A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: The Swiftie Bloat Controversy

Humans are a fascinating species. Whether it is the wars they needlessly fight because of their arrested development, the genocides they engage in, the bombs they develop that can kill millions of their own species and devastate the earth in the process, or whether it is their soap operaish lives humans just keep giving commentators a lot to write about and a lot to write about on the absurdity of human existence particularly in the core nations of the world.  

Someone who has been a soap opera star almost since she came on the pop music scene as a singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The tabloid sensationalist press online and offline has been full of stories about her alleged feuds with Beyonce, with Kaye West, and with too many “boyfriends” to count (the latter apparently her claim to authenticity fame). Presumably for Swift and others of her pop music ilk, any publicity is good publicity because it sells records and whatever else these stars are hawking these consumption dominated disneyfornicated days.

Recently Swift has spurred controversy because of her politics, specifically her retweeting of Michelle Obama’s remarks on the terrifying US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the end of a national abortion policy in the United States. Additionally, her relationship—whatever it is—with Travis Kelce of the US football club the Kansas City Chiefs, has, in addition to her presumed politics, led many, particularly on the populist right, to whinge and whine about Swift’s presence at football games and the camera eyes that focus on her during football games and about “celebrities” making political statements (a truly bizarre admonition since all in a democracy, including right wing amateurs, have a right of free speech) . Finally, controversies have arisen recently over whether Swift performs live during her concerts.

Let me be upfront, I have rarely ever listened to Swift’s music. I did, early in her career, her “country” years, listen to a few of her songs. They were not my cuppa tea any more than Star Wars was and is—I am not tweenee or a teenie either demographically or metaphorically—though I did find them OK and decently written. I am not, in other words, one of those tweenees or teenagers who ties his or her—mostly hers I suspect—identity to a celebrity and to an intimate stranger, a term film critic Richard Schickel used to describe the relationship between fans and the simulated celebrities they tied their identities to and sanctify as secular saints in the process. Swift, of course, has become one of those intimate stranger celebrity “saints” to millions.

I don’t know whether Swift sings live during her concerts though I would not be surprised if she didn’t or if she kind of didn’t. Many contemporary popular “artists”, after all, often sing to pre-recorded vocals, sometimes multiple pre-recorded vocals and are thus actually live only partially or only occasionally. Welcome to the world of postmodernist “live" popular music and its technologically driven spectacle. What I do know is that when I heard her sing at a charity even for those devastated by the bush fires in Australia I was not impressed by her voice though I should note that as a rock fan who likes Rush and Acca Dacca voices have never been a big deal for me. I don’t know whether she used or uses autotone or other forms of technology to beautify her voice because the tweenie and teenie masses now expect it in this age of the increasing automatisation of musical performers in the pop music world, something that does bother me but then I never wanted to be a cyborg.

What I also know is that when Swift is seen as being defamed, as being profaned, by others, her tweenie and tennie fans mobilise into an army who rush to the defence of their beloved intimate stranger on social media sites like YouTube and Facebook. This time they are rushing to defend her against accusations that she is not playing live, an accusation that has been made before against Swift. One of the many defenders of the Totem Taylor faith which I recently saw on YouTube argued that Swift had put an end to the lip synch controversy when, during a recent concert in London, she praised her band who, she claimed, played live for three and one half hours a night. 

The thing is that this apologia and polemic by Swift doesn’t put an end to the controversy. The claim that Swift clearly showed she was live in London is a hypothesis that has neither been confirmed or falsified by the empirical evidence yet. It may have been confirmed for those who have emotional and identity ties to the secular saint they clearly adore but knee jerk faith in a saint is not empirical evidence. It is ideological “confirmation”.