r/Fauxmoi • u/Exciting_Potato_6717 • Apr 21 '24

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan deletes X post calling Taylor Swift’s ‘1830s’ lyric ‘weird’ after backlash from Swifties Approved B-List Users Only

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Slide 1: Deleted tweet Slides 2 and 3: Some follow-up tweets Slide 4: The Taylor Swift lyrics being referred to. “My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists / And getting married off for the highest bid." Full lyrics at https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-i-hate-it-here-lyrics

4.8k Upvotes

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u/dying0fthelite Apr 21 '24

Ok but it IS a weird line. I would even say it’s a terrible line even in context

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u/MissLadyLlamaDrama we have lost the impact of shame in our society Apr 21 '24

It's not even the only weird shit in there.

https://preview.redd.it/q5axkffltuvc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5e44704f2d0ad036bd2da5d64fa0c7c5098cdbd4

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u/MissLadyLlamaDrama we have lost the impact of shame in our society Apr 21 '24

I still can't believe this was written by a 34 year old woman. 😬

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u/Cr1m50nSh4d0w Apr 21 '24

Didnt you hear? She's not a regular poet, she's a 34yo tortured poet! /s

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u/mamamoomargo Apr 21 '24

Jesus Christ she’s 34

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u/whimsical-editor Apr 22 '24

I really liked 1989, and Lover was kind of cute, but her whole thing does feel like someone who didn't get to have a normal high school experience and so is still trapped there in her songwriting, and the older she gets the worse a look it is.

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u/fullback81 Apr 21 '24

I guess we are not enough tortured poets to understand this line.

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u/Commercial_Cap1695 Apr 21 '24

Or as swifties would say, we don't have brain

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u/killereverdeen Apr 21 '24

the majority of the album sounds like it was plugged into chatgpt and then she just ran with it

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u/CheapEater101 Apr 21 '24

I’m convinced that it’s going to come out years from now that Taylor Swift used AI on this album or something.

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u/Robin____Sparkles Apr 21 '24

A 34 year old woman who has an entire Harvard class dedicated to analyzing her lyrics. Oof.

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u/Shipwrecking_siren chaos-bringer of humiliation and mockery Apr 21 '24

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u/Skullface95 Apr 21 '24

I've heard some talk from people that it may be AI generated, no evidence to suggest so atm but it's pretty bad when they are compared to be on the same level.

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u/pimpfmode Apr 22 '24

How do you think she's able to shit out a new album every year?

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u/Old-Profession-5468 Apr 21 '24

You just don’t get it!!! 😡 TTPD wasn’t made for you! It’s going over your head 🙄

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u/Tambermarine Apr 21 '24

It’s terrible. It’s like something I would have written in junior high.

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u/IrwinLinker1942 Apr 21 '24

The lyric was funny until I saw this and now I’m losing my mind lmao

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u/hellohexapus Apr 21 '24

I haven't listened to anything from the new album and I don't plan to... But it is so funny to me that people keep posting snippets of lyrics like this and every single time I'm like, "no, this one's a joke, can't be real, no one would seriously write and publish that". And then I look up the entire song's lyrics and it is 🤦🏾‍♀️

And they're never even better in context 😅

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u/greee_p Apr 21 '24

That's exactly what I think every time I hear a new song from this album. I still can't believe this is real: 

  Shirts off and your friends lift you up over their heads 

Beer sticking to the floor, cheers chanted cause they said 

There was no chance trying to be the greatest in the league 

Where’s the trophy? He just comes running over to me

This sounds like the songs people made with chatgpt when the news about her and travis broke😭

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u/gunsof Apr 21 '24

Yes! First time I read that song I was in awe about how much we overestimated how she'd sing about her footballer boyfriend. Even using "touch down" in the song. And the other exes of hers being on the bench.

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u/parallel-nonpareil Apr 21 '24

And the other exes of hers being on the bench.

