Let’s start with those that profit directly from human suffering.
So the entire Healthcare, agriculture, and processed food industries.
And obviously Ticketmaster.
Yeah for sure, but we can still plan for tomorrow.
Hi, Swiftie here 🙋♀️
There are no good billionaires. Taylor Swift is not a good person due to her business practices. I have no defense of her and I would never say “she is one of the good ones.” I and most of the Swiftie circles I run in wish that she would practice equitable compensation in her tours (where she gets the vast majority of her profit), among other areas.
Taylor Swift is a capitalist, and that’s bad. There are thousands of artists and laborers being exploited by her every performance. All those laborers, stage hands, designers, arena staff, etc should have a say in how the massive revenue generated is distributed, and they do not get that say. That is bad.
As a majority male space, Lemmy has a tendency to slide a bit toward dunking on women and majority women’s spaces because you may not be aware that many leftist Swifties are just as critical of Swift as other billionaires. This post is a good example of that. (If you feel bad or called out by this, don’t stress it. I just want to gently course correct the conversation a tad 🙂)
I appreciate you posting this, it was actually unexpected to see to me and was nice to know.
i appreciate you leaving the feedback! sometimes i feel like what i say lands on deaf ears so it’s reassuring that my experience can actually get out there :) cheers
I’m not a swiftie, and I’m male, so take my words as you will in that context.
Simply: IMO, it is possible to appreciate someones artistry while disliking their personal value system and actions.
Just because someone is a good artist, does not and should not imply that they are good.
Both liking someone’s music and disliking their decisions as a person, can both be true. I hate the plethora of false dichotomy arguments that you can’t appreciate music made by a person if that person is considered a bad person. One does not mean the other cannot be true.
based
false dichotomy arguments that you can’t appreciate music made by a person if that person is considered a bad person
For me this is more about making someone more popular and making them profits by listening to their music. And then there’s also a possibility that someone is considered a bad person for their views that are also displayed in their music, then I consider that I might start viewing their opinion as the norm, and also prefer not to listen to them.
All in all, I agree that the dichotomy is false, but I think it has some sense in some cases.
There’s definitely logic behind wanting to boycott their art so that you are not indirectly supporting their decisions by giving them the money to continue to do the things that they’re doing.
Of course, that is also a separate decision from whether you like the art or whether you like the artist.
Anyone trying to tie these things together is generally not someone I would want to associate with.
Oh, yeah, I kinda mixed together liking and supporting in the ‘appreciate’.
Wow, I could never listen to her, but thanks for a Swiftie with a reasonable take on this.
to reiterate: i’m not alone :) my positions mirror a ton of other swifties’ (obviously not all, but you do what you can)—they just have limited representation on lemmy due to gender and vibes
Why keep giving her attention? Why label yourself as a “Swiftie”? Why continue to consume her media? Are there no other artists?
once you’re a part of a cult of personality, it’s hard enough to become self aware of the fact, let alone to break free.
Why do you pay for gas? The world is ending due to fossil fuels.
If you do, why do you buy bottled water or cheap supermarket chocolate? Communities are being deprived and destroyed by companies like Nestle.
If you do, why do you own a laptop/phone? When it breaks, why do you plan to get a new one? That technology was developed off the backs of child labor.
If you pay for Spotify or similar, do you realize that those platforms often exploit and underpay the very artists you enjoy, ethical artists or not?
If you’re an American who pays taxes, some of that money has gone to fund a genocide and decades of warmongering. Maybe you should give up paying taxes…
Much to think about! 🙂
How do you reconcile the understanding of her not being a good person and doing harm to the world with being a Swiftie? That’s a genuine question, I find identifying with the group supporting or admiring the person or idea I myself am opposed to on the ideological level hard to imagine. I can understand it being the case if one is defending the lesser evil, as they are coerced to do so by implied existence of the greater evil, but while I’m not well versed in the Swift lore I believe there isn’t any evil twin running around that she needs to stop. Unless.
That’s not an attack, I believe that being a Swiftie might mean something else than what I understand by this term and I am making a fool out of myself. Still, it does seem to mean supporting what you’re opposed to. How do you resolve that contradiction?
Thanks for your question! It’s a good one.
Short answer: I don’t
Long answer: @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca explains it super well so I won’t rewrite their excellent comment: https://lemmy.cafe/post/10463918/8811775
Parallel example but chronically fandom answer: Swift has also made a lot of really shitty decisions regarding relationships that I strongly dislike, including dating freak weirdo misogynist Matty Healy. 🫤 I don’t think we could ever be friends, or whatever, because of these flaws to her character. I don’t try to reconcile her flaws at all. I just like most of her music a lot and keep myself honest about the rest of it. 🤷♀️
Brava!
