I forget how the quote goes. Something along the lines of "I don't marvel at Einstein's intellect, but at how many Einstein's wasted behind a plow or in a dark factory." Theres no limit to the amount of people that have the intellect of Einstein or are as talented as Taylor Swift, its the mode of production that keeps most of them from having the chance.
I think what gets lost in nepo baby discourse is that, they aren't all failchildren. Many are actually talented. Its just that they aren't successful because of that. They're successful because they had the opportunity to display talent to the right people. That's what many people equally talented will never have and why they will never have the chance to be successful in a given field.
Original quote may have been the following by Steven Jay Gould in his book, The Panda's Thumb:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops
thanks.That's a Stephen Jay Gould quote.
As Stephen Jay Gould wrote in The Panda's Thumb: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops".
not defending the underlying system, just can't help but being in awe that a 300000 dollar investment made taylor swift what she is today. massive return on investment lol.
Her parents practically grew her in a lab, it was way more than 300k that did it. Alexander Avila just put out a video that went over her life and rise as part of its analysis on the greater theme of the video
You know how some people say the internet is not real life? Definitely not always true, I know some people who fucking worship Taylor swift. Truly the weirdest shit
One of my partners friends almost went to jail over a fight at a Taylor Swift concert
Only got away with it because she smashed in the side of her new Jeep getting away
When she told me this, it took me completely by surprise because this lady is a therapist
It’s actually kinda fascinating ngl
I wonder if she realizes the power she has. Could literally lead a Revolution if she wanted
Probably the closest thing the world has to The Word of God from Preacher that's for sure
Yeah there’s no chance in hell lol
I think it’s a wonderful illustration of how the most non-threatening people can accumulate so much power and influence though. I fucking hate it here lmao
she's not just a non threatening person she's a person who was born with power and influence. People with power and influence can accumulate more
True to the spirit of cognitive behavioral therapy, therapists in my limited experience seem to be able to perform their job rather well while leading relatively unhinged lives.
lady is a therapist
One of the bigger criticisms of the whole "go to therapy!" Lines, besides not everyone being able to afford it, is that there are a lot of fucking garbage therapists out there who often do more harm than good.
Why yes I do enjoy trying to convince my Stanford-educated therapist that capitalism is not the end of history
My friend had a therapist suggest Jordan Peterson to them. This friend later came out as trans.
The 3% stuff is at Wikipedia.
Soon after, Big Machine released Swift's first ever recording, the single "Tim McGraw" and her debut album Taylor Swift. Keith dropped his affiliation with the label in 2006, but he was reported as an equity holder in November 2014, alongside the Swift family and Borchetta (the latter reportedly owning 60 percent of the company at the time). In October 2012, Borchetta told Rolling Stone magazine: "[Taylor Swift's father] Scott Swift owns three percent of Big Machine."
Her dad doesn't have a Wikipedia page but he does have a page at a fan site.
Scott Swift | Taylor Swift Wiki | Fandom
In an interview, Taylor briefly discusses her father's work:
In a recent Google/YouTube interview, Ms. Taylor said that at 8, while friends reported wanting to grow up and become astronauts and ballerinas, she wanted to be a financial adviser, like her dad. “My dad is so passionate about what he does, like in the way I'm passionate about music," Ms. Swift said. "He's so gung-ho for his job, and I saw how happy it made him and I just thought, like, 'I can broke stocks.'"
Networking, networking, networking. It's all about who you know. People talk about nepotism a lot and I think that's mostly brainworms from people convinced that meritocracy is real. For most of history it's been people passing down property and capitol to their kids or close allies
But you dont understannnnnd! Taylor is such a genuine good person and her music ... its like it was written just for me, me a young woman between the ages of 18 and 36! You just hate her because she is a successful woman in a male dominated industry! Her music is objectively moving and real.
In other news, someone please uh forcefully upload to the brains of all Swifitie stans or whatever 'Cult of Personality' on infinite repeat.
