Everything Is Content - Gaylor Swift, Gypsy Rose Blanchard and The Traitors

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

It was the week we all spent lipreading what Selena Gomez said to Taylor Swift at the Golden Globes… Beth has managed to convert Oenone and Ruchira to the Traitors. We also deep dive into the newfound social media fame of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Anna Marks’ New York Times article about Taylor Swift. —INDEPENDENT: Ayo Edebiri has flustered reaction to co-star Jeremy Allen White’s viral Calvin Klein photoshoothttps://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ayo-edebiri-jeremy-allen-white-golden-globes-b2475183.html COSMOPOLITAN: Selena Gomez *Wasn't* Talking About Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the Golden Globeshttps://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a46317748/selena-gomez-wasnt-talking-timothee-chalamet-kylie-jenner-golden-globes/ EMMA GARLAND: Substackhttps://substack.com/@emmagarlandBBC: The Traitorshttps://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0db9b2t/the-traitors?seriesId=m001ttsm INSTAGRAM: Gypsy Rose Blanchard https://www.instagram.com/gypsyrose_a_blanchard/?hl=en NEW YORK TIMES: Look What We Made Taylor Dohttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/taylor-swift-queer.html THE CUT: Why is The New York Times publishing Gaylor theories? https://www.thecut.com/2024/01/new-york-times-op-ed-taylor-swift-gaylor.html?utm_campaign=thecut&utm_medium=s1&utm_source=insta THE PINK NEWS: Taylor Swift defended by queer country singer named in NYT sexuality articlehttps://www.thepinknews.com/2024/01/08/taylor-swift-new-york-times-sexuality-chely-wright-social-media/ NME: Billie Eilish responds to Variety “Outing” her https://www.nme.com/news/music/billie-eilish-responds-to-variety-outing-her-i-like-boys-and-girls-leave-me-alone-about-it-please-3552827 ---Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lucy Goosey little juicy Ritchie. Don't ever call me Ritchie. Hello, this is Everything is Content. I'm Beth. I'm Richira. And I'm Anoni. We're here to guide you on the trek to the top of the Content Mountain and hopefully help you enjoy the view along the way.

On the podcast today, we'll discuss traitors. Don't worry, it's going to be spoiler free. And also Gypsy Rose Blanchard. And remember, if there's anything you want us to discuss, you can send us a message on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. Okay, Gailies, what have we been loving this week so i've been full golden globes content diving what about you guys exactly the same pretty much all week it's on sunday night and i was so annoyed that we don't do the podcast until now because will people be over it don't care we're

going to talk about it anyway please don't be over it we have to we just have to talk about it all right what was your favorite moment i i'm just going gonna put it out there kylie jenner and timothy chalamet and all of the reactions trying to work out what the conversation they're having is and some of them are very funny the lip reading i was like i love you i love you yeah um i thought that was really sweet actually no did you see the bit where apparently a lip reader said one of them was like i wasn't actually talking about you and And the other one goes, I wasn't either. Oh, that's quite cute though. Do you not think?

No, it is cute, but it's just like, I don't know. It's just like when you break down people flirting with each other, there's no way to like, unless you're in the moment for it not to be cringe. They must be so in the honeymoon phase because like, they're both really aware that they're on camera. And it's probably the most flirty we've seen a celebrity couple be in a while at that kind of thing i think pda is back and i would also say like yes she's got kids like it's proper date night out like kids are with who's their mom called chris kids are with chris having a night in manan i think that was very sweet so i like that but then did you see selena gomez did she or didn't she try and get a picture with timothy

she's denied it the rumor is she tried to get a picture with timmy kylie said no um and then she went over to her bff taylor swift and then they had an exchange and it's so memeable the video is everywhere the video is so good and it's the way she shakes her head and she's like and taylor's got her mouth open and then selena's nodding like yeah yeah i know this can you believe it it's really classic gossip what did they she came out though didn't she and she denied it and she said that she was telling Taylor that one of her friends was dating another friend I love that people are now because I think Timothy actually yeah he also said to like a paparazzi or a fan like that never happened I love when they get involved in our gossip and it's like we weren't talking to you we were talking about you so did you also see a journalist bring