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As a swiftie, I can say you’re right. However, there’s also no such thing as a purely good or purely bad person, and liking a billionaire does not make someone good or bad. People, it turns out, are complex.
I can love Taylor’s music while also criticizing her for her excessive personal jet use and massive pollution problem.
I think if we stop making it a binary decision that more people will start opening up about changes need to make. In Taylor’s case, most Swifties would never dare say anything negative about her for fear of others in the fandom thinking they aren’t true fans, and vis versa, I’m sure people here will read this as I must support billionaires because I like her music. No, complex multifaceted opinions are valid.
I think we should abolish ICE vehicles. It doesn’t mean I think I need to yell at family members who pull up in their 02 Camry because they can’t afford to upgrade.
You need to be evil to accumulate billionaire levels of wealth, no one forces her to be that wealthy, she could give hundreds of millions to MSF and other reliable charities and still be richer than 99.999999% of people on earth.
Completely agree. Went to her show, loved it. She’s donated to every food bank in each city she’s stopped at, but I don’t think it’s nearly what she could be doing. She has “put an actual dent in climate change” money bur instead gives a few thousand to food banks. Like I said, people can hold 2 opinions.
Disagree here. I’d argue being good and being a billionaire are mutually exclusive. You can be good before you are a billionaire (rare) but it’s not possible once you enter that class.
someone of her unique status cannot fly scheduled commercial flights without causing significant disruptions everywhere she travels to and from.
Pfff, yeah, sure. In my country the ex-president was stupidly popular, like 80% approval popular and 99% of the people knew him. He still traveled, always, in commercial flights, economic class, basically each weekend. Taylor Swift just doesn’t wanna deal with normies.
and liking a billionaire does not make someone good or bad.
Buddy we all make mistakes. Liking a billionaire is simply not good don’t try to hide yourself behind an excuse. The world has much better artists and music to offer.
So what as soon as a musician or artist hits a big enough line in the sand we all have to stop liking their music?
Musicians and artists are people who focus on music and art. Billionares are businessmen who focus on making money. As many others are highlighting in the thread a billion dollars is a ridiculous amount of money that you don’t simply hit, you have to seek profits above everything else and work your way up there.
I agree, but you said I need to stop listening to her. I disagree with that. I can still listen to her music and enjoy that while also at the very same time think that she is a billionaire who should be giving most of her wealth away.
I didn’t say you need to stop listening to her. I encouraged you to listen to the much better artists and music that the world has to offer.
That goes into opinion. I personally really like her music, I listen to a lot of others too, but I’m not going to stop listening to my favorite.
Hi fellow Swiftie! Thanks for sharing your thoughts 💃
Hello! If you aren’t aware we do have a community over at !taylorswift@poptalk.scrubbles.tech if you’d like to join! Always happy to have more!
Shits a cult aye
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You decide not to feed it because it’s not your dog - it’s not your problem. But your whole house is completely stocked with food. You throw out large amounts of table scraps and leftovers daily.
How many people would consider that to be evil?
Internally the person can justify his actions “You feed a stray dog one time, it will nag you forever, maybe call up his buddies because there is free food, and now suddenly you have a pack of stray dogs on your farm that are causing all sorts of trouble”. Such nuances are always present(I will stop with the dog analogy, because your original example and my addendum, dehumanizes people in need to dogs). but such is the harsh reality, that often arises with a direct personal transfer of wealth, people tend to form a dependency on the table scraps and those that provide them(even though they are losing literally nothing) resent it.
The solution you may ask to greedy billionaires and hungry homeless people, SOCIETAL or GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION, think about it, its the failure of whoever the fuck is in charge that a select few of their citizens have exploited the system so well that their wastage is equivalent to the GDP of a small country, and similarly there are many people that only dream of a roof over their heads!!
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^ This right here.
I’m so tired of “leftists” focusing on inoffensive targets in the middle of the spectrum when the real problem is far to the right of it.
Pop stars are just the pretty faces in front of the behemoths that are the music labels. These labels are absolutely very politically powerful. Do you think Taylor Swift for rich by paying her staff fair salaries? The cleaning people from the concert venues, the bartenders, the people taking your tickets, etc, they all earned little crumbs while Swift, the venue, and the label made the big bucks.
No one becomes a billionaire by paying fair wages.
Most of those people work for the venue though, the performer doesn’t control their wages.
Taylor Swift has the power to demand basically anything from the venue.
Taylor Swift has the power to demand basically anything from the venue.
Expecting a performer to go to lengths like that just isn’t realistic, they’ve got their own job to do.
You can say the same about mega corp CEOs. Poor them, they are so busy with their own job.
Idk, when you move from normal wealth to exorbitant wealth AND you’re a international pop star who very clearly has THOUSANDS of workers supporting each show it seems kinda hard to ignore the people who’s work is providing your stage to excess.