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0
I know /so many/ self proclaimed liberals and leftists who just get seething with rage angry when you mention that Taylor Swift's music is basically cookie cutter pop rock, and that she comes from an obscenely wealthy family of bank executives.
Lol who are you talking to? Do you mean in real life or online? Of the 10 leftists I know, 9 of them don’t think about Taylor swift, the 1 is indifferent. The few girls I know who are swifties just think she’s neat but nothing deeper, but then again I interact with 20+ year olds
The few girls I know who are swifties
the fact that there's a word for this means the world is beyond saving
It seems like you’re the one with seething rage that some leftists like Taylor Swift. Maybe don’t tell someone who likes Taylor Swift that you think her music is basically cookie cutter pop rock, and be a decent human being. Of course people will get defensive when you tell them their taste is shit.
People talk about nepotism a lot and I think that's mostly brainworms from people convinced that meritocracy is real. For most of history it's been people passing down property and capitol to their kids or close allies
I'm confused.
Why would people convinced of meritocracy talk about nepotism which is defined as "Favoritism shown or patronage granted to relatives, as in business. "?
Meritocracy is the idea that people succeed on their own merits, while nepotism is a direct refutation of meritocracy, because it reveals the underlying networks of familial favoritism and patronage of the ruling class.
For most of history it's been people passing down property and capitol to their kids or close allies
Isn't this a form of nepotism? Nepotism is just the cherry on top of inheritance. If you're a black sheep of the bourgeois family, maybe you don't get daddy's fortune but instead you get one of his vacation homes and a do-nothing job at his firm.
I think he means that calling out x or y random celeb you dont like for nepotism implies they are the exception, and that if you just rooted out those exceptions then meritocracy would function as intended. Where in reality nepotism is like, omnipresent and meritocracy is fake
It's only nepotism if people recognize it, otherwise it's just good ol' fashioned hard work.
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?
My favorite people in her cult are the ones convinced she's queer and leaving them hints in her music
Me staring at these people and thinking about all of the properly queer artists there are
I remain convinced she is asexual / has never f*cked and the boyfriend press/song cycles are there to convince you otherwise. But then again I also thought the Bey/Jay drama was mostly made up to sell records.
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.
Also there are plenty of actually gay musicians please show them some support instead of making fanfiction up about the billionaire that flies her private jet more than anyone else in the world.
Its people who want the clout from supporting a gay artist but they dont want to do the difficult and scary thing of listening to something new for the first time, so you just headcanon the pop star who has been mega famous since you were a kid into the gay icon you imagine you would listen to. Also: Harry Styles.
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.
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'.
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
This is not to be confused with what Jared Leto did which is start a regular cult as a celebrity
Except she's been around for 10 years and we have watched them very obviously not grow out of it.
thats sort of the weird part, its been going on for 10 years and people only get more obsessed.
I thought the point of the comm was silly memeing and critical support for Taylor's status as an iconic lightning rod for chud anger - does this (not new) information obviate the need the community is fulfilling?
Taylor's status as an iconic lightning rod for chud anger
Hillary Clinton is also that. c/Hilldawg when? 
explain. now.It was extremely horny if I remember right. Lots of mommy milkers talk. I could be remembering the discord though
Holy fuck I had completely forgotten about that why why why did you have to make me remember
for the future
My complete lifelong indifference to Taylor Swift discourse has never felt like such a boon
Taylor's music is not bad enough to catch this much hate in the comments lmao
Fucking contrarians
We get it, you only listen to good pop like Bjork 🙄
Its not possible for Taylor swift music to be bad. Hundred's of talented people work on its production. Not liking slop from because it came from a giant slop machine is a perfectly valid response.
I love eating tastycakes. I am also revolted by tastycakes.
Nah I'd argue she's better than the MCU. The MCU became a bloated mess quickly. Her music is generic pop but I'd argue it's pretty good generic pop. Taylor is more like the older Fast and Furious movies.
