Everything Is Content - The internet has spoiled Baby Reindeer

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Hello! We’ve got another episode of Everything Is Content for you - this week the internet has slightly soured the way we’re looking at Baby Reindeer, did we all miss the point of the show? Drake has been using AI in a diss track - is it ethically ambiguous or is this the new frontier of diss tracks? We also, of course, discuss Taylor Swift’s new album - The Tortured Poets Department. Has she managed to win over three non-Swifites? If you want to understand more about the issue of stalking - listen to Ruchira's podcast Anatomy of A Stalker, which is available on all podcast platforms. —NETFLIX: RipleyWELLCOME COLLECTION: The Cult of Beauty (closes on 28th April) BBC: 'Seagull Boy', nine, wins European screeching competitionVOGUE: Inside Victoria Beckham’s Star-Studded 50th Birthday PartyTHE GUARDIAN: Spice Girls reunite at Victoria Beckham’s 50th birthday partyDAVID BECKHAM: I mean come on xTHE GUARDIAN: The dangerous fallout from Baby ReindeerPASTE: Taylor Swift Strikes Out Looking on The Tortured Poets DepartmentNEWSNIGHT: “I think of the uniqueness of Taylor Swift is that she speaks for an audience that is not always spoken for”29Secrets: Taylor Swift Is Chevrolet: TTPD And Brand Evolution PITCHFORK: Drake Taunts Kendrick Lamar Again on Diss Song With AI 2Pac and Snoop Dogg VersesBILLBOARD: Tupac Shakur’s Estate Threatens to Sue Drake Over Diss Track Featuring AI-Generated Tupac Voice—Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeExec Producer: James Norman-FyfeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

whenever we do any podcast though but i'm like the title is so good everything is content it's honestly just perfect i'm beth i'm mature and i'm anoni you are listening to everything is content this is the podcast where we give you your weekly dose of pop culture discourse. From literature to runways, TikToks to blockbusters, everything is content and we're here to talk about it. We're the shiny gold medal you receive at the end of your content marathon. Make sure you're subscribed and follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. We love to hear what you all have to say. On today's podcast, we're going to talk about Vicky B's birthday bash. We have an update on Baby Reindeer. Have people on the internet ruined the series?

And we dive into the tortured poet department. So, girly poops, what have you been loving this week? Not poops, that's for sure. I tried something new, it didn't work. Well, I've been loving the new Rip Ripley on Netflix have you guys been watching it nope I haven't I've seen it I've seen it about but yeah tell me tell me what is it even about I have no idea oh my gosh okay so I'm a mega fan of the original The Talented Mr Ripley which was Jude Law and Matt Damon from like 1999 so it's a remake of that but it's a series this time and it's

andrew scott playing ripley and then johnny flynn is playing um dickie greenleaf johnny flynn also has been my like childhood crush since i was a teenager side note because i used to listen to her songs anyway so it's a remake it's a series it's completely shot in black and white it's set in like the beautiful amalfi coast in Italy I think that Salt Burn was based a bit on the talented Mr Ripley and Brideshead Revisited so it's kind of this creepy little weird dude tries to force himself into a wealthy family in order to reap the rewards for himself and it's really good I was a bit jarred that the black and white wasn't just like the opening credits and that went on but actually got really used to it and it's very beautifully done very sinister Andrew Scott I

always think is amazing so would highly recommend I didn't realize it was a remake or a reversion of the talented Mr Ripley because I did really like that film do you think that this is kind of offering anything new to that story or is it like you know a direct for each episode copy of the film i was actually really unsure if i was going to enjoy it because i love that film so much and i probably watch it like often enough to be really aware of it it is similar the general gist of the storyline is the same but there is a difference to it like andrew scott is kind of a much more creepier insidious character than i say matt damon played it's also got dakota fanning is um

margina and i love her she's actually not been in like loads of stuff recently i definitely think it's worth the watch you do know what's happening but it's cinematographic cinematographic cinematography yeah yeah one of those i know the word it's really well done it's really beautiful the acting's impeccable so if you know the storyline i don't that matters much. And also you feel really worthy because there's some black and whites who are like, God, I'm honestly such a purveyor of art. I did say this year I was going to read the novel. I haven't even got it out of the library. I haven't even thought about it. I was like, I'm going to read all of these books everyone loves. I'm going to read some Patricia Highsmith. I'm going to do it. And I've actually just read loads of rom-coms.