They all are a symptom of the same disease, some of them are the disease as well.
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Looks like your stats are a bit out of date, Swift is in first place again: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/10/08/taylor-swift-becomes-worlds-richest-female-musician-heres-who-is-right-behind-her/
But you bring up a poignant point. Maybe some of it is because of the whole jet thing from some months ago, those discussions were really raging on here and so it’s probably echoing forward.
People have been hating Swift for decades now. They were hating her for writing too many relationship-related songs even before the American left revived.
She’s an easy target because her target demographic is teenage girls, and anything / anyone beloved by teenage girls MUST necessarily be gay and worthless.
See also: Justin Bieber, the Backstreet Boys, and the Jonas Brothers.
I highly suspect people joined the left and transferred their hatred from, “Taylor Swift the musician for stupid, hysterical girls, who I hate” to, “Taylor Swift, the billionaire,” without once examining the lens through which they first started hating her. And now she gets more “anti-billionaire” hate than Jeff Bezos?
It bothers me.
Misogyny is a tool of capitalism, and to quote Lorde: the tools of the master will never dismantle the master’s house. No one is destroying capitalism by weirdly fixating on Taylor Swift and her fans “because she’s a billionaire” while criticizing her more than basically all other billionaires.
I look forward to the day I see a leftist meme reminding me “you can’t love Bruce Springsteen (1.1b) or Jay-Z (2.5b) and still be a leftist.”
Until then, I’m not taking lectures on leftism from people who haven’t deconstructed their own feelings of hatred and superiority towards teenage girls.
Edit: I hope I didn’t come across as angry at you in particular. You don’t seem to be joining in the hypocritical, unnuanced hate.
I made a post about this a while ago! (edit: okay it’s not about this per se but relevant, inspired by Contrapoints’ video about JK Rowling.)
https://lemmy.cafe/post/3014506
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I’m glad you got a good upvote:downvote ratio for that post. It’s encouraging to know that people are at least willing to listen to a reasonable take on Taylor Swift.
thanks! i actually forgot how successful it was! to be fair, that was back when blahaj zone didn’t federate downvotes so the ratio must be taken with a grain of salt :)
They both got rich and famous with pop music, but Rihanna started making BANK when she made makeup for women of color. Crazy idea right? She noticed a hole in the market and filled it. That’s not talked about as much as entertaining us musically, so Swift is normally brought up before Rihanna. Swift has been touring more recently as well.
Paul McCartney catching strays out here… If anyone should be allowed to live a life of luxury, it’s the surviving members of the fucking Beatles…
Jokes aside, I do see a difference between people who became wealthy through art, than through straight capitalism. It’s still gross, it still shouldn’t exist, it is still a form of capitalism and exploitation, etc. etc., but there are levels to this.
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I was being a bit facetious, I agree with everything you’re saying.
“What about…?”
Weird, I feel like there’s a word for this. 🙄
Those billionaires are being propped by stupid people buying exorbitant ticket prices to see their idols dancing from a mile a way. I blame the populace for this. you can make them irrelevant without even spending a penny.
This being said on the same platform that basically every third person believes voters aren’t responsible for their votes.
We can always assume people will be stupid, so I don’t think they’re gonna all stop wasting their money. Even if half of them did TS would still be a billionaire
If every single one of Taylor Swift’s concerts were free, past, present, and future, she’d still probably be a billionaire. Artists don’t really make that much on ticket sales, the ticket vendors and venues are the ones making all the money. Swift’s net worth mostly comes from the value of the rights to her songs, not ticket sales.
I think you would be right in a lot of cases but does that apply when you routinely sell out these extremely expensive shows like are being discussed here?
Taylor Swift probably has it better than most artists, considering she’s probably the most famous music artist on the planet right now, and even if you only make a small percentage off of ticket sales, a small percentage of an astronomical number is still a big number. I’d still be willing to bet the bulk of her net worth is in the rights to her music though.
In the face of exploitative capital, blaming the consumer is on the same tier of nonsensical rhetoric as victim blaming.
It’s not the fault of people buying bottled water for Nestle’s human rights violations, nor is it the fans’ fault that Swift’s business model is exploitative and nonethical.
You are telling me you can’t live without going to a Taylor Swift concert. Capitalism is the origin of many pains, but this one isn’t one of them.
I am not telling you that. Blocked :)
As someone in the entertainment business, those performers don’t like ticket master either. Or at least on the level I am at.
As an INTJ I also don’t like most people, because as you said people are stupid
I understand why Queen B or T Swift aren’t doing it, but the only moral activity (beyond survival tasks) that a “good billionaire” can be engaged in is redistributing their wealth to marginalized workers.
You can figure out your next album / tour or how to benefit your friends and family once you get to 999M USD.
Why do you understand why Swift and Queen B arent doing it?