Half of the people are 40+ whose entire personality is “not understanding the youth.” The other half are 18+ whose entire personality is “I hate when girls scream and get excited. They are icky”
My next door neighbor kept me up by blasting the one that goes "You belong with me(eee)(eee)" at max volume and on repeat many nights. Do I get a pass?
From the dozen or so people I've met here I think the average age is about mid-late 20s
but yes, literally everybody I've met here are hipsters that love mbv and car seat headrest, myself included
I'll have you know I am an elder millenial and I am 30 or 40 years old but yeah been trying to be less of a hipster
Honestly I feel like there's been a bit of a "switcheroo" with leftist online media discourse. I remember in my early 20s there was a lot of hate for the slop the "sheeple" loved coming from 
libertarian nerds, such to the point a lot of internet progressives actually began defending mainstream media and said aggressively disliking it was "elitist".
Sometime around Trump, or maybe it was the pandemic, the right became a bunch of treat hogs gobbling up their slop, so the left went back to being contrarian hipsters who sneer at Marvel movies and insist people watch weird Serbian indie movies.
Personally I prefer the latter but it was still a weird shift.
prevailing winds like that do sorta come and go but also... maybe some people just like taylor's music and some don't and it doesn't have objective merit or lack of merit? Just blaming contrarianism is kinda tired IMO, as is just blaming a counter-reaction to contrarianism for when people defend popular media. I don't give a shit what anyone else likes I just want people to stop trying to psychologize me when I express a completely subjective opinion on something
I get what you're saying and people on here do get... weird... about media. I would point out though, I think there's two factors playing into people's neuroticism about it.
1: there's some market logic to this behavior. If things I don't like get too popular, and things I like get too unpopular, the industry that makes these things will make less and less of what I like and more and more of what I don't. So there's a bit of a market incentive for fans to discourage fandoms of other things and promote their own. That's where a lot of the mockery come from. If I can make being a fan of bad thing cringe, there will be less bad thing.
2: media does have an impact on society. I think this impact gets a bit overstated at times, but it's there. A lot of these impassioned take down are coming from people who think modern media is having a detrimental affect on culture as a whole, heck certain people here think Netflix shows are turning people into psychopaths. Correct or not I don't think it justifies smug hostility towards people, but if it is true I get why people can get a tad heated by it.
Also Swift fans can be pretty culty, and I think some people think criticizing here will demystify her a bit and maybe get her fans to calm the fuck down.
Yeah I guess. I'm not a fan of hers but its not just because she's popular, I just don't like the music or the culty part of the fanbase. But I mostly stick to live and let live and don't comment on it unless those specific things come up
Hot take: Swift is actually talented but there's probably like 100,000 equally talented white girls who can sing decent pop music as well as her, but probably won't ever get her level of fame cuz they don't have the connections her parents did.
There is nothing about her music that is more unique than any other generic pop music—very meh. But she’s a fucking narcissist and her marketing is insufferable
Guess even leftists aren’t immune to the swiftie cult
I guess it’s my opinion, but the spotlight hasn’t been off of her since like 2010 and she always wants more attention. She feels more like a product than an artist who creates for the sake of creating
She plays into the worship of her army. She knows exactly how they are and she throws gasoline on it. She's actively cultivated a cult of personality
I listened to her earlier stuff when I was a kid, liked some of it, definitely a lot of earworms, but I tried listening to her new stuff when the gaylor stuff was hitting a fever pitch and it really didnt do anything for me, its just not my style I guess
its fine to like popular music, it's also fine not to. there's a lot of contrarianism out there but people also just have different taste and I see no reason to assume its all just contrarians not people who just legit dont vibe with her music
Most of the songs I like from her are also based on nostalgia. I don’t even like her as a person lol, but it’s weird seeing people get up in arms about the fans being weird as if this is a new phenomenon. I can definitely imagine all the grumpy people getting mad because everyone is screaming over Paul McCartney in the 60s lol. Like chill. These are just kids trying to savior the last remnants of free time and youth before it falls to shit
I feel like this is a new phenomenon though? I grew up with Taylor Swift, like I was in 8th grade when the Kanye VMAs things happened, and I definitely remember her being a huge artist and a lot of people being into her, but on this level? Like Beyhive, Barbz level, defend her to the death stans? That I don't remember.