So maybe this is the push I need. Oh, the book pile is just getting bigger and bigger,'t it as the year goes on it's toppling what about you girlies I have an exhibition that I want to rave about I went to the cult of beauty at the welcome collection today actually I went not really knowing what to expect I thought the theme sounded really really interesting I love the idea of just dissecting the world of beauty and you know why it's so important to all of us. But I thought it was really well curated and a lot of the kind of threads that they go down, I just hadn't even considered. So, you know, the concept of aging is in there and why we really shame women for aging. And part of the lens that they look at that is

the idea that women are kind of heralded for the fact that you know they can reproduce so the idea of aging is so offensive to the world because it's you know the public recognition that as a woman you can no longer reproduce so I guess your your worthiness is decreased publicly to everyone so that was really interesting what exactly is it as an exhibition kind of thing is it like and who is it curated by? So Emma Dabiri does one of the threads on the racial aspects of beauty. And then there was another person who,

I think it's an art group, did the more digital aspects of beauty. And there was some museums that curated the more like cultural aspects of like art and things like that. So it was really holistic in the people that were involved and then there's loads of art in there there's loads of issues of vogue it's very it's quite immersive it isn't the most immersive experience but it's got

different bits of history art culture and like physical aspects to it I'd say I'm so annoyed that I didn't go and see this because I think it is and you can confirm this you're true I think it's on until the end of this week so like over the weekend you can go and see it but I'm so annoyed that I didn't go and see this because I think it is and you can confirm this you're true I think it's on until the end of this week so like over the weekend you can go and see it but I'm out of the country until next week so I'm not gonna be able to go and see it oh you girls I'm you're gonna have to deal with me just kind of filling you in and showing you my really crap pictures so sorry please do that sounds good to me what have you been loving Beth um it's not quite as worthy but I have been loving the people's champion our lad Cooper Wallace who is a nine-year-old boy from Derbyshire I think who has

won the junior category in the European Girl Screeching Championship which I'm sure everyone here and everyone listening knows exactly what that is. But I'll explain. It is a competition that's been taking place apparently in Belgium for the last four or five years. And it is what it says. It's gull screeching. It is human beings attempting to replicate the screech of a gull, of a seagull. And the winner this year was a nine-year-old boy from our fair and beautiful land when you first said this I really frowned and then it just reminded me that we used to do a thing at our school that was called um like our school's got talent and there was one guy who every year would just get

up and do seagull sounds and it was incredible and he would often win it's an art it's an art form and I imagine it's like so annoying to everyone else around that these kids do this but it's like the one place in the world that they can get their flowers and their medals and I just thought it was a really nice story about a thing I knew nothing about and you kind of get to my ripe old age of 30 years old and think I've seen it all and it turns out I haven't and I think that was just a really nice thing for my week oh I love that where would we find out about this young chap I actually read about this i think it was on bbc news so it was not a breaking story but it was important news and he kind of

talks about why it's important to him and his relationship with seagulls because i think he was bitten by one once but he's since forgiven them but he now does only eat his food on the beach inside a tent because he's learned his lesson i'm so confused i feel like the more you speak the more questions i have i want to know why being bitten instead of, you know, being a villain origin story has made him instead like love the animal so much he recreates their sound. I don't understand. Maybe it's like a kind of Spider-Man thing where he is turning into the girl that bit him.

I don't know. I think it shows a really good spirit in this young man, Cooper Wallace. And maybe the kids are all right. It's a very American name, Cooper Wallace. And also, how often are people getting bitten by seagulls? I didn't even know that was a thing. Have you not been bitten by... Maybe you're not eating enough on the beach,

but I have been swiped at by many a seagull. Really? Yeah, they're violent. I never knew. Anyway, that's what i've been loving this week so gullies i really want to talk about the big british royal family event that happened obviously i'm talking about victoria beckham's 50th birthday party and the entirety of the Beckhams turned out looking amazing might I say Harper Beckham 12 years old looking absolutely stunning the boys were looking gorgeous and the guest list

included Tom Cruise, Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria just to name a few and david beckham as he is want to do as the world's best instagram husband managed to capture all of the spice girls reuniting and singing i don't know if you saw it when you did it before i don't know if it's her birthday last year was it mel c was missing from the the boat one but they were all there this time and i mean it's just one of the best things I've seen on the internet for a while can I just say something when you were making that list of the celebrities that were there when you said just to name a few I was like oh my god who's just in aim a few um I don't know who this really famous man is I was like should I google it so I don't

look stupid and then I put the pieces together so sorry about that um but yeah I've been so obsessed with this with this party I kind of do wish I had been there, but then I think who would I talk to? Oh, I'd be literally wallflower in the corner, just like having a panic attack, but also like so happy I'm there. One thing I did want to say about this is, am I just like an evil witch?