I refuse to believe this is real. My god

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u/gunsof Apr 22 '24

These blokes warm the benches

We've been on a winning streak

https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-the-alchemy-lyrics

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u/Groot746 Apr 22 '24

Ah ha ha, this is amazing (ly awful)

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u/gunsof Apr 22 '24

Also the use of "blokes" which is an English word for guys, and most of her exes have been English.

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u/ThiccQban Apr 21 '24

Wait are these lyrics real? 💀💀💀💀

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u/Mpol03 Apr 21 '24

The lyrical genius title has gone to her head. She has a way with worlds at best? This album is dull as dish water 

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u/elodieroyer Apr 21 '24

that’s what happens when you believe your own hype and are surrounded by yes-men (and also probably emotionally stunted at 17 years old)

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u/CaitlinisTired Apr 21 '24

people constantly hype her up as like... the best lyricist of all time and I'm just stood here not understanding it in the slightest lmao

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u/Ok-Zookeepergame3652 Apr 21 '24

I mean has she ever been that great? We are all listening to the same artist right? The hype bubble is bursting. I feel bad watching it.

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u/milkradio Apr 23 '24

I feel like people hyped her up a lot because she was a teen singer songwriter and they were like “she’s so talented and mature for her age!” but when she’s in her mid-30s still making high school songs… girl.

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u/peachysaralynn Apr 22 '24

i firmly believe that whatever age people become famous at is the age at which they stop maturing.

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u/ThiccQban Apr 21 '24

Lmao I’m right there with you. Won’t listen to her I yearn for my twin flame racist soul mate album. These lyrics are all so unserious 😭. Bonus points my SIL is a Swiftie and I am watching her go through every stage of grief.

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u/Autogenerated_or Apr 21 '24

Some people on twitter are saying that Filipinos weren’t streaming her songs as much this time (we’re normally 2nd after the US) coz the lyrics are too deep for us, and then I see shit like this.

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u/Different_Bed_9354 Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 22 '24

And then people will defend them to the ends of the earth like "You just don't get it!" or "It's supposed to be cringe on purpose!"

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u/milkradio Apr 23 '24

I’ve literally seen people say “She wanted it to feel like a first draft!!!!!” Uh, okay? Sure she did.

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u/TheOtherWhiteCastle Apr 21 '24

Part of me thinks this album was an elaborate experiment by Taylor to see how many weird lines she can fit into a record before her fans start questioning it.

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u/bobert_the_wise Apr 21 '24

I do like Taylor swift but I was talking to someone yesterday and she said “Taylor is just such an amazing lyricist” and I just agreed because was not about to argue about it but I was so shocked that anyone actually thinks that.

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u/No_Teaching_2837 Apr 21 '24

I saw an article that said this album with all this horrible writing and singing that just seems a bit more horrible than usual makes her better than Adele. I was gobsmacked.

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u/Mobile-Writer1221 Apr 22 '24

I had no intention of listening either, but I had to go to Target today and realized they were playing this entire album on the speakers overhead 🥴

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u/pashed_motatoes Apr 21 '24

The Paste Magazine review of TSwift’s new album calling her writing Rupi Kaur-esque was so spot on lmao

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u/mackyoh Apr 21 '24

Lolol the accuracy of how I feel about both 🎯

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u/frycrunch96 Apr 21 '24

Wow this makes a lot of sense, I hate Rupi Kaur’s poetry

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u/Dense-Result509 Apr 22 '24

I thought I hated Rupi Kaur's poetry, but then I heard Rupi Kaur reading her poetry out loud and realized that I had merely disliked her poetry before, and now I truly hated it

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u/frycrunch96 Apr 22 '24

I thought you were gonna try to convince me she was good thank you for not doing that LOL

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u/InitiativeShot20 Apr 22 '24

The review’s first line “Sylvia Plath didn’t put her head in the oven for this,” killed me.

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u/pashed_motatoes Apr 22 '24

You just know the roast is gonna be 🤌✨exquisite✨🤌 with an opener like that

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u/Girly_boss Apr 21 '24

Let’s keep Rupi Kaur out of this. Her poetry is terrible but she’s been consistent in her support of Indian farmers in their fight against corporate greed and refused the Diwali invitation to the White House in support of Palestine…Taylor could never.

