#revcore

I’m someone who has been listening to Taylor Swift’s music since 2012, when I first heard “I Knew You Were Trouble” on the radio, and was instantly in love. As a kid in fandom culture, I was absolutely obsessed with learning more about her and her music (alongside my then love of One Direction as well). Over the years, the obsession decreased, and while I continued to engage with her music and all the fun fan theories and easter eggs everyone else was coming up with, that was all it was to me.

That is to say, I love her music, I think she’s a great songwriter and storyteller, but I like any person have my favourites and not-so-favourites. And then…October 3, 2025 came. Like many other TS fans, I couldn’t wait for the release of her latest album, especially since the end of her Era’s Tour which I also loved and had attended last year. The album came out, I had a small listening party with two others, and frankly I was disappointed.

This album was not it for me. For how much hype she had created around it, especially considering the producers she was working with, I expected better, given my personal preferences with her music. I definitely gravitate more towards her emotionally vulnerable albums like The Tortured Poets Department, and Folklore & Evermore. I still appreciate the up-beat pop, but it just was not my favourite.

THIS is the opinion that I have. That I just frankly dislike the album, because of my personal taste in music. What I was completely unprepared for, was the chaos online and the polarising discourse that existed around this album and TS in general.

This is not just in the last week or so, but over the last couple of years, the people I consider my friends, people who ‘know’ me, have loved bombarding me with memes with bad-faith takes on Taylor Swift. She is a white woman billionaire worthy of criticism, and I am a normal human being with critical thinking skills, who is able to reach that conclusion.

What I am unwilling to engage with, is out-of-context lyrics taken by what I like to call “bad-faith haters”, drawing drastic conclusions from them, packaged in a silly looking meme meant to ragebait a reaction out of me. And no matter what, it’s a lose-lose isn’t it? I don’t have the time to explain to this ‘friend’ why this is stupid because they’ve taken out-of-context lyrics or twisted facts to paint a picture that simply does not exist.

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The bad-faith hater is someone for whom the hate comes first and the reason second. They hate because they want to hate, and attach any excuse for a justifiable reason with it later.

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There are so many valid criticisms to have against Taylor Swift, such as her claiming to want to be more vocal about political issues in her Miss Americana documentary, while not following through. Her only speaking out about issues when they personally impact her. THOSE are good-faith and evidence-based criticisms unique to the person who has claimed they would stand for those things and didn’t.

What fascinates me with TS-hate online, at the risk of sounding like I’m engaging in whataboutism, is the selective outrage.

What I mean with the selective outrage here is that the things we have been screaming at TS for over the last couple years don’t seem to be unique to just…her? And yet, a disproportionate amount of energy from people I know!!! Fellow leftists like me!!! Seem to be expending it towards Taylor Swift - the Ultimate Girlboss White Feminism Billionaire and the Destroyer of Worlds.

When we look at the private jet use discourse - this woman was on the biggest tour to ever exist, and was using her private jet to get to her tour dates as well as for her personal life. Should people own private jets? NO. Should billionaires exist? NO. But TS is not unique in that, is she?

What is especially frustrating about the selective outrage is that it is coming from leftists, who otherwise portray significant critical thinking skills. Why is Taylor Swift the ultimate representation of why private jets are bad? As of October 2025, she isn’t even in the top 10. you know who is though? Diddy, Kim Kardashian, Jay Z, Donald Trump, and at the top of the list - Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.

Yes we should care about the environment, yes we should have active and useful discourse surrounding how people are able to become billionaires in a world with so much inequality, and how people can own private jets to take them wherever and whenever they wish. But why have so many made an artist not unique in her approaches than most others in her field, the face of this fight?

It’s me. You knew there had to be a theoretical side-note to all of this. While researching to better articulate my feelings about this, I came across a lovely piece of work from L. Kinnunen called “The Love to Hate Taylor: Dislike and Toxic Practices in Anti-fandom Culture Surrounding Taylor Swift”. And man did this articulate some ideas I felt, but it does not delve into why it is happening.