When I saw David Beckham's video, I was like, why are you inserting yourself, sir? I want to see the girls. I got really annoyed that like right at the end, he like swings the camera back to himself. I literally like said audibly, get out the way get out the way you are right and the video it wasn't also long enough to be honest but I did see some funny tweets where people were like the great thing about this is it just just looked like a group

of like fifth job women who've had like three bolts of pinot grigio anna down the slug and lettuce dancing to their favorite song because they're so glam and gorgeous but also it's like there is that sort of white wine vibe about them now it's a pinot grigio night it's a pinot grigio night i love that david beckham did do that video and like i think it swings back to him at the end because he's forgot to press pause like i think he just meant like it kind of goes under his chin and it's like a really um it's just such a dad moment he is the instagram dad slash husband that I kind of long to have I think he's so he is obsessed with her there's something really interesting I think happening in the celebrity world but like Rosie

Huntington-Whiteley had her 40th birthday I believe like the week before and celebrities who are I guess moving into the the middle-aged parts of their lives are kind of having these really glamorous big parties in a way that like I feel the younger generations aren't it seems interesting moving into the the middle aged parts of their lives are kind of having these really glamorous big parties in a way that like I feel the younger generations aren't it seems interesting that they're sort of state like and everyone looks younger I mean this goes back to your earlier thing about the cult beauty ritual but when you look at like Rosie Hunters and Whiteley and Victoria Beckham they look like what 20 year olds did about 20 years ago and I do find it funny seeing them stumbling out of clubs at like 2am and having these massive parties because I can't even do that anymore maybe you get a second wind

do you think I do think Victoria Beckham does seem like so much fun and she is it's kind of like the litmus test of like everyone's favorite Spice Girls saying something about them and I really just inherently like trust posh girls more yes i agree also they the beckons must do something right because they are the creme de la creme like they have the most people famous people showing up like they must have all of those jets must have been flying into london because half the guests like coming from the us it's like i bet they are such a riot i know i want to be friends i want to be in the kind of like evil angoria and they're just so beautiful and just so I just love that they're besties I was really sad because when there was the spice guys reunion at

school my mum one of my sisters I think managed to get tickets my mum tried to get me out of school to go in the school wouldn't let me get out of school so both my sisters went I must have been in like year nine or something and both my sisters went but obviously since then there hasn't been oh maybe was it posh didn't do that one either did she oh no she did she did that was like the the most recent one i can't remember no no the years when we when we were like 11 or something that one oh i think she 14 yeah i think she did do that one that is devastating for you i'm sorry i mean i didn't know it happened the school were like she can't just leave it's the middle of a school day and it might have to go got to london they were like sorry and they went without me that's literally

what's wrong with the schools right now that i know and i tried to be like can we not just say we're ill mum was like well i've already rung them a ton i want to take you to the bicycle so you can't suddenly be like i've got tummy ache oh babe i know it's really yeah it does feel like you have missed the boat because i i don't like what would it serve any of them to reunite like they did it for the olympics they probably would have done it for the queen but like they're not going to do that again surely in our lifetime with us i don't think it's in victoria beckham's interest because she's like a full-blown like truly respectable fashion designer now and her brand is like gigantic i feel like everyone else you know there's some nostalgia in there but i feel like with her she's moved so far forward from the spice girls it just doesn't even make

sense to look back but I think it's quite telling that all the Spice Girls are at her birthday I think that's the first time we've seen all five of them together in a really long time because obviously there was that big bust up after Mel B kind of exposed or said that her and Jerry allegedly had like got together and then they all kind of had this fallout so I'm wondering if maybe like them all being together I mean, how amazing would it be if they came on stage at Glastonbury? Let's all hold hands and make a wish because I just want to see that. Let's pray to the Spice Lords. So last week on Everything Is Content, we spoke about baby reindeer richard gad's new netflix

drama which is a dramatized version of his own true story of dealing with a stalker since we discussed the show there's been a disturbing development over the weekend, users on X and TikTok have uncovered what they are claiming to be the identity of the person that Martha is based on. So Richard's real life stalker. And having watched the show, it seems beyond belief that viewers would then go to such lengths to find them but that's what we've seen on x especially a lot of large accounts have retweeted and amplified the voices um that are sharing this online discussing whether they think it's real and sharing her supposed account um richard gad the creator and star has posted to his instagram saying please don't speculate on who any of the real life people could be kind of hitting home that this isn't the point of the show and he really isn't supporting

that so just to check in with you girls what is your opinion on on what we've seen i think that this is kind of like showing there's so many things that we've spoken about in previous episodes about sort of like the sleuth angle on the internet people asking the internet for advice that it's bled into everything where everyone feels entitled to seek out this like further truth because I was trying to think of other shows that are similar for example I May Destroy You I can't imagine anyone going to the lengths of trying to figure out who Michaela Cole's attacker had been and from that show it would have felt very odd whereas in this in this time that we're in I've like looked at some people that have been like we're trying to find out who it is and some people have commented like this is really far out like why are you doing that and they're like well what do you expect you