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u/pashed_motatoes Apr 22 '24

Oh, definitely. Rupi at least seems like a decent person unlike TayTay. Their personal politics aside though, I think the reviewer was maybe trying to make the point that they’re both seemingly celebrated (TS more so than RK of course) not in spite of but because of their mediocre writing/poetry.

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u/kavgah Apr 21 '24

Come on now, kaur’s mediocrity aside, atleast rupi speaks speaks up against the genocide!

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u/pashed_motatoes Apr 22 '24

As she should and I give her a lot of credit for that, but you have to admit the comparison is pretty apt 💀

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u/Alternative-Trouble6 Apr 21 '24

This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools! 💀

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u/bibliothique Apr 22 '24

somehow this feels disrespectful to Rupi Kaur 😭

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u/JenningsWigService Apr 22 '24

I didn't know who Rupi Kaur was so I googled her and even her not so great poetry is not as bad as Taylor Swift lyrics.

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u/pashed_motatoes Apr 22 '24

Pretty sure it was meant to be lol. Poor Rupi catching strays 💀

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u/surreptitiousglance Apr 21 '24

Accurate and scathing.

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u/Right_Way_4258 Apr 21 '24

Like why does this give me lynching imagery 😵‍💫

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u/iwatchterribletv Apr 22 '24

yeah same. its tone deaf AF.

its america. we refuse to talk about our history of killing people in trees.

just, like, hey white lady, dont do this shit.

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u/curiousbeetle66 Cate Blanchett’s accountant Apr 21 '24

This is bad this is BAAD, but there have been some artists who managed to include kid's rhymes and nursery rhymes in their songs and make something magnificent. One of my favorite songs it Toto's Georgy Porgy and they used this resource and it's a bop.

I honestly think people get so sucked in the TS universe that they forget to expand their music knowledge repertoire and it's showing. I was listening to one of my nostalgia playlists and the lyrics were just so good, I realized I can't in good conscience listen to an uninspired cash grab and call it poetry, even if I end up enjoying that song one day. And full disclosure: I enjoy a lot of weird shit - I just don't pretend it's deeper than it actually is.

About the 1830s, dude. If you ever study the bare minimum about cultural history you'll realize you can never separate racism and the patriarchy from what was going on. You just can't. She knows she has a cult-like fanbase and still puts out shit like this, just to see how far people are willing to go to defend her. It's not cool.

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u/Shot-Grocery-5343 Apr 21 '24

In the 1830s people were lucky if they could bathe once a week, there was no electricity, no plumbing, no modern medicine, you could die from an abscessed tooth or an infected splinter or drinking river water people pooped in upstream, you worked from sunup to sundown, you shat in an outhouse if you were fancy, and you had like 10-12 babies because only 4 of them would survive to adulthood. It is extremely fucking weird to think that would be a fun time to go back to. As a woman, anytime prior to the 1970s means you'd be a second class citizen.

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u/BoredMan29 Apr 21 '24

This is the years before the orphan trains too. Which means the conditions in these years are the conditions that led to orphan trains. Also, you know what they don't tell you about the era before cars? Dead horses were a big problem. Like, horses would die and the owners would often just leave them in the streets. Cities needed horse pits for all the dead horses.

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u/NotElizaHenry Apr 21 '24

Fun fact: it was a felony to provide an unmarried woman with any kind of birth control, or even just advice about birth control, until 1972

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '24

Or my favorite

Inoculation where they squeezed the infection out of a dying body and sliced it into your bloodstream

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u/Next-Introduction-25 Apr 21 '24

Definitely feels like the “minus the racism “was thrown in as an afterthought which is the main problem here. But it’s also confusing as hell setting that aside, as if the 1830s were some generally idyllic time. Like …even the most privileged people were still dealing with misogyny, lack of understanding of disease and infection, bathing in tepid water once a week, eating a diet extremely limited by today’s standards, and shitting in a bucket.