up a picture of Jeremy Allen White's Calvin Klein campaign which yeah I think if you've not seen it go check it out a journalist brings it up to Ayo Adebiri and is basically like confronting her with the picture and is like so what do you think about this and she she's awkward at the best of times but she's especially awkward and she's like I think people need to remember this is my colleague yes um why why has it become normal to do it sort of it just brings the internet too much into the real space it forgets itself i mean one i would like to know where that big enormous contact went i would like to get my hands on it two i think it was quite inappropriate she hands it really well but she's like shuts it down immediately she's like nope turning that around this is my colleague

this is my boy so she's like being protective of him at the same time as being like i've just won or i'm about to win a Golden Globe. I'm very accomplished actress. Ask me something interesting. And also maybe because it's Jeremy Allen White, who isn't this guy that seems like he's very showy. I don't know. I'm trying to think of it as a different actor.

I think he is really showy. Do you not remember when he was calling the paparazzi on himself like every other minute? Wait, when? There were so many staged photos of him like, oh, I'm just working out in this remote area in LA. And oh, here the paps are. Like he was getting ripped because i feel like if the picture had been of like chris hemsworth and someone took

up that a cardboard cut out of him to like i can't even think anne hathaway or something she would have poured it and laughed and yeah do you know i mean there's a certain kind of type of celebrity where that would have not have felt yeah he's like a prestige actor almost like not as established or like I don't know less protection of their image and maybe like maybe it felt more because I do think we've seen things like that before I loved actually her reaction was really refreshing I was like

god you're right yeah but had it happened and she not reacted like that I probably wouldn't have been that surprised that they'd taken a cardboard cutout of him in his underwear do you know what I mean she managed to call it out in a really good way yeah I agree I read a really good newsletter from Emma Garland on this and she talks about how instead of kind of unpicking sexuality all we've done is replacing objectifying women with objectifying men and being really horny for men on the main and i don't think it necessarily tackles sexism or sex in an

interesting way it's just replaced one with the other and i think io's response kind of really highlights that and blows it up because it's like this is my fucking colleague it's not normal for you to do this i was reading all the comments they were really making me laugh under the calvin klein ad about him and people just people are so creative the comments were making me laugh so much like how many ways are there to say that you're wet a million i didn't see maybe it's funny because it's that power and balance thing so it's like it feels like it's safer and we're all in the joke and women aren't actually being serious maybe there isn't that level of like threat that comes with men thirsting.

There's no statistics that back it up that this kind of talking among women adds up to violence against men. It is still quite weird. I think it's perceived to be not a threat, but in doing it in such a like massive way and piling on men in that way, I don't think that necessarily equals the playing field.

I think you do tip the scale again. And we can commodify men's bodies in a way that is like really disgusting when it's like white women and black men we can actually dehumanize people exactly sometimes it's very fun and cute and it's you know being horny in the group chat or whatever but bringing it perhaps to that person's attention is like that's gross so as I as number one fan I think she dealt with that really well yeah I agree I think keep the internet on the internet with the freaks so last week beth said she was loving series two of the traitors and now we've caught up to and we can't wait to discuss if you're not up to date don't worry this is going to be spoiler free the traitors is a bbc game show where 22

contestants go to a castle in the scottish highlands most of them are faithful but there are some traitors the faithful have to find out the traitors and if they can do they're going to win 120 000 pounds we've seen the first three episodes and those are the only ones we're going to talk about for now so don't worry about any spoilers we're going to keep it relatively spoiler free yeah we'll just talk about stuff that's happened yeah favorite characters iconic characters iconic moments but we just won't mention like key plot points and who's been murdered or banished yeah cool so and only this is the first time you've watched it it's also my first time watching it what do you think i'm not gonna lie i know that last week we'd spoken is the first time you've watched it. It's also my first time watching it. What do you think? I'm not going to lie.

I know that last week we'd spoken about the show and you guys are like, you're going to love it. I secretly was like, I'm not going to like it. It's going to be awkward when I come back because I don't really watch like game shows, like reality game shows. Like I hate I'm a celeb. I've never really got into that kind of program.

So I sat down to watch it. Didn't think I was going to get into it. Obviously immediately was hooked from the moment when Paul said, they were like, describe yourself yourself in three words and he was like something cruel something else I was like this is hilarious who are these people Paul is legendary so one of the words he calls himself is traitor and not a spoiler but he is one of the traitors is that was that one of his three words yeah I just remember saying cruel and it made me laugh so much I think I paused it no he said traitor and yeah he was, he was born to be a traitor.