Boy bands and even single acts have gotten crazed fanbases since the 20th century. And K-Pop bands/stars have that in the 21st century.
Taylor Swift definitely wasn’t an international, influential celebrity back in the day, so yes it’s new in that sense. But I was referring more to this type of celebrity and fandom in general, which isn’t new.
Oh yeah sorry misunderstood. Yeah I was just reacting to the phenomenon of the Taylor swift Stan specifically
Fan girls are one thing, sure. I’m talking about grown ass adults here in a trumpian cult and I feel like it has a deeper sociological implication
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I met one of those anti-Mccartney guys. He was older, and a beetles song came on, he started saying "let's have a Beatles reunion: 3 more bullets" or something like that (I don't actually know how many were in the band, just whatever the number was after Lennon).
That's interesting. I think her old stuff is garbage but the new-ish stuff (like after whatever she was on with Look What You Made Me Do and that whole phase) is markedly better.
I also have the extremely controversial opinion that "All Too Well (Taylor's version)" is way better than it has any right to be, though it's got some really garbage moments too.
My taste in music is way more insufferable than Bjork fwiw :)
Taylor Swift is okay I guess, 1989 is fine the rest I can take or leave. It is perpetually shocking to me though, just how many contrarians foam at the mouth over her stuff.
Her country era was fun but since then I don't think she's made anything spectacularly unique. She's there with Katy Perry and Lady Gaga for me, catchy pop I can sing along to but dont need to seek out.
That's why I only listen to 70s and 80s funk and soul. Nobody knows who Tower of Power is so they can't make fun of you for liking them.
I was inundated with Taylor Swift stuff on my feeds earlier this year out of the blue, despite never showing an inclination for TSwift lol. Regardless of the quality of her music I don't want it shoved in my face
I listen to highly respectable music like Ska 
I listen to stupid bullshit like Tally Hall, I like when my artists have breakdowns and publish objectively awful music. I listen to demondice unironically, you can't do shit to me. Taylor swift writes music I can only describe as half-assed anime openings. None of the punch or encentricity.
bjork is nice though, I like the video where she beats up a reporter
It's also not good enough to have an army of millions of obsessed fanatics who stan her online, she's incredibly mid and that's where the hate comes from - not that she's bad, but that she's overrated (which she is)
Congratulations on posting the most triggering comment! But im with the masses, always ready to get irrationally worked up over burguise culture
I mean, it's the rare exemption that someone who isn't already privileged to some degree manages to attain fame and fortune
what do mean there bucko? Maybe pull on those bootstraps a little harder and lay off the avocado toast and you'll be successful too
The eldest zoomers would have been starting middle school in 2008, there's probably a substantial amount of people here that were young and not as online when the info started circulating, and spreading the info fell off as it becomes old news.
Also elder millenials who were too old to care about the latest pop singer and omly knew who she was because of Kanye interupting her
Literally 
on not knowing T-Swift Lore
As a middle aged zoomer I remember a guest speaker in my 3rd grade classroom gave us an inspirational presentation about never giving up on your dreams or whatever and using Taylor as an example of rising to success. She showed us a photo of a little girl before revealing it was Taylor Swift when she was a child, and basically implied she was an ugly duckling who blossomed into beauty, "so you can too" or some shit
I am a middle aged Millennial, and my version of that growing up was Bill Gates, with the whole started a computer lab in his garage story, as if Gates was not the child of wealthy folks who were well connected to IBM and other computing firms, who got him access to hardware that was not really publically available, funded much of his early business attempts, and more importantly, as if Gates didnt just take already existing open source UNIX code written mostly by professors for the good of the public and for research purposes, make some changes to make it proprietary and incompatible with said UNIX code, and do legal jiu jitsu to claim he owned the code so that he could profit off of other people's work, while pretending to the media and public it was all him
Most current and former twitter users probably still do not understand that Musk was actually sued into buying Twitter after he tried to back out of his decision to buy it something like 72 hours prior.