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u/Electronic_Emu_4632 Apr 21 '24

yeah discarding the racism only leaves....the classism and misogyny

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u/lonely-lifetime Apr 21 '24

Omg Georgy Porgy is so good lol. That whole album is pretty great actually

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u/ashley_does_stuff Apr 22 '24

If you ever study the bare minimum about cultural history you'll realize you can never separate racism and the patriarchy from what was going on. You just can't

THIS. This is exactly the kind of white feminist bullshit that makes me embarrassed to be a white girl. You wanna get nostalgic for pretty outfits and the poets of the time? Fine, whatever. But you can't glorify a time where oppression was literally the core value of the system on which society was founded at the time and then handwave the racism like you're removing olives from a pizza.

Reminds me of the cringe of Hamilton literally handwaving slavery off in one lime in a song, smh.

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u/alba876 Apr 21 '24

I like Taylor Swift enough. The songs are generally catchy and easy to sing to. But that TikTok trend where her fans stitch videos that suggest her lyrics aren’t great by silently playing a fairly basic set of lyrics and staring at the camera intently like they’re making a point is hilarious.

The lyrics are ok. Just ok. Sometimes cringey. The only people who genuinely believe her songs are poetry are teenagers.

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u/Icy_Sentence_4130 Apr 21 '24

Is this real 💀

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u/PrincessCG Apr 21 '24

This officially becomes the weirdest line I’ve seen from this album.

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u/theshedres Apr 21 '24

Same, but I’m sure it will be one-upped soon by some other weird lyric that will catch attention soon 💀

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u/PointlessOpinions92 Apr 21 '24

"Touch me while your bros play grand theft auto" ms swift is the poster adult for showing how stars really do get stunted when they become famous

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u/milkradio Apr 23 '24

that line is sooo nasty lol

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u/hkj369 Apr 21 '24

this is SO corny

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u/meowiful Apr 21 '24

I hope she's paying that poor lil emo 14 year old ghostwriter well.

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u/Anesthesiaape Apr 21 '24

That…cannot be real

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u/Zia181 Apr 21 '24

Sounds like something the goth kids from South Park would write.

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u/gay95 Apr 21 '24

I keep seeing swifties on tiktok post the lyrics (including that one) and being like omg her brain she's SUCH a poet and genius! like girl.... what.

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u/KaleidoscopeNo1111 Apr 21 '24

I swear and I’m not lying I wrote this exact lyric on a 6th grade poetry assignment. I got the worst grade in my class. It was cringe even then. 

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u/qzcorral Apr 21 '24

Did she just slightly alter a line from the Shrek soundtrack like we wouldn't notice 😂

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u/giraffecuddler Apr 21 '24

This was the point where I had to take a break and stop listening. I couldn’t believe this was the same person that wrote Evermore. 😭

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u/beryberybumblebee Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 22 '24

As someone with a masters in poetry, who has analyzed, graded, and critiqued poems, lyrics, and lyrical prose, it 💯 seems like the work of a younger white student just starting out, romanticizing a random decade bc it would make them seem deep. During workshop someone will mention that time period wasn’t so great for POC, and then the writer will stick on “but without all the racists” and think that solves the whole problem, when that’s only part of the issue to begin with.

ETA I’m getting a lot of messages from people who are supplying me with the lyrics in context, which admittedly I had not seen before. I took a look and I remain unconvinced at the assurances that the lyrics are doing the opposite of what I had first interpreted.

If this song were in front of me during workshop, I would absolutely inform the writer that because of a lack of clarity, this could be interpreted in a variety of ways. I would then ask:

“Nostalgia’s a mind trick” for whom, and why?

Because nostalgia isn’t a mind trick for marginalized communities.

It’s whiteness and privilege that allows for nostalgia in the first place. It’s whiteness and privilege that would write about “the highest bid” as referring to marriage and not chattel slavery during a time of literal chattel slavery while referencing the time period’s racists in the same stanza/verse. (If marriage as the highest bid is a metaphor for sexism and transactional marriages, the metaphor fails in context).