This is why I realized I liked the show because I didn't think I would. It is a really fascinating look at like the psychology of people and they so quickly kind of break down. A hundred percent. But he is, not only is he loving it, like everyone loves him. He's thriving. He's like the sweetest, kindest, nicest man ever. And then it like cuts to him in this sort of like diary room

moments and he's always just laughing whenever they're like the rest of the group being positive about him and i'm like you are a sociopath but like if he doesn't win i will be flabbergasted i think what might happen is when you get that popular and you rise to the top you're gonna be on everyone's mind and people go who's the person i least expect it's gorgeous handsome ginger paul and then eyes will turn to him and in that moment we saw this in the first series everyone has a moment when all eyes are on them and then they can sink or swim in the first series again no spoilers one of the traitors was basically i thought about to go and he defended himself so well that for the rest of the series people went nah but do you remember

nah he's not a traitor do you remember that exchange so if he manages to get through that which is coming I think he could he could be a winning traitor

which would be delicious which brings me onto the question do you guys or are you guys rooting at the moment for the Faithfuls

or the traitors the traitors which really surprises me 100% the traitors what about you I'm kind of I like people on both sides for the faithfuls or the traitors the traitors which really surprises me 100% the traitors what about you i'm i'm kind of i like people on both sides like i love harry yeah harry is earring earring traitor little cute face 22 years old i loved it in his like beginning video thing when he was like i've got one of those faces yeah they want to kiss you want to punch i'm like you're so

cute i want to squish your face see this is the thing cause there's 22 contestants it takes me i can't get attached i don't know any of their names apart from the traitors which i think is why i'm rooting for them i also love diane though so diane is she's a faithful she's a gay icon one thing i will say about her is and i've never watched this before but it's making me see how um a bias really does shape how people react to people. Like she had this one guy at the beginning she had a bad interaction with and she will not let up. He's faithful, by the way, but she is obsessed with the idea that he is a traitor and there's no evidence for it. Everyone else is kind of her intuition has been amazing on every other traitor.

But she can't let up about this guy she perceived as being rude to her from their very first interaction and it makes me think like oh we do really you know do first impressions and take them so deeply i'm worried that it's unconscious bias from diane because it did seem like she really singled anthony out and i know that it's edited but from what we've seen it doesn't necessarily look like he's warranted anything to be getting this kind of attention from her and she is a white middle-class woman the optics of it just don't sit that well with me agreed so I saw my auntie the other day and I said to her have you been watching it and she said I cannot watch programs like that because I just think they're exploitative she's like I just think it's dystopian to get all these people to fight together for this money so then i felt so bad because i was like oh my god i'm loving it and i was like oh

and she was like i just honestly she's like i can't watch it makes me squirm it makes me feel like i'm complicit in something which is is kind of like hunger games and i was like god she's so right what do you guys think about i mean i would and i kind of think i can see both matures and my brain's working um I do think there's truth to that in a lot of reality tv series yeah the show itself format wise I think it isn't exploitative but I think when they go in they say what you want the money for that is depressing because some of them ash for example she's like I've got no pension I've got no inheritance come oh no she's got a pension but no inheritance coming i need this for this another woman in the first year is like i want to i've um have lost my arm or perhaps it

was born with limb difference i would like to buy a better prosthetic and i went oh fuck we really live in hell what do you think we share i feel like my gut is um because i i love reality tv i love it so much it's so you know amor. But my gut is that this isn't by far the worst of the exploitative TV shows. I think things like Love is Blind, I think all of those things, there's been some lawsuits against the way big companies such as Netflix treat their cast.