put this into the public obviously and I just think that's such a weird view to take on a piece of art and a show which was so vulnerable it's it's like do people not realize what's happened here or like what the show is about it's so serious I can't believe that anyone would think it would be funny to kind of try and put anyone in the limelight whether that's like the stalker or trying to figure out who the other character and baby reindeer was I just I found it all quite distressing to be honest yeah I agree I found it already quite disturbing and I feel like all the people doubling down or tripling down I really am finding so alienating and just like yeah really upsetting

to be honest I feel really bad for everyone involved you know especially Richard Gerd and having put something out that is so vulnerable that that draws on real life. Maybe we don't deserve art that's authentic and very vulnerable and very honest if this is the response that it has. And also all it's going to do is push people to never do that, which is really sad, actually, just really sad. We posted on our Instagram about this earlier in the week and I shared it to my story and I got so many responses from people with like genuine questions of how, like in the age of TikTok and X, can we ethically share stories from reality, whether it's our lives or other people's lives, knowing that people, the kind of digital pitchforks will come out. And like, do we need to wait wait longer do we need to kind of have a better idea of what needs to be changed is there any way to handle these stories that doesn't end with people taking it way too far i also have people kind of dming me in response that post

we did and someone sent me a long message at the end they said personally i think it was an ill judge commission but i suppose that's what's got everyone talking and that's what channels are chasing clicks because the other flip side I guess of this argument is should channels and commissioners and broadcasters be pre-empting that the internet is going to blow up like this is this too new of a phenomenon for them to pre-empt it and could there have been more to have been done to protect her identity because when I wrote my book and I mentioned people that I wasn't able to ask the consent the legal team went through it with a fine tooth comb and they were like you have to change their job you have to change where you met them you have to change so much that they might not realize that

you're talking about them if they've discovered the real Martha it looks like maybe that wasn't done with that much rigor no I think that's a good point when you first said that message i feel like there was a part of me that was quite defensive to it thinking no no it's the internet's fault not anyone else's fault we shouldn't respond like this but i feel like there's two prongs to this where it's like the internet has become increasingly sleuthy and you know feels like it's owed information about anything and everything regardless of how you know dramatic or how vulnerable the subject matter is. But commissioners do have to be really smart and they have to also be very protective of the stories that they tell. And that's just being pragmatic, I guess, at this point. It's not endorsing the internet. It's just being really honest about if you put something out,

you have to be careful. It's these faceless accounts, which can post as many like untruths as they want. And that's bad enough, but it is when bigger accounts interact with them. We know this is going to happen. I think it's kind of soured what was, I think, quite a productive conversation into this sort of witch hunt. It's such a shame.

I completely agree because almost within a week of it blowing up, the main conversation now is around Richard Gowd having to release statements about you know certain other characters who other people have sort of pulled various corroborating factors together and they're like oh we found the person and he's actually had to say no that person's now had to like have police involvement and the way that the internet is reacting is really odd I actually I know what I literally just said was like the commissioners or whatever should take more control but I was very shocked because some of the people retweeted onto my timeline people that I really respect and

like and enjoy their work and they'd be like oh my god no way they've already found the Martha and Baby Reindeer I was stunned when I saw that I I couldn't believe, like, it just felt like a huge lack of, I don't even know what, just empathy, intelligence, just like, what on earth are you doing? Like, if it does come onto your timeline and you want to screenshot it and send it to your friend

and be shocked about it, fine. But what is someone with, like, a very large internet following doing? And this is, like, not about one person. I saw 10 to 15 accounts that I follow. And it's such a deep show the fact that people think that it's like a funny thing to turn into like everything just wants to be a meme now i guess i don't know yeah it's like you know how with most shows you go down a wikipedia rabbit hole and then you look up all the actors you look up everything about it

it feels like that line between what is a fictionalized show and what is very openly a show based on real experiences people are putting into the same bracket and that's i don't know i don't know how we've got here where it's not so clearly a different issue at hand and it's so clearly a different thing to go through someone's personal social media bring up tweets from like a decade ago and just like throw them to the walls online i don't i don't get it i don't understand also what possesses someone to watch a tv show where someone is obviously doing things which are um harmful and threatening and potentially violent and go what i'm gonna do is kind of poke the bear on this one i am going to insert myself into this

