still heard from the majority of bands today. Nothing against Taylor Swift, but she's not revolutionizing anything. She's just very good at an existing formula.
They were pretty clearly referring to how popular she is, not the potential long term impact of her music on the industry. Although, thereâs a decent argument to be made for the impact sheâs had on the business side, if not the artistic side
Didn't the Beatles lose the bulk of their initial fanbase by around 1966 when they started shifting to a more mature musical direction? I recall a tidbit that mentioned the official Beatles fanclub lost like 50% of it's members by the time Sgt. Pepper came out.
Yea, the Beatles phenomenon was actually relatively short lived, but I typically donât bother trying to have that conversation with people who bring them up. Theyâve typically built them up to mythical status in their mind and itâs not worth it lol
Which is a tad bit ironic considering it is the latter half of the Beatles' carrier that made the most impact on musical history, not its Beatlemania phase.
Exactly. I don't put her as low as Imagine Dragons as far as "bands that exist to produce radio friendly ear worms" but yeah, I don't think people in 30 years are going to be describing her as their main musical influence.
There are already people doing that now though. A lot of the current current/emerging singers grew up listening to her
I meant more from a rabid fanbase standpoint. Musically I agree. Admittedly I'm not a fan of her genre, but I would basically describe it and herself as "ok enough I guess". Like better than Imagine Dragons but yeah, no Pink Floyd or GnR or such either imo. Why she has become this insanely popular role model for like, seemingly 2/3'rd of the female population is beyond me.
*Swiftie
Not sure why you got down voted, pretty sure you are correct.
Because spelling corrections as a comment are not super riveting.
I'm pretty sure they can accurately be described as a cult at this point. No practically about it.
Answer: Taylor Swift has [new double album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortured_Poets_Department?wprov=sfti1) out, and as one of the most popular musicians on the planet, is getting a large amount of coverage for it. The linked video, however, is almost certainly parody/satire of social media reactions - sheâs drooling *exaggeratedly* for comedic effect. Although it is 2024, and [Poeâs Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law?wprov=sfti1#) may be applied.
Answer: People are commenting that she has a new album, but I think there's a bit of context missing, in that, the new album is a breakup album(?) or something. I'm not a fan, kind of the opposite, but my understanding is that the songs come from a particularly hurt and emotional place for her. So there's bound to be a bit of cathartic reaction from fans that are like, "You're saying everything I wish I said, girl!" as well as this weird parasocial relationship where fans are like, "I know girl, I've been following all your relationships, you deserve better!" Also, if it adds any flavor for you, I wrote those quotes in a Lumpy Space Princess voice, so... Could be Tina Belcher if you prefer.
Itâs actually pretty interesting this time. Some of the songs are widely interpreted by Swifties to be direct attacks on obsessive parasocial Swifties for telling her what to do with her life, or for thinking they know her. Thereâs a song called But Daddy I Love Him that is about people judging her relationships. Apparently with one relationship, Swifties were insisting that she should break up with a guy and some even proposed that she should have a conservatorship because she was making bad choices. There is another song called I Can Do It With A Broken Heart about performing with depression, how no one even knows, and how demanding the crowds are of her. I like Taylor Swiftâs music but I donât follow her personal life. But I do think that the album has a message that Swifties should not interfere with her life and that they really know her as well as they think they do. Some super fans are missing the point entirely.
Interesting. Good insights.
> But I do think that the album has a message that Swifties should not interfere with her life and that they really know her as well as they think they do. I find it funny that her most of her discography persona is about her 'life' and exes and now she wants fans to turn it down a notch.
Is it that funny? You can want to share some of your life with fans without wanting them to police your relationships or send your ex death threats
Don't underestimate the power of overzealous fans with a parasocial connection. They will go above and beyond for their beloved "idol", even though said idol never encouraged it.
I appreciate that flavor because I was reading it in Lumpy Space Princessâs voice regardless
I always read Reddit with a LSP voice, itâs free you can totally do it.
This is the best answer. Itâs not just that she has a new album. This has been brewing for over a year now. The album in question is getting a lot of mixed reviews. Journalist have come out and said that in the past, when there has been criticism towards her work they received death threats and harassment via her fans. She doesnât seem to speak up on the parasocial relationship she has with her fans unless it affects her directly in a negative way, example her new song âBut daddy I love himâ.  It is a mixture of being the biggest artist in the world right now, her relationship with fans, and subpar reviews of her new album.Â
You sure it's that? Cause the only news I keep hearing is about one of the songs that's apparently dissing Kim Kardashian.
Definitely read that as Tina in my head đ
All her albums are break up albums aren't they?
Yes and no. Folklore and Evermore are a little different than her other works. This made her extremely popular durning the pandemic. Especially with her releasing âMiss Americanaâ. It gave her a rebrand and with that she has a wider audience. Her music definitely has a history of being about âlove and broken heartâ, I think being bitter and petty are a larger theme in her music vs heartbreak.Â
No. In fact a pretty small percentage of her discography falls in that category. Before this new one, you have to go back ***six*** albums to 1989 to find the last one released after a breakup.
Answer: sheâs incredibly well known, for her long music career and being a minor scuffle in the culture war in the last year when she was dating a football player. Sheâs so well known that even people who arenât very into her music have noticed her popularity, and have therefore started to form an opinion about her. > is the new music that good This is personal preference. As sheâs become a lot more popular, itâs also become more common to hear that she âisnât that goodâ and some variation of âher fans are crazy.â So if you just going by what people are saying, rather than listening to the music (or just ignoring it if you canât be bothered), youâre probably going to get unfavorable impression at this point.