And that can be very explicitly exploitative. I think what you said is right about the money. And, you know, there is a depressing element about these people fighting, quote unquote, to the mental death to get it. But i don't think this is as bad as it could be i would also say that a show like like everyone from the first season this none of them uh are like massively in the public eye i don't think they pursued that which seems better than something like love island where they are thrust into it yeah i think reality tv shows are political they just always are and have been so

something like big brother the time it came out and you know around the tony blair era these people kind of fighting for fame and the idea that you know everyone has a chance at the british dream quote quote like the american dream i think by their virtue represents something about our political times and people needing money what they need money for what you know job prospects are and the ways and avenues people have to get money and i think with this one i don't really get the impression that people are doing it for social media fame i think it is it is literally about the money i also think what's interesting is the age range of this show is like there's not there's a couple people that are quite young but they're not really young a lot of people are like like middle-aged or kind of like a bit more mature

in their 60s yeah and and it does seem like it's about money but then that is also depressing because it is like in the grand scheme of wealth like the amount of money they're winning isn't actually astronomically life-changing it's a portion of potential it might help you towards getting a certain goal or doing something but it's not actually no that to be putting yourself it's not like squid games which i didn't watch because i felt really gross about that i think this is it's sweeter and it has like a night it has a more wholesome element because they're they're kind of having fun they are making friends a few of them come out of it last season and like started podcasts and like they road trip together i think it's nice i don't i see exactly where your aunt's coming from but i would

on this case maybe disagree beth thank you so much for introducing traitors to our lives you're welcome okay so this isn't the end for traitors on this podcast we're gonna still keep talking about it for the next few weeks yes i can't wait yes me neither so i think we have to talk about gypsy rose blanchard she's a 32 year old woman who at the end of last year was released from prison so she was in prison for eight years and she was in prison because she basically organized to murder her mum through this guy that she met online and the reason she did that is because her mum had munchausen's by proxy which has now i think got a new name yes factitious disorder imposed on another her mum basically made other people believe that she was really

badly ill so she would like get her lots of prescriptions of drugs she would shave her head she would like take her out with an oxygen tank and just gypsy rose herself as well believed that she had some sort of like terminal illness when she found out what her mum was doing to her she basically organized someone to murder her mum yeah so she's come out of prison and she has been posting she's been tweeting she's been very online she has eight million followers that's huge and she has got this huge fan base and she's kind of become i would say a gay icon to many yeah she's not gay herself no she has got a man husband a human man who is a husband but yeah so people on it's like young people especially are kind of lionizing her they're sort of making memeing her they're mothering her by which I mean they're calling her mother which is so interesting I know she's had all this time in prison to build up this fan base this

case was enormous it was made into tv shows like um the act the politician I get it but also it is to me it's really alarming do you think it's something to do with almost this like anti-hero narrative like this anti-celebrity of kind of like where people are fed up of influencers we're fed up of the a-list we're fed up of this like curated gorgeous stunning people like gypsy rose can be farther away from sort of like your starry glossy person it's such an interesting thing anyway it's sort of like the the ethics of what happened and what went down she had a lifetime of abuse and then eight years in prison at 32 years old she's kind of having her first stab at life but it's not normal life because it's life as a

sort of pseudo celebrity a cult figure so i'm i'm sad in that regard i'm so glad for her to perhaps get to tell her story after years of other people telling it but i i worry okay guys i'm gonna bring up true crime again but i feel like it's the same thing of like everyone's super invested in all of these stories that have happened and this one is a present case it's one of the few ones that people can get super invested in that is happening in real time and there's been all these documentaries there's been all these stories about her it's rare that people can almost be fannish in real time about one of these people that they have obsessed in the same way of any true crime stories except the person is still alive which is quite rare for a lot of these stories that do get big and are really viral do you know what else is interesting i saw a tweet

that was saying about how people there has been backlash obviously people are like oh my god well she organized to kill her mother. And like, how are people like forgiving her? And someone says something really interesting, which was like, if this had been to someone else, say a man had been abusing her or like someone that wasn't related to her had been abusing her.

And then she got someone to kill them. I think we would have more grace for her, but it's because it's her mother. Agreed. In society, we don't like to see mothers as perpetrators of abuse or as people that are in the wrong and so you kind of give them more room to murdering your family or being involved in like a matricide you know the response to that reminds me of it reminds me of jeanette mccurdy

and initially when she had that title of her book um i'm happy my mom died my mom died people didn't even know anything about the details of the horrific abuse her mom did to her but the immediate backlash was how dare somebody write a title like that and then once people started reading it they were like oh she was a victim of abuse her mom was awful to her yes because people took it as like a lot of people like i feel triggered like you can't say i'm glad your mom died i love my and it's like no she's literally saying i'm glad that my abuser is dead gypsy rose went through invasive medical procedures was in great pain thought she couldn't walk like her teeth fell out because of medication it was