narrative which was formerly like really dangerous i think people have lost their heads a little bit and forgotten that, you know, digital spaces bleed into real life and real life, you know, really anything can happen. Even in the case of like defamation, if you're potentially defaming someone online, you can't just go, oh, it's just the internet. There are real consequences. And it does feel like we've sort of flattened into an experience of, just a game of like find out the truth we're kind of like internet detectives there's another thing that's happening off the back of sort of like people having what feels like overnight success and we saw it with someone responding to the show saying that they'd had an interaction with richard gad and sort of wrote online a very thorough account of their

experiences with him and that was quite interesting we see this more and more where someone will pop up or some person will become like part of the the famous faces of the moment or whatever and lots of people will decide that they want to recount what their personal experience is with that famous person even if it's not necessarily salacious or abusive or anything that warrants I guess public knowledge I think we are on a very weird thing where the internet maybe the power of the internet is really starting to show itself now because celebrities and famous people have always had power and obviously they have the privilege of being sometimes being wealthy as well which is an extra thing but I think what

we're seeing more is that actually the lay person can do so much damage to a celebrity just by virtue of having access to the internet I don't know if that's going to really impact the way that celebrities and non-celebrities interact the way that you know people share their stories and stuff because something's definitely flipping there I think I definitely feel really uncomfortable with that development so even with the Paul Meskell thing and the you know him allegedly having one night stands and running away from them and all that kind of stuff it was a funny story but it also made me just feel deeply uncomfortable that it's become normalized to kind of expose everything you have on a celebrity just like to the internet and just almost like create an outline of what kind of person they are based on your experience because

I don't know imagine if somebody did that to you all these micro experiences you had in the world and people were just constantly sharing them online who knows what kind of person I would come off like because they don't know me but essentially this picture is being painted you have no control over it you just have to be silent and then these things go viral it's all it's all a lot yeah i do find it really horrifying and i do just wonder what what the answer is because we've talked about this on and on and on about digital decorum and this hurt feelings are one thing but like this is the scariest end of it like falsely accusing innocent people um ruining reputations kind of potentially re-traumatizing a victim of

you know all kinds of horrible things if that's the end point then surely it is quite vital that we figure out as like viewers of these kind of things and the people involved in making them not to do like a moment i know but i think part of the problem is that everything is content as in everything that's cannibalized so much that people don't see the value of it so it just becomes content oh my god i found the real math of a baby reindeer that's gonna score me points on the internet this is so clever i'm such a sleuth this is a piece of content and so the reduction between like feeling touching seeing being in the same room as someone and posting something online feeling like you're very far away from real consequences is part of the issue it's like you

can lock your phone and forget that you've tagged or retweeted an account from 2014 because it's not happening in your reality I think that's probably part of the issue as well that's it's happening in a few people's realities and those are the people that were involved. It was not just content for them. It was, you know, their real life and their real pain and their real kind of healing that you're potentially interrupting. We still love Baby Reindeer and would highly recommend if you want to watch it. It is on Netflix now. so now we're going to be talking about she who shall not be named because i mean we have to it's taylor swift and she's back with us with the Tortured Poets department the album was a double release with the entire anthology containing 31 songs I have I don't know

I struggle with this I don't dislike the woman I think her music's enjoyable I really take umbrage with how much people kind of salute her for her lyricism I really don't personally find her that incredible of a lyricist what did you guys make of the album it's too long it's way too long I've got to just over halfway it's not a bad album I'm not not enjoying it but it needs a good edit a lot of the songs kind of bleed into the same thing I think there are a few bops in there but it could have been a quarter of the size oh my god yeah it could have been an email I love that you were like I'm about halfway as though you're talking about a marathon some of us ran a different kind of marathon this weekend I also haven't finished it I think I listened to it I listened to the second album and then there's another album with all of

them on and I listened to the shorter one so I was like okay I've listened to it and then someone's like no there's about 900 more songs and I just thought I'm not I'm not doing that I just thought that I don't know if it's the hype but I saw someone tweet that she's like better than Adele and I've just actually not been able to enjoy her music since you are an Adele super fan I understand sorry to go on this lyric thing but everyone calls her a poet and I find it really annoying because it's like isn't surely any songwriter is kind of a poet that's kind of what they're doing and i think it's like a bit insulting to say that she's a poet when i personally think that her lyrics are a bit sort of like teenage i mean the tattooed labrador exactly to say like to say i'm a poet and then have lines in there like tattooed laboratory or no tattooed

what's it dashing no it was a golden retriever golden retriever oh tatty golden retriever this might be my other thing I keep seeing the things where it's like we've tried to pick a year that we wanted to live in what about 1830s without the racism I mean I haven't even 1830s America like I don't even feel like the steam train was invented it was all like no vapes no aircon they're all dressed like curtains how can you say 1830s without the racism that's like saying the sky without the clouds like what the fuck well people said that it's because that was the year Emily Dickinson was born oh right which is also I just think that's even more cringe sorry to be a hater because our producer actually loves Taylor Swift and I'm worried that she's gonna like cut all of

