[ SECRET POST #3937 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3937 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 48 secrets from Secret Submission Post #564.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. https://i.imgur.com/Qxx2SZ3.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Upset... or heavily calculated?

[(Anonymous)]

this, actually. the whole thing strikes me as incredibly manufactured and definitely aimed at the young demographic that can totally relate to "old taylor" not being able to come to the phone.

like if i had been into pop when i was younger i would have eaten up the fantasy of becoming super hardass, paying back backstabbing bitches and overcoming all the silly ideas people have about me.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it's entirely her fault. I mean, some of it is that she's ridiculous, but some of it is just inevitable backlash against anyone being popular. The fact that people manage to criticize her for not being political and speaking out against Trump, while also siding with Kanye West against her even though he's actually spoken out in favor of Trump, kind of says to me that it's not really entirely about things that she's done. When people are being inconsistent like that, I have to think that it's at least partly about point-scoring.

It doesn't help that the songs we've heard from the new album are really bad and impossible to take seriously, though. That does not help at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. Blank Space was at least a little interesting in its self-awareness and a catchy song on top. This is just embarrassing.
Look What You Made Me Do is such a disappointment. It doesn't sound like much musically, her POV in it is confused and unsympathetic, and she very obviously tried and fails to pull off the boss bitch image that invites comparisons to people like Beyonce where Taylor can only lose.
I thought I was gonna be a fan of hers after all with the last album, but she completely lost me again.

[(Anonymous)]

Not a pop fan at all, but let's be fair here. Pop songs and music videos are almost never much of a reflection of the performer's own thoughts. For one, does she even write all her own songs or direct her own videos? For another, even if she does, she's selling a product, not her real self. She performs songs that are meant to be catchy and easy to relate to for her target demographic, not bare her soul or write an audio-autobiography. And even if she puts a piece of herself in it, I think it's quite a jump to say it reflects the full performer at all.

[(Anonymous)]

So I don't entirely disagree. But I think it's a little more complicated than that, especially in this case.

First of all, in the case of Taylor Swift, we're talking about someone who absolutely has the power and the ability to have complete and total final say over everything she puts out. I'm pretty sure, even if she's not the director or the only credited songwriter, she has an enormous amount of agency in the creative process. Treating her as an empty vessel for other's creativity is just broadly factually incorrect.

Second, it's true that the songs she releases are not her true self. But I think the same is true for anyone else. Any person creating and releasing music is putting out a representation, and usually something that is to some degree a commercial product if it's being released for money. You can never draw a direct line from any kind of performance to the true being of a person, in Taylor Swift's case or in any other case. These aren't really things that are distinctive to Taylor Swift or pop music. Now, is Taylor Swift's persona more opaque and elaborately constructed than some other people's are? Yeah, absolutely, but it's a mistake to talk about it as though this is something unique to her or to pop music. The basic idea that anyone can have some kind of pure, unvarnished representation of their soul on record is completely and totally wrong.

And the other thing there is that, ultimately, the fact that her persona is opaque and constructed means that you can talk about that persona as a creative product in much the same way that you can talk about the music. The fact that you have a persona that's an artifice around the music doesn't mean that we conclude that those appearances are false, meaningless, insignificant, not worth paying attention to, etc. It is another mode of presenting something to the world, and representing something. Not that it necessarily has to work for you, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean this is true of performers in general, but Taytay has always tried very hard to work the "authentic me in my songs" angle. Like, she's spent her whole career presenting herself---her entire public self---as "this is who I really am, I am so genuine, I am not a fake girl, these songs are right from the heart." So, it's extremely silly that she is now making such a stink about how people took her at her word in regards to all of what she showed the world about her supposedly real self.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe she's trying to tap back into the tween market. I looked at the YouTube comments for her last video and there's a lot of people going crazy about how badass she is who seem pretty 12ish. And hating the Kardashian Wests looks to be cool with the kids these days as well. There's an audience for these things.

[(Anonymous)]

+1 to all this.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't take the song so seriously. She certainly didn't.

[(Anonymous)]

This.

[(Anonymous)]

+1. I thought it was very tongue-in-cheek.

[(Anonymous)]

She constructed her reputation herself? I don't think you know how reputations work, but go off I guess.

[(Anonymous)]

I think they mean that she specifically constructed her persona knowing how she had to behave in order for people to see her as a "goody-girl drama llama" i.e. the reputation she has is exactly the reputation she wanted.

[(Anonymous)]

MTE

[(Anonymous)]

But she did construct a lot of it herself through PR.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreeing with the comments that mention she's tailoring (ha ha) her image and music for her market. Last album seemed to be for the "cool unaffected crew"/"la vie boheme young hipster" (or so I have been led to believe, didn't listen to the whole thing) and this is the other "edgy teen" market she's catering to. She's gotta make that bank...

I still don't like her (not taking away from her music/talent/business acumen). Never did, because she came off as false (I respect musicians that make it clear this is a persona, that do not try to pretend what I'm seeing is the real deal versus those who cultivate a persona and say this is me, 100% -- nah, it's like you 15% the rest is the image you want me to believe is you. Which is always how I saw her. Like the kind of person who smiles with you but talks shit once you're gone, or something to that effect.)

[greghousesgf]

her mouth looks like a blowup doll's in that pic

[(Anonymous)]

Feeling nostalgic about the ex?

I've seen this exact thing with other pop stars before.

[(Anonymous)]

The constantly evolving persona to get and keep attention and publicity, it's all about keeping her name in the game to make money. I believe this is absolutely manufactured to do exactly that. Some do it better than others (like, say, Madonna or Cher). Also, when you're trying to appeal to a teenage market, you write/sing songs aimed at them. Madonna was 28 when Papa Don't Preach came out.

[(Anonymous)]

I still can't get over how many people are taking LWYMMD (song and video) seriously, when it obviously wasn't meant to be taken seriously. She's making fun of everyone - herself, her "enemies," and the media.

And if she is annoyed by anything, I'd say she's annoyed by the way people/media sources keep pulling their own presumptive, cynical, and ignorant narratives about her out of their asses and then saying, "She made this narrative herself!!!" and expecting her to agree.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with everything in the secret. So tired of Taylor's constant self-martyrdom. Apparently no woman has ever been wronged as much a she has. I will love it if one of these days, one of her exes released a song or something in response called, "Maybe the Problem is You."

What Kanye did was pretty shitty and I'll admit that Taylor's probably been through some rough breakups, but since every song of hers is about how she's been horribly wronged in life, but totally isn't bitter and will rise above it...At some point, Taylor needs to ask herself if the problem in all this, isn't her.

[(Anonymous)]

Am I on ONTD?

[arcadiaego]

Every pop star's image is constructed. Accusing Swift of being worse than everyone else, as the media does, is ridiculous. The level of seriousness people take everything she does is really baffling and if she herself has lost sight of reality as well by this point, it's not surprising.