physical emotional abuse for however long none of us are qualified to say what what comes out the other end of that like what would any of us do no um but looking at the the facts of her life now she's married she has a very publicly quite like a relationship with her husband i think his name is ryan so she's done some quite racy comments on social media in basically there's a lot of jealous haters in her opinion people are making nasty comments as they are wanting to do on the internet and she replied to one of these mean comments saying besides they jealous because you are rocking my world every night yeah i said it the d is fire happy wife happy life the way the way she's commenting makes me think of like do you ever get on facebook a memory

from i don't know 2008 and you've just written on your friend's wall then like hey so um i saw so and so yesterday and i'm gonna go like as if no one can read it i feel like that's how she's writing because the way she starts off that comment is ryan don't listen to the haters i love you and you love me we don't know anyone it's like why why is this not a text message why is this in a public space for everyone to read i mean i can't even imagine being home it must be so overwhelming to come out people with access to i mean she's been on talk shows did you see she went on i think it was abc's the tour yeah and there was a really funny interaction with because she was saying which was actually quite profound she was saying

look i want now to be a voice for the people that are in similar situations i went about it the wrong way and one of the hosts interrupted and go no no don't say that don't say that no she goes no no i did do the wrong thing like baby i killed and then the host is like oh you meant that part and it's really like what part do you think that's what i wanted to know what was the bit she thought she was saying like it was the most american bit of tv and then another host is like yes murder is wrong and it was just just to confirm and all of that's happening and i think she's in the bubble but the public and especially the social media public are very fickle.

It's very like very narrow moral lines that we have to stay within to become relevant, to stay like a public figure in that kind of comedic way. And I do worry like she's come out of one kind of confinement. Is this another kind of confinement where she's going to have to perform for like a viewing public? And I don't want to infantilize her, which is what has happened to her all of her life and i also feel like

when the internet builds a woman up i'm almost terrified and prepping for their fall because there's always the fall like i know it's not the same but the way that everyone obsessed with you know jennifer lawrence at one point and they were like she's the cool girl of our time and then there's always like a person who's like this is our icon this is our icon and then like soon after you know even within months it's like oh the backlash they said this one thing one time and she's been in jail for eight years like you know she might say something very stupid she might not but like i worry what this big rise to the top could mean in the next few months yeah well i think gypsy rose though is this like really specific type of camp campness is a thing but campness on twitter it's like it's a whole a

new category now so like i'm thinking allison hammond i'm thinking jemma collins yes i'm thinking hunts it's hunts it's mothers something else and sometimes it's just the most random thing and and someone will be like this is so camp it'll be like an advert for kitchen roll yeah i don't even understand why what it means but i know exactly what they mean and she is that she is a hun i think part of camp love like love of stuff is when it's really absurd and she is like the definition of an absurd person like not her her life where does she go from it like tv show i know that she's done a lot of interviews like will she get her own series will she like what what's in the works for her like is she gonna be on like american big brother is she gonna be on

the american traders what's gonna i just i i don't know what to expect there well more things are coming she has that hulu series out now the prison Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, available on Prime. And she has a new book, doesn't she, released, which is out now. It's like such an old case that obviously now she's out, it's fresh again. Like this true crime thing has legs.

And at least in this case, it's serving her financially and in terms of telling her own story. So I don't really take that much umbrage with that. But what if it runs out? It's just very unsettling, isn't't it the way that true crime creates celebrities like tiger king you know simon leviev is that his name the tinder swindler he got like millions of followers immediately after that netflix doc it's just very very unsettling with her i'm happy that she can make money because she's the victim she's a victim of abuse but it's unsettling to see that thread it makes me feel like we're living in the hunger games like this

is the capital like you have to go on these wacky tv shows or be through some like massive trauma and abuse in order to get these huge payoffs and I mean is it worth it yeah I'm going to be kind of watching what happens but maybe like quite tentatively in the attention economy i guess we've seen so many rounds of people having to you know fight for the attention they get people having to go to more extreme lengths to be viral famous right now and this is what we're seeing so last week an article came out on the new york times about taylor swift it sort of flew under the radar a little bit and then this week people got wind of it and the reaction has been it's been big and it's been really negative do you guys read this you know i'm talking about yes yes okay so for the listeners who don't know it was written by anna marks who's an opinion editor at the new york times it was entitled

look what we made taylor do and it is a 5 000000 word personal opinion essay, essentially arguing for Taylor Swift, not only being a queer icon, but also arguing that Taylor Swift hints and has signaled all through her career that she herself is a queer woman, has been coming out in these small ways in her performances, in her lyrics, in her artwork and her appearance for that time that she is gay, that she's queer, that she's part of this community, that I say evidence in quotes in sort of bunny rabbit ears because it's speculation.