the shit no no this is not gonna make it in the final edit let's be real we'll have our voices going i love taylor swift she's spliced together um it is the taylor phenomenon is it's still gaining momentum which i think is a way more interesting thing like the juggernaut of taylor swift when you think it's kind of reached its kind of peak velocity, whatever it's called, it seems to gather more. And I just find it such a spectacle. I really want to hear your thoughts on the fact that she's dropped this double album. It comes after, you know, the mega hit of a tour that she had over the summer. The pace at which she's releasing stuff is so is insanely fast the amount of content she's

pumping out is gigantic I feel like there's something exhausting watching her do this and continue on this hamster wheel outpacing every other artist on this earth and just like keeping every month about you know something new with Taylor something new something new I don't think I can necessarily you know hold art in such high esteem if it's constantly being pumped out because it just makes me think it's rushed but then also there's another thing of just like she's she's just winning the game because the game is her at this point yeah she's like flooding the charts she's flooding our eyeballs like I had to wade through Taylor content on every single one of my social medias I was like I just need to see one selfie I just need to see anything but this um it felt

over saturated as you said we just came off the back of that tour where I felt like it was so massive thing after thing and that's another album but then so as you can tell I'm being quite downtrodden about Taylor and I did feel guilty about it because as I was like starting to think about this the other day Jamila Jamil did a post that was like here comes the hate train because a woman made stuff that she forced nobody to buy or pay attention to and then she was like buckle up it's not here yet but it's coming we got mad at overexposure why do we as a culture still always go after the subject of the overexposure rather than media outlets who do the overexposing I don't know if that sentence is currently true specifically true

but I do kind of agree with the idea that it's like something is happening and I don't want to be a part of it which is like we've talked about like the half a hay and the years of people hating Keira Knightley and it's like I don't want this woman to have people being mean to her I do want to have less of my timeline being occupied by her and I do agree with the turret and that like maybe I'm a boomer but like I love that Adele puts her albums so far apart and that they are all standalone impeccable I can listen to any of her albums through and through time and time again and they never fail to move me so maybe she's just not for me but I think that maybe where Jamila's wrong in that post is like I feel like I can't escape it even if I'm not choosing to listen to it it's everywhere yeah she's become the

dominant culture I mean it is rare that I I see where Jamila Jamil is coming from on pop culture analysis time and time again but especially in this one I feel as if it's just kind of the vein of thought where it's like Taylor Swift girl people shouldn't attack girls because girls should have a right to speak as we've spoken about before Taylor Swift is the dominant culture of our time she is a mega capitalist she's profiting off all of this I don't think it is you know girls gonna hate girls by just kind of talking about how she's become dominant culture and why it is quite fatiguing bearing witness to that what do you think that game plan is like because you can't keep producing unless she's got like a secret game plan which is

it's like chuck this all out and then just disappear maybe she wants we'll have like a private life with travis kelsey and go on to have kids and just completely i don't know go live on some secret island that she's like mark zucker but is it mark no what's he called zucker corn no zuckerberg what's his is it mark zuckerberg it's Mark isn't it yeah yeah Facebook man also you know that fit picture that everyone's been posting of him sorry to say that but it's no it's not real it's not him it's not real no it's been yassified so it's not actually him yeah um anyway he's you know he's built some I don't know if he's in Hawaii or somewhere but he's basically built this like massive I think it's in case it's like an apocalypse well there will be brought on by billionaires yeah exactly so for all we know taylor swift's

built some like taylor swift island somewhere she's going to release to make as much money she can and then just disappear i don't see it happening but i don't either because it's an interesting thing like all of her fans are so all in and she rewards them for being all in by kind of pumping out music at the rate she does inserting all these easter eggs kind of rewarding them for knowing intimate details of her life for her then to try and walk it back i think they would be i can't imagine the swifties the very very diehard swifties being okay with that i think if you offer so much they they get a taste for it because she's always been so visible she's always been there she's pumped out like 10 11 full studio albums in since like the

late 2000s her output has been insane and obviously that should then grant her the ability to vanish but I surely people would kind of swim to this island and seize her yeah they'll find her did you hear the line where she kind of has a pop at the fringes of her fan base who really hated her and matty healy does she say like vipers in sheep's clothing or something there's like a metaphor she uses basically saying like the people who thought they knew best for her kind of you know being really down about this relationship and she really has a go at that part of her swifty base which is i think one of the first times i've ever heard her critique them did you see the paste magazine their um review of it was like there was no byline because the last time they posted a review the writer got death threats in paste magazine was

