• happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Qanon Anonymous just did a premium episode on her cult. It’s so fucking weird to me. Like it’s just generic pop music about relationships, right?

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      I can’t explain it completely, but I can say she gives way more convoluted and involved biographical information in her songs than most musicians and encourages her followers to be parasocial, and seemingly this interest in The Lore has lead her more obsessive fans to spread interpretations of her songs that are absolutely ridiculous.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Is it an actual cult or is it just people acting as if obsessed teenage fangirls being weird and attached has never existed before? They will grow out of it in 5-10 years.

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        It’s not teenage girls though. The most obsessed swifties are usually in the 20-30 range, people who literally grew up with her and her apparent lifestyle and music changes. Teenage girls do listen to Taylor Swift, but your average teenage girl is just as likely to be into Billie Eilish or Ariana Grande or any K-pop. The people who get para-social with it (to name a couple of real-ass examples, getting tattoos of her handwriting or theming rooms around different albums) are the people who have been celebrity gossip column following her for years, and trying to convince their friends that in fact she personally writes all of her tweets well into their 20’s.

        Her music is whatever, what bothers me is how deeply they’ve fallen for the marketing schtick.

        Edit: More specifically, it is their tendency to think that if you don’t fall for the marketing schtick, that makes you a ‘bad person who is just jealous of her success’.

      • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        I think for a few celebrities- Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson- there’s a point where it becomes a whole new level of parasocial relationship. The line between toxic fandom and cult is pretty blurry. The hosting website also has a bunch of hentai and shit so NSFW but that episode of QAA has some pretty extreme fans using biblical gematria to prove that Taylor Swift is secretly gay: https://kemono.su/patreon/user/12883973/post/93239821