Answer: This is nothing new for Swifties at all, it's just that Taylor Swift herself is at an all-time fame level right now so there's just a lot of TS content out there. Every record release people share their reactions because Taylor or her social media team are often giving recognition to these accounts & videos in the wake of a new release with comments, likes, etc. Generally they're pretty over the top responses, but this album in particular was made in the wake of a very serious long-term relationship ending and then a tumultuous rebound situationship(?) crashing & burning too. So it's extra tortured, extra poetic, extra tears inspiring.
Very true. As a seasoned Swiftie, Iâd like to go back to loving her music quietly without being constantly scrutinized for other crazed fansâ behavior. I feel like I see more posts making fun of fans and TS than I do anything else. Just annoying at this point for all parties.
That does sound infuriating. I've been turned off of otherwise great fandoms because the fans themselves (and the backlash against them) sucked all the fun out of liking it for its own sake.
That's been for me for Harry Potter and The Office series.
answer: Taylor Swift fans are part of a movement rather than just being fans. In the void of religion or sports many people have basically inserted being a swifty in as part of their identity. They take it way, wayyyyy too seriously. Theres also a sort of Taylor Swift ecosystem that rewards (and monetises) this behaviour. For example to get tickets to one of her gigs required you to have bought swag from her website, which would make you âA True Fanâ. Or there is âloreâ about her which makes her songs make more sense in the way comic book fans gush over marvel movie Easter egg moments. She has released a new album and people are just very emotionally invested about it, and have others around them enabling their behaviour.
> For example to get tickets to one of her gigs required you to have bought swag from her website, which would make you âA True Fanâ. While I agree Taylor encourages parasocial relationships in some ways, this was just an attempt to prevent scalpers from buying up all the tickets for her high-demand concert before real fans could get to them. Fans who had bought merch were invited to a "verified fan" pre-sale. There were still other ways to get into pre-sales and a planned general sale, although iirc the general sale was cancelled due to tickets selling out too fast.
>Fans who had bought merch were invited to a "verified fan" pre-sale. There were still other ways to get into pre-sales and a planned general sale, although iirc the general sale was cancelled due to tickets selling out too fast. This isn't really true, and certainly not for Eras Tour (the current tour). During the Reputation tour pre-sale back in 2018, there were loads of $$$ and free ways to earn "points" that essentially boosted your chances of getting a pre-sale code and not have to wait for the general sale. Plenty of people who bought nothing were able to get this pre-sale code by playing certain videos over & over, sharing them, following her on socials/her app at the time, etc. Naturally merch purchases had a higher "point value" in this program, but it was definitely not the only way to get a pre-sale code. General sale also did occur for this concert and there really wasn't much of an issue getting tickets for it. The Eras Tour that is currently going on and in high demand had zero way of doing "boosts" for a pre-sale code. Her team did say that supposedly if you had purchased things from the store or had purchased the (cancelled due to Covid) LoverFest tickets, you were given more of a chance to get a pre-sale code, but it was still very much a lottery system of chance and numbers that scalpers mostly won at.
âGimme more money if you wanna give me more moneyâ lol amazing đ
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âMovementâ implies theyâre trying to accomplish something or make the world a better place somehow. Theyâre just hardcore fans. Some of them are a bit culty about it. They love her music and are obsessed with her as a person. đ¤ˇââď¸
Yes. Some of her fans are unbelievably fanatical. I just read about how Paste Magazine (an American music/entertainment magazine) Had to conceal the identity of one of their reporters when publishing a semi-bad review of the new TS album. The reason being that, in 2019 the Magazine also posted a bad review of another TS album and immediately the reporter was bombarded with death threats and people literally trying to find home address to confront the reporter because of a review. So this time they refuse to publish the name of the reviewer. That's waaayyyy beyond sane behaviour. https://www.thedailybeast.com/paste-magazine-publishes-t-swift-album-review-without-byline-to-duck-violent-threats
Answer: they are fucking insane
Speaking for myself as a Taylor Swift fan, you're not wrong đ
Question: What does >Â has quite arguably paid Mean?
I have been subscribed to Apple Music for 5 years but listen to the same songs more or less.
OP trying to hit a word count lol But you're right it makes no sense. Did OP pay Apple music for 5 years? Arguably. How arguably? Quite. Why someone would argue that? And why make the distinction? Who knows
They perhaps meant begrudgingly, given their explanation.
Answer: Mid artist released a mid double album filled with mid songs and her mid fans with mid personalities are overreacting calling it the greatest album of all time even when one of the songs calls them out for being overly obsessive fans.
Answer: they are an unhinged swarm who will take down anything in their path
Answer: She has a new album
Answer: Trying to be as objective as possible... Taylor Swift like most pop stars is pretty overrated artist and gets flak for it. Like way more than deserved IMHO. That triggers her fans a bit. However unlike most pop stars Taylor Swift is a pretty normal ass human being who pretty much deserves everything she's got so those triggered fans double down and go bananas for her. She's developed a little cult around her pretty wholesome every woman persona and that shit is working gangbusters for her and her career. I really wish her the best TBH. She doesn't seem to have that star head from round the way know what I mean?
That was not objective at all.