like we're going to post the review and it was quite scathing but they didn't attach the writer's name because the swifties were so badly behaved last time i saw that shocking isn't it the other thing that i think has been getting a lot of traction with this album was um kat mckenna on news night who is like a big swifty she went on an interview and she was talking about why you know people love her and she said i think of the uniqueness of taylor Swift is that she speaks for an audience that is not always spoken for and a lot of people have been kind of unpacking what that even means because Taylor Swift's music I think it was Courtney Love said that you know she's like she's not a genius but she's doing something great and you know people like to listen to her but it's certainly not revolutionary or

she's not reinventing the the banjo I find it interesting I think because she sings about women's interior lives heartbreak um friends being shit kind of the humility the daily pains rather than kind of the great tragedies which I think makes her it shows how important it is for the every woman to have to feel seen and I think she's tapped into that in a way that i can really understand why she is a billionaire now even though i don't vibe with the music listening to the lyrics i go this like the you know to talk about situationships in a way that makes very as yeah as serious as they feel when they're happening to you so i do i think that's maybe what she meant about the capturing women or like representing a group of people.

Women are kind of treated like shit globally and kind of, you know, insulted for their everyday pains. And I think she says, no, you're allowed to feel this. And that does it for us. Part of the frustration with absorbing Taylor content is just seeing the kind of reverence from the Taylor Swift community. And I think it's okay. Like, it's obviously great to be a fan. It's warranted to be a fan of anyone you want. But something like Kat McKenna saying she speaks for an audience that is not always spoken for just feels so hyperbolic and absurd because I'm sorry, as a woman, I am spoken for in multiple ways. And Taylor Swift is not the only person speaking about being

a woman she's just not I want to read a short bit from a great review by Anne T Donoghue for 29 secrets she talks about how Taylor Swift is a brand and a corporation now and should be kind of considered as such in reviews she says she is a singer songwriter and performer yes but she's also upheld various local economies simply because she has chosen to sing her songs there. We can't review her music in the same way we might review a smaller act because they're not the same thing. She is The Gap.

She is Chevrolet. She is the Star Wars, which I'd never considered before. Don't know how far I agree with it, but I think it's interesting that she is, she's Bran, she's Taylor Swift TM rather than being any longer just that girl with the guitar but I think part of the problem is in her lyrics she still presents herself as just the

girl just the country girl singing about things and she doesn't present as the trademark corporation Taylor Swift so I think that's where the discrepancy comes and why people feel as if they can say, oh, you're attacking Taylor Swift a la Jameela Jamil, when really she doesn't feel like just a girl. She feels like so much more now. So Drake dropped a track on social media this week called taylor made freestyle so this song came in response to kendrick lamar recently reigniting a feud with drake in a barbed verse on metro booming and futures like that drake had responded with taylor made freestyle and in the track he's used ai to create verses that sound like tupac and snoop dogg taking swipes and essentially goading kendrick to release his response snoop dogg responded in a

video which i thought was hilarious and he said they did what when how are you sure you'll have a good night was that the ai voice it was it was so realistic richara is snoop dogg in the room he might well be um many fans have compared drake's uh drake's using tupac in his song to kendrick also using the singer on vocals on his song mortal man on his 2015 album to pimp a butterfly on the song kendrick lamar used archived audio recordings of tupac to have this like imagined conversation with him. Kendrick also sparked backlash for using CGI to manipulate his face into different celebrities in the Heart Part 5 music video in 2022. In it, Kendrick's face transforms into the deep fakes of lots of celebrities including Kanye West, Will Smith, Jussie Smollett and Kobe Bryant, Nipsey Hussle and the late OJ Simpson. This isn't the first time that A.I.'s entered the music world but it is the first time that we've seen it so

visibly used in a diss track. I want to ask you guys what do you think about this whole thing and do you think what Drake's done is different or worse to the ways in which Kendrick Lamar has used A.I. in his music in the past? Am I old? Because I was trying to keep up with all of the names and I was like, who's done what now and who? I'm not surprised that Jake, Jake, this Jakey character seems like a lovely voice, but Drake has done this. I think he has been exhibiting more and more loser energy lately i think that's what this is for an artist of his scale to be meddling in ai just shows like a real kind of disrespect i think for all like the jobbing like voice actors and singers who are like

this is really detrimental for him to be like it's just a toy for me yeah i think it's creepy as well because it's like let the dead rest as well it's like will tupac have consented to his i don't know how it works i imagine that it'll just be his kind of um what's it called you're like a state a state yeah that is in control of your music and stuff but like for instance i personally would be devastated to bring it into like a a scene of music that I understand more like if someone used Amy Winehouse's voice on a track and AI manipulated her saying I would find that deeply deeply disturbing um I can't imagine a world where I would ever think that was okay and so I think that Tupac maybe he is legendary in that sense that like I feel like people have kind of lifted and worked with his songs even prior to kind of using it as AI so maybe there's kind of a bit of like a distance between thinking that that's wrong but