It's cherry picked lyrics that suggest this could be about a woman. It's style choices she's made. It's color ways that she's used in her albums and artwork. And to me, I'm just very shocked that this was published. Completely. It's just such a weird thing. First of all, it feels like feels like i don't know the first time you've ever written an essay and you come up with a thing like why i think taylor swift's gay yes like why is that being published in the new york times no and it was i completely agree it wasn't imagine if this was the case it wasn't

why a icon of taylor's stardom would be an amazing person to come out wasn't about the dangers of coming out but even if taylor is gay again don't really understand why it would be something to write about unless i don't there's never a situation when it's like would be appropriate to speculate to the world in a 5 000 word essay that she is a queer woman because one if if someone is in the closet for whatever reason you know that is once you know that's kind of a prison to be in also to have all of these people insisting that you are straight if you're people insisting you are gay neither of those situations are ideal for the person this is happening to because she is a real person she isn't just this figurehead of pop stardom um which I think it's just made me really uncomfortable

that this was published as it was. And I think I've read that Taylor Swift's team are like kind of scrambling and they're really unhappy with this. And quite rightly so. I mean, if you're a huge Taylor stan, what they call Swifties, you wouldn't write this, I think.

I think it removes her, it just completely takes away her humanity and her like, she exists as a person. She's not just your fave. It kind of demands that she be what you need her to be or want her to be. I don't know whether I'm saying that

as I mean it, but I just, something really did not sit well with me. This is a really basic thing to say and I do often think this line of like, feminism is kind of trite, but like if this was about high styles, for instance, if this was about a man and trying to out them as they were gay do you think it would be more did you know that Anna Marks has written oh almost what a very similar piece about Harry

Styles saying he's signaled that he is also gay I feel like there's a few things going on here I feel like basically she's platformed some of the darkest corners of fandom internet by platforming conspiracy theories. Gayla Swift, you know, is a Reddit forum with like nearly 30k followers. The things she's referenced in this piece aren't new if you are part of these circles where conspiracy theories about her sexuality have existed. The difference is platforming that on the New York Times is insane insane it's completely insane this these are unverified things speculating about somebody's sexuality and the second thing is i feel like she suggests taylor swift owes us her coming out because she calls herself an ally and she's had

these references which may or may not exist the thing is no one owes us their sexuality no one owes us coming out i say this as a bi woman i have people that i you know relate to because they are open about their sexuality but no one owes me being an icon for me i would love if they were but i i no one owes me that no totally and and if compiling a list of reasons why you think someone who's presents as straight um is gay i mean what are you doing if not trying to out them yourself or trying to that is just not um and in the first paragraph of of i think it's the opening sentence anna marx talks about shelly wright i think her name is shelly wright she's a a country singer she's a queer country singer who tried to end her

life because of homophobia in country music shelly wright has tweeted her own like discomfort with this article um not only because it talks about obviously a very dark moment in her life but because it is a 5 000 word piece speculating about someone's sexuality and that is i think for queer people that nobody is, is. No one's asking for that. No. So this is funny because she says this in the piece. She says, if coming out is supposed to be a radical act of resistance that seeks to

change the way our society imagines people to be, then undeniable visibility is essential to make space for those without power. In this posture, queer people who can live in aspiration, oh, those who cannot a real world in which our expansive views of love and gender aren't merely tolerated but celebrated

we have no choice but to actively vocally press against the world we're in until no one is stuck in it and it's like I kind of get what you're saying but Taylor Swift

hasn't ever said that she's gay or bi or anything so it's like fair enough if you want queer people who are out to speak up about their queerness. And also there are lots of people doing that,

which she doesn't reference. We have Moona, we have like St. Vincent, we have so many. Renewal. Exactly. Billie Eilish recently, although I'm not sure on that one. That's also dubious because she claims that she was pushed to come out.