Kinnunen talks about the rise of the ‘anti-fan’. I guess it is what I was feeling when I spoke of bad-faith hating. When people usually dislike a piece of art, they don’t care about it, and more importantly, they don’t actively consume the piece of art since they well…dislike it. But that is not what the anti-fan does.

Anti-fans hate the artist/art, and hate it no matter what happens. They engage in things like hate-watching, or as Kinnunen expanded, ‘hate-consuming’. With hate-consuming, anti-fans actively seek out and consume content related to the artist they despise, and engage in hate-listening to albums, hate-watching interviews, etc.

Since the release of The Life of a Showgirl (TLOAS), the trend that I have noticed over the last week, has been a unique reaction from…for lack of better words….’woke’ and leftist people online. Anti-fans as studied by Kinnunen involve people mostly engaging in misogynistic remarks against Taylor Swift, her worthiness in regard to the money, fame and awards she has received, and so on.

Since TLOAS was released, I’ve seen leftist anti-fans rise up, and needing to moralise their hatred. This means, we can no longer just dislike art. We need to have a deep political reason for it. So like I said, I didn’t really like the album because it wasn’t for me, and given the range of Taylor Swift’s song-writing, it can be a hit or a miss and this one was a miss for me. This is, given my personal preferences in her songwriting.

But the leftist anti-fan cannot simply dislike her music, or the new album. Which means people draw drastic conclusions, by listening to songs like ‘Eldest Daughter’ and ‘Opalite’, claiming that the lyrics have racial undertones, and is actually criticising Travis Kelce’s past dating history for dating black women.

WHAT??? And in addition to that, EXCUSE ME??????

We really do. I dislike Justin Bieber’s music. It’s a dumb decision I made when I was little. Part of it was to be edgy, part of it was me genuinely not liking his music, and part of it was me disliking his attitude. I’m sure there’s people who love his music today, and good for them. I know that I have this silly dislike for Justin Bieber no matter what he does. But you know what I do with this dislike? NOTHING.

I have not heard anything about this guy in a while. I think he released new music recently? That’s it. We all do bad-faith hating, and just hate someone or something for no logical reason. Feelings aren’t meant to be rational all the time, and that’s ok.

What I’m fascinated by is the need to moralise this hatred, and the very particular attention Taylor Swift seems to receive from both leftist and right-wing haters. In the US, Republicans seem to denounce her for being too liberal, while Democrats accuse her of being a MAGA trad-wife.

It is ok to dislike art or an artist. I can’t believe I’m quoting a toxic man when I say this, but truly, it’s not that deep.

Is Taylor Swift worthy of criticism? OF COURSE SHE IS. She isn’t flawless. She is a powerful and influential woman, who picks and chooses when to speak out. More importantly, sometimes she has been outspoken about particular topics, and has acted in ways that oppose the things she claims to stand for. That is something we should criticise her and many artists for.

But why have many painted her to be the ultimate face of why capitalism is evil? Why is she the face of how private jets suck, while going on tour after not doing one in 5 years? Those are things I truly don’t have answers to, although part of the answer does lie in misogyny…but that’s a discussion for another time.

I think the purpose of this piece was to bring up my own personal frustrations from people in my life needing me to justify my general like for Taylor Swift’s music, seeing it as a moral failure, and sending me ragebait memes with an air of condescension. On the other hand, I am also just genuinely fascinated with this hatred. What has made her uniquely evil and worthy of hatred in ways that most mainstream artists are apparently exempt from?

However, there can be a moral duty to avoid art sometimes. Let’s take JK Rowling for example. This is a person who has made it abundantly clear that all the money she has earned and will continue to earn will fund her transphobic activism. In that case, if I see someone spending money on her art, I see that as them endorsing her hatred of trans people, especially in the current political climate. It is up to us and our moral compasses to see who falls in these categories.

Yet, Taylor Swift manages to fall in a category of her own, where some consider it morally reprehensible to like her music, while also engaging in anti-fan behaviours themselves, aka hate-consuming her art.

bones sticking out of their dome

blood and guts pouring down here

and her gaze of life replaced by empty fear

what did they call me and where did they go wrong

when they only tried to make me strong

but instead they made me a machine

cold and lifeless

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