I basically have a theory that your brain just molds itself to the format of the social media website you use the most, so by that, we have a lot of Twitter users (former, more so than current, at this point) who more or less forgot how to have or hear an idea that takes more than about 5 seconds to think about.
God, about as well as something like a decade now of continuing to push back his timeframe for a mars landing, about as well as his demo for the still nonexistant Tesla Semi, about as well as that fucking insane video demo for hia humanoid robot that was just like a mime in a suit dancing, about as well as the now multiple videos of SpaceX launch onlookers cheering when a rocket completely explodes because they are so stupid that they think that is the rocket staging...
... oh yes and the piece de resistance...
" i think that i know more about manufacturing than any human currently alive on earth "
I think it's a self-selecting process. Muskbros who begin to doubt their Lord and Savior will stop following him and talking about how great he is, so every dumbass decision he makes shrinks his core fanbase, but also results in them being less bothered by all the terrible things he does. So it results in this weird situation where his hardcore fanbase have long since abandoned any semblance of reality, and if you reject reality, there's no point remembering things someone said or did a decade ago.
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I still see redditors saying that Musk is actually subtly trying to destroy Twitter on behalf of the Authoritarian Regimes he owes money to, so no more Arab Spring type movements will happen.
Like nah, he's just a fucking idiot who doesn't knew when to stop making bad decisions
Trying to keep this as vague as possible: family member on the west coast runs music events at a bar and has for a long time. Taylor Swift played said event when she was really young and she absolutely bombed. Apparently the owner of the bar (not my family member) was giving her advice on how what to do to succeed. This drunk hippie probably gave her family some wild ideas and they absolutely ran with them!
I agree she isn't organicly famous but I also don't really care or believe that most people in our society got where they did on merit
Correct. Actual talented musicians struggle their entire lives and often die very early from the stress related to working like a normal person and also being out late playing in clubs. Wes Montgomery was a welder throughout his entire career, he died at 45. Wes had more talent in his right thumb than t swift has all over.
Seasick Steve lived in a shack until his 60s. Then a TV program here in the UK seemed to have discovered him. Music festivals have thankfully loved that guy.
The basis is legit, but I don't care enough to read enough to figure out this headline https://web.archive.org/web/20150109151416/http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-12/taylor-swift-and-big-machine-are-the-music-industry
i'm pretty sure the recent alexander avila video that was posted here that talked about swift covered this actually.
LMFAO should show us how easy it is to get a hit on radio with the right connections. They got some of the most generic EDM pop hits to the top of the charts purely though the power of their surnames back in the early 2010s.
Dua Lipa springs to mind right now. I've heard her music and wondered how the hell that's a popular thing. It might just be that I am old though
Reminds me of Tony Hawk. The old school skaters like alba, Duane Peter's, hasoi, were rebels who were all about style, hawk was a trick machine with a skateboard coach. Also his dad was like the head judge at all his contests. Super successful, but kind of a weasel how he made it to the top.
I mean Tony was doing some genuinely novel and cool things. I'm not surprised he's a California fail son, but he was flipping and spinning in a way that was new to the sport. All these other dudes had long limbs and they'd reach down and grab their boards mid air. Tony was not a tall guy so he learned to tuck himself up in a ball. Genuinely impressed the old heads.
200 cm (6 ft 6.7 in)
To give a serious answer though, Hawk was a professional skateboarder already at 14, so maybe he was referring to before Hawk reached his full height?
Okay I admit I got that from a Tony Hawk documentary. And I think that when was when he was like 14 so that's probably before his growth spurt.