I just think I think it's very weird isn't it one of the things that in the saga for strikes the actors were campaigning to make sure that they had it in their contracts that people can't just create like AI fakes of them to act in roles and stuff it seems like a quite an anti-industry move as well because as Beth said you're taking away from jobbing actors you're kind of it feels lazy and it feels yeah loser loser behavior yeah it just is super uncomfortable isn't it as well because it's just like I guess in across all industries we're just like waiting to see how AI transforms everything and it's kind of anxiety inducing and just i don't know every time the

the needle gets pushed a bit further in various directions it's unsettling but especially in something like this where it feels like people are involved i don't know this is also involving you know deceased legends it just it all feels very like i don't like the use of ai in this way and it feels it feels very very very uncomfortable it sort of also feels like an adult man who couldn't just like say what he was thinking he was sort of like and now I've got my cousin on the phone and he thinks you know he's gonna beat you up as well it was very much like you can you can I think stand in that on your own you don't need to kind of call up the ghost of the past or like get snoop dog you know fake snoop

dog on your side it just all felt really kind of pathetic especially since like real snoop dogs right there and literally responding like what do you mean like how how stressed out would you be like is snoop dog not gonna sue or something he didn't okay it did he i think it looks like he's not bothered snoop dog has never bothered and that is why he's so perfect he's just stoned so he has no problems he's all vibes I just think it's a weird move from Drake he was such a big artist people loved him I do agree that recently he's kind of been you know people aren't as obsessed he's kind of like he's a bit outdated it just seems a strange move for such a big artist with so much wealth so much access to incredible artists to use this and kind of co-sign it and then what happens where do we go from there it's like once

someone's done it how much more are we going to be seeing this I don't it doesn't sit well with me I kind of hope that Tupac's estate challenge it or question it or maybe I don't know if they don't mind maybe it makes money for the estate and they're happy with it who even knows it could change the frontier of like music and diss tracks if you could just get anyone to say anything you want like it almost feels as if we've been worried about how ai is gonna take over you know the news and disinformation and stuff like this but this is kind of pushing the realm of like disinformation and music where it's like you could have somebody just say anything from across the board and like obviously we know that snoop Dogg and Tupac didn't lend their actual voices to this song,

but I don't know who's to say that in the future songs could come out and you have no idea if the person is actually credited on it and is actually performing that song. Well, totally. Like it could put Drake out of a job. Like they could just put in, like make the next Adele album, make the new Amy Winehouse album,

make the next Taylor Swift album. It could put all musicians completely out of, out of work if that's what big streaming companies are doing and as we know like artists are really suffering in terms of like not getting paid as much and it seems very like you're doing a disservice to yourself and your industry I want to bring up a tweet that made me laugh so much um at Skylar underscore highly wrote these rap beefs are real housewives but for men oh my god so true that's so funny and it is because all i don't have a clue about it but all the boys are talking about it like and you have to know all the back characters you have to know all of it and functionally that is real housewives of beverly

hills so true i love them when people were talking about it and i heard i was maybe a podcast something and i was like they were referring to kend heard I was maybe a podcast something and I was like they were referring to Kendrick Lamar as just Lamar and I was like oh my god what like the guy from pop world or whatever it was like if there's any justice um that's how much I know that is a tune if there's any justice and I was like Lamar don't don't get involved in it Lamar rise above um yeah so I'm really out of the loop. Yeah, the boys are squabbling online. Like my boyfriend begged that we spoke about this on the podcast.

It really is. You know, it's taking men down left, right and centre. I feel like Drake used to be for the ladies so much. He used to love Drake. And now he's very much for a particular kind of man. And that's all I'll say. We have an update on this story. Since we recorded, Billboard have reported that Tupac's estate have sent a cease and desist letter to Drake saying that Tupac would never have given his approval to his voice being used in this way.

We'll link the article in the show notes. Thank you for listening to us this week. you love the podcast please leave us a review and make sure you click subscribe or follow or whatever it is you do on your podcast app so you don't miss an episode we'll have another episode for you next week in the meantime you can catch us on instagram at everything is content pod also on tikt, same handle. Bye! Everything Is Content is a Grape Original podcast and we are part of the Acast Creator Network. This podcast was created, devised and presented by us, Beth McCall, Ruchira Sharma and Anoni.

The producer is Faye Lawrence and the executive producer is James Norman Fyfe.