I have no interest in hearing the music of Taylor Swift,
getting any details on her personal life, or hearing any commentary on her
music or personal life. There must be some kind of app or filter that will keep
this person out of my life. I do not actively seek out Swift but there will be
times when I cannot avoid hearing her music or seeing gossip about her pop up
online. I wish to opt out of this experience entirely and I wish modern science
would invent a way for me to do so. I have extreme apathy, bordering on
antipathy, about listening to one note or one syllable of Swift’s music. A song
that I think is called “Love Story” will sometimes be playing on the radio when
my alarm goes off and I begin to resent even those scant minutes I endure until
I rouse myself to shut off the alarm and her voice. The song is tolerable until
she compares her boyfriend and herself to Romeo and Juliet respectively,
seemingly unaware that those characters died for reasons that are not so much
romantic as tragic and stupid. I heard “We Are Never Ever Getting Back
Together” and despite its critical plaudits, found it annoying and boring to
the point where I was ready to fall unconscious during the first chorus. I just
… I don’t get it. From what I read, Taylor Swift seems very immature and petty,
not so much for writing songs about breakups but writing songs about anyone who
pisses her off, like Kanye West or the critic who said she was off key during a
performance. Swift is a person who overreacted to harmless jokes that Tina Fey
and Amy Poehler made about her and implied that those women belonged in a
special place in hell. I have no interest in an entertainer that hilariously thin-skinned.
Her music has nothing to say to me and I want nothing to do with it. I also
have absolutely no desire to know any more about who this woman is dating. I
was reading some gossip about her love life and I just thought, “What am I
doing here? Why am I reading this? Why do I care?” And I looked quizzically at
the heavens and had one of those moments where you just question how you got to
that point and where your life is heading. To an extent, I have wasted part of
my life in reading about this person. It can be fun to read celebrity gossip
when you’re bored but I have to admit that who this singer dates just does not
impact my life and does not at all arouse my curiosity at all. I couldn’t be
less interested in whether she dates John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, that guy from
the boy band or whatever Kennedy descendant. I don’t care if they break up and
I won’t listen to a song about it. I don’t care about her life or what happens
to her. She’s just … some person, you know? I care about her as much as I could
care about any of the 10,000 faceless extras in a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Most
of all, I turn a profoundly disinterested eye toward any commentary on What
Taylor Swift Signifies About Feminism or whatever faux-intellectual subject
people write about the singer. I will not be grading your doctoral dissertation
and have no power to confer a degree so please save me the trouble of having to
read your in-depth analysis of a pop singer. I know you will say the solution
is “Then don’t read anything about her or listen to her music” but it’s not
that easy to avoid a celebrity completely when her image is so pervasive.
That’s why I wish there were a solution for me to opt out of experiencing her
on any level. Maybe when a song comes on the radio, some technological advance
could instead let me hear a song I actually care about. Maybe when I’m on a
website and see an item about Swift, science would enable me to see a pretty
painting or a recipe for chocolate cake. I just wish modern science would
advance to the point where this would be possible. I just want Taylor Swift to
leave me alone.
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