It would have been totally fine if she was like, as a queer woman, I have a queer reading of Taylor's works. Here are the ways that I see it as a queer piece of art. And her as an artist who has opened this up for somebody like me. She does that in loads of it. And I thought those were the kind of bits I related to. And then she just takes it like 10 steps way too far with the bit you said, Anoni, which is by, I don't know, adding all of this criticism and like making it so academic to

the point that if you break it down, she's basically being like, Taylor Swift is letting us down by not coming out.'s what she's saying yeah yeah and it is and it's all speculation and it's someone who's never been in an open like a relationship with a woman that we've seen um who's who said i am an ally i'm not part of this beauty but i'm a huge ally maybe that's what it is and having the world's one of the world's biggest superstars as an ally brilliant but i think you can probably just leave it there and let someone live their life yeah it just is so it's over over familiarity it's the internet again bleeding into real life yes like gay like it's a fringe group the the galas but um there's so many of them just because of the the size of her fan base there's so many of them it's like quite daunting that many people

insisting to you that you're gay i don't even saw that tweet from a gala supporter or believer who just said listen taylor you're gay and that's that which obviously is hilarious but that is the i think that genuinely is how fervent people believe this they really believe it i'm gonna go as far as to say that some parts of fandoms can really veer into conspiracy theory radicalized fringes and i do think it is really dangerous kind of normalizing the symbiosis of like putting that in a newspaper and just like giving credence to some of the wilder parts of the internet like for a lot of us who are you know online chronically online we are used to kind of dealing with that part of the internet and just kind of like rolling eyes

memeing it that kind of stuff we know how to communicate with it but the massive failure of this is by treating that as like actual logic in a newspaper well it's like what we said earlier about bringing the online stuff into reality it's like i think these things can exist there's the language online there's a lexicon that we all buy into and we know when something's a joke and when something's not and then when it's put in something like the new york times it gives it validity that changes it makes it more it bolsters it it bolsters it i agree with what you said as our retreat it's like there are some bits we were like that's an interesting idea but it's also like it's quite unhinged like this bit when she's like so whatever you make of miss swift's sexual orientation or gender identity

something that is knowable perhaps only to her sorry what do you mean whatever you make of miss swift's why is that even like how is that how is that even a sense you can write or the exact identity of her muse is something better left a mystery choosing to acknowledge the suffix possibility of her work it's like fan fiction yeah it's why are you why are you what do you mean like whatever you make of miss swiss sexual orientation we don't you can't make of someone's sexual that's not something you can do you can make up it does not belong to you in any way we need to end the queer baiting stuff because this has been happening for a while you know with harry styles and now taylor swift you mean and

the concept of queer baiting yeah and also just like i guess having conversations on is this person queer baiting talking about it as if we have a right to know a yes or no answer um and talking about it as if um they owe us an answer and i think it's kind of coming up in interviews as well we spoke about billy eish so Variety had an interview with her and um in it the the interviewer says oh you know as a queer woman I saw you have a music video and I was wondering are you are you queer and she came out and the whole thing was quite uncomfortable and I think further on maybe a month ago or something she basically came out and said that she was pushed to come out by Variety and she was very, very upset by it.

I don't understand how we've normalized that conversation where somebody has to answer on the spot if they're gay or queer or bi or whatever. It's bizarre. It's bizarre. People are calling out for queer representation icons. And I understand when there is that gulf i mean there are as we said there are amazing artists you know in that space now and what i hope we can do is just lift them up make sure that they have that the love that they deserve without having to kind of pick and choose who we would like to to represent us it is true that claustin goes on it is true that if you are the most famous person

in the world and you come out as queer it could derail you it could put you in real danger um that's a conversation worth having if like look at someone like sam smith who's fully embraced their queerness has embraced their non-binary identity has really lent into this kind of yeah personality and making that forthright and everyone is just completely degrading them yeah treating them like they're an awful

incarnation of the devil like and that was Sam really trying to be unapologetically like really leaning into it with their music and like the way that they

presented themselves on stage and that whatever like when you see something like that why wouldn't you even like now not to talk about Taylor but anyone talking about closeting like why would you want to put yourself on this