I don’t know about other people, but I tend to drift toward doing things that are fun, comfortable, and familiar, unless I do some “internal parenting”. Even if they found a way to make redistributing their wealth fun, they are shaped by capitalism even more than myself, so I doubt they’d find it comfortable or familiar.
That’s how I understand it.
I’m going to get comfortable and familiar with community investment of my own resources well before I reach 1B, by intention.
What does Taylor spend money on? Since she’s still a billionaire I’m guessing she doesn’t give it all to charity.
Oh jeeze, you mentioned Swift in a meme. I feel sorry for your inbox.
Posting women as the targets is such easy pickings and it’s so fuckin lazy. Where’s the white guys? Why aren’t they the face of this, since they’re the hand choking the poor?
You’re missing the point. The point is that people always defend TS because they like her but she is still a billionaire. You can’t just snap your fingers and turn this into a conversation about sexism because that’s not related to the point in the least.
As someone else pointed out a while ago, Dolly Parton isn’t a billionaire because she tirelessly gives away her wealth to the poor.
It’s not the same level, but there are other musicians who have fought to keep ticket price affordable for their fans, Minor Threat/Fugazi being the most notable but far from the only ones.
Yeah and there probably is a gender cultural component to Dolly being so kind. But to the commenter I am responding to, I stand by what I said.
So… The endgame here is that billionaires CAN exist, but any of them who don’t give away their wealth are assholes? So are we all here on these posts just to peer pressure billionaires to give away money?
That’s certainly going to be a helpful approach.
You also can’t snap your fingers and take everyone off the street. Sure, you can pay for places and help, but people aren’t obliged to take it. Unless you’re arguing for forcing that situation?
I understand the argument is simply “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, but that’s a job for the government by way of taxation. There’s no reason to point fingers at TS, she sells something people want really bad for some reason. Instead, point your finger at any of your asshole friends who don’t vote or show up to help the cause.
Otherwise what? TS sucks because she’s disgustingly rich, and the only way out is to give it all away? And then of course all other billionaires will follow suit?
These posts really seem like nothing more than “it’s cathartic to yell at the sky, and it’s even better if some people like the sky”.
Man, sometimes people have a point even if other points exist. The point is that it’s a bad thing to ignore one example of badness because you want to. If you wanna paint this as a moral judgement of TS, ok fine, but my issue here isn’t so much with her but with people who want to have exceptions to their own moral code. And yes that moral code in this case is the job of the government.
Ok fair enough. That wasn’t my read of it.
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When your bank balance is higher than the GDP of a small country, gender is irrelevant.
I’m so so on this example specifically.
Most of Taylor’s wealth is in the value of the rights to her songs. The liquid value she gets from those rights she is generally pretty generous with, she pays her employees very well and donated quite a bit of it.
That said, the bar is on the floor, and even a good billionaire is still pretty bad. She has much to improve
I would go so far as to say: they will never be a good billionaire, unless that means a median income in a poor country
I think it’s kind of stupid that we’re defaulting to the idea that a billion dollars as sort of the default “well, that’s too much money, nobody could ever possibly deserve THAT much money!” metric we’re using. Not particularly because there are really any good billionaires, I mostly think that’s not really the case and agree that any claim to the contrary would probably strain credibility.
About the most you could point to is somebody like taylor swift, or any musical performer, or athlete, someone who specifically gains money based almost exclusively on their command of cultural capital and ability as a performer rather than necessarily on extracting the surplus labor value of others, though to a certain extent, you have to have some sort of corporate backing or management company to reach that level, and even if those performers don’t control it, there’s probably some level of loaded complicity going on there. These types would maybe be just above the sorts of people who just run good or more ethical companies, as far as companies can be, on the billionaire morality totem poll.
No, my criticism isn’t so much that billionaires aren’t necessarily evil, because I think it’s mostly true enough that billionaires are all evil for it to be as true a heuristic as a heuristic can be true. I think my ire draws less from that, and more from how this sort of like, meaningless agreement over this particular example doesn’t really necessarily lend itself towards any more in depth analysis. We’ve put the marker too high, the standard too high. A billion dollars is obviously very extreme, you can see that with the comparisons from a million to a billion. What about a million, though? Is that bad, is that a bad standard of evil, if you have a million dollars, does that make you evil? Where’s the cutoff, here? I’m sure plenty of people know someone with a million bucks, you could probably just point at anyone who owns a home in LA.
My point is that instead of some arbitrary cutoff we should probably just be looking at what’s actually going on here in terms of the relationships at work and the constructed hierarchies. If that’s the case then we can probably draw the line less at a billion dollars and more at anyone propping up this stupid bullshit type hierarchy, and specifically those more critical lynchpins which hold it together. Perhaps, like a “not necessarily a billionaire” healthcare CEO. Now that, that would be a good start.
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