world what's the point like and this doesn't make it a safe space for anyone to kind of hound anyone out of them this is not me saying I give any credence to to this piece but to hound someone and to say you owe us this and she did it with Harry Styles as well she said you know what with your performance you owe us an answer and he said i'm comfortable this is mine my friends and family know that is mine yeah hands off and i think that is the only sensible someone says that you take them their word and wish them the best of luck and it does feel in a way like we've gone backwards in terms of like seeing something and i think we're all in beauty this but like assuming that so whether it's the way that harry dresses or whatever and then being like okay well this must mean this and it's like

surely fluidity has got to expand beyond that it could be that like you could be sexually the most straight person but have very camp yeah joy in other ways like I feel like again we think we're coming further away from it because we're trying to be open yeah but we're actually just still labeling everything absolutely and I and a famous ally might just want to be like i really want to signal to my queer fans that i'm with them and let's do the rainbows let's do this let's write songs that everyone can sing and i think one of the songs that uh the writer picks out was a song that was co-written with saint vincent who is a publicly queer woman and like it doesn't you know i think that these links are there but i think she's reading the tea leaves yeah wrong but again not my business you know what it is as well Taylor Swift has has been such a big

person when it comes to you know dropping easter eggs and symbolism and all this kind of stuff and that's what makes her an interesting artist there's so much to like unpick and like there's so much rich tapestry in her music and her her choices basically and i think what's that what that has done to some fans has just made them absolutely rabid for signs constantly and maybe over reading and over projection all this kind of stuff and it's given them almost evidence in their minds to say absolutely anything they want and also i think she's so famous she's almost not a person to them no anymore they think they own her exactly how it reads it's like she's a concept you can love someone so much that you just

like crush it to death in your own like oh fandom freaks me out as at the best of times i think this is really the darkest well not the darkest but it's one of the darker sides of it when it's it kind of leaks out into into the other spheres what would have been really interesting is if the new york times had done a deep dive into investigation into these gay law subreddits these factions these fan accounts and talked about what is this cultural phenomenon with sort of treating celebrities like they are characters or like they are fan fictions and like they can dictate their world what's weird is that because that's to me that's what journalism is that's what you'd expect a long read in the new york times to do not carry stories i think that's quite a scary

place to be when like quite strange corners of the internet can end up being like a headline in a really reputable paper agreed agreed it's like a tumblr post that like got hit by lightning and like became something monstrous like it should not be where it is it's like cursed yeah it kind of makes you feel like journalists are losing their code of conduct in a way yeah i agree because more and more and more this happens where a piece is written and people it's absolutely outraged that the piece has been written then there's like a response piece a response piece to that and you kind of wonder what's that first piece all along designed to kind of invite scandal invite shock or because that's what kind of powers publications nowadays

which is obviously terrible all of these prestige publications don't know how to report on the internet. And I think with the demise of, you know, new media, certain companies that have fallen to the wayside, you know, Galdem, sadly, never forgotten, BuzzFeed, all of these amazing places for basically young thinkers who get the internet and who get culture with that comes all of these prestige places not really knowing how to report on these issues in the right way not verifying not being critical about it and you get more pieces like this yeah it's such a good point yeah galden would have done a great piece girls before we go i have a tv recommendation for you tell us fool me once on netflix it is like an eight part tv adaptation of a harlan coban book which i haven't read but i actually might read after this stars michelle keegan joanna lumley joanna lumley joanna lumley it's it's woman's husband is killed she has to take it upon herself to figure out what happened it's juicy

it's fun i actually have to say i've i've watched it i stayed up till two in the morning i had to finish it this is yeah definitely a bingeable it's a nice sort of whodunit whodunit whodunit okay okay i'll watch it oh we're also going to the cinema all of us today to watch poor things which is out today we're going on a school trip yeah i'm gonna get popcorn i'm so excited for this film i saw the trailer i think last year when i oh maybe when i went to see oppenheimer actually that's when i think i saw the trailer and i remember being like i am gonna watch that film even though i had no context about what it was about it just deranged yorgos lanthimos films always just kind of bizarre strange you just have to buy into it yeah and enjoy the ride he did the favorite and the lobster

right yeah we'll be talking about poor things next week and if there is anything else that you want to discuss want to tell us please do not hesitate to contact us on at everything is content pod on instagram if you've enjoyed this please subscribe if you're not already subscribed i hope you are tell your friends recommend it to someone that you think might love us as a new podcast it really helps us out word of mouth is very important and if you do love us please do leave a review five stars five stars thank you for listening we'll see you next week bye