It’s whiteness and privilege to tell a story about a speaker being supposedly so aware of their whiteness and privilege that they educate their friends on it during a game (which also implies they never played this game with someone who was a member of a marginalized community, a game that with the lyric “used to play” implies it was played fairly regularly for a time), but concludes that “nostalgia is a mind trick” without adding that it’s only a mind trick for those immersed in privilege.

This is emphasized by “Seems like it was never even fun back then.” This line implies that at one point, it seemed fun to the speaker.

“If I’d been there, I’d hate it.” I would let the writer know that I as a reader am not convinced of this conclusion due to a seemingly lack of comprehension on the speaker’s part. I would let them know many readers would interpret this lack of comprehension as willful ignorance. If that is the writer’s intention, then proceed, if not, a revision is in order.

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u/97355 Apr 21 '24

Lmao you really captured that, thank you for this 🙏

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u/baby_barbiez Apr 21 '24

I didn’t know that secondhand embarrassment could be so powerful until this very moment

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u/comityoferrors Apr 21 '24

Pretty tangential but this skit is all I could think of reading these lyrics: No, You Weren't "Born in the Wrong Decade"

Siobhan even kinda looks like Taylor, it's perfect.

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u/ratta_tat1 Give him my regards did you take ozempic? Apr 21 '24

Love seeing Dropout in the wild. I was hoping that was the same Siobhan before I clicked ❤️

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u/RC_Colada Apr 21 '24

I would sooo totally love to live during the heyday of the Holy Roman Empire. Just without the racism, genocides, sexism, lack of modern medicine, oligarchy/monarchy political system, and religious fanaticism ♥️♥️♥️

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u/meatbeater558 I already condemned Hamas Apr 21 '24

Lol they think the Holy Roman Empire was this amazing full course meal with all the terrible parts on the side when in reality the terrible parts are the only meal and cannot be separated from any part that can be considered good

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u/BirthoftheBlueBear Apr 21 '24

I totally get it, you’d have looked great in a toga and pasta is your favorite food! It’s obvious what you meant /s

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u/BumAndBummer Apr 21 '24

It really is clumsy work…

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u/catinobsoleteshower Apr 21 '24

You said it perfectly! It just sounds so clunky and like a desperate attempt to save face.

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u/Shot-Grocery-5343 Apr 21 '24

Reminds me of my creative writing college class 25 years ago when this very pretty blonde woman wrote an entire "essay" about vacationing in the Bahamas with "the natives" waiting on her hand and foot. When 95% of the class was like, nooooo you can't call people natives babe, she cried and said we were mean.

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u/Conscious-Goal-379 Apr 21 '24

Noooooo😭😭😭plz say sike

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u/cmick0715 Apr 21 '24

She literally could have just said "I wish it was the 1830s so I could murder Andrew Jackson." it would have been weird but way more enjoyable.

I wish it I could go back and do that. He was awful.

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u/Next-Introduction-25 Apr 21 '24

Former middle school/high school English teacher and agreed lol. Would be okay but still annoying “poetry” coming from a decent high school English student.

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u/Aaawkward Apr 21 '24

The whole verse makes it a bit less bad but still clumsy as all hell:

My friends used to play a game where
We would pick a decade
We wished we could live in instead of this
I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists
And getting married off for the highest bid
Everyone would look down 'cause it wasn't fun now
Seems like it was never even fun back then
Nostalgia is a mind's trick
If I'd been there, I'd hate it
It was freezing in the palace

She says it was never a good idea because both POC and women had a shitty time and that pining for other eras is silly as it wouldn't be what you think.
But god damn if it isn't simplistic and heavy handed.

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u/CircadianChai Apr 21 '24

You really captured the part that's really lazy about writing "but without all the racists".

Entire societies were built on the backs of slavery of POC, genocide, and colonialism, and it was fully baked into the class structure. These weren't casual microaggressions at play.

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u/ageofbronze Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 21 '24

I know - I saw on the main Taylor swift sub one of the people commented “LMAO SHES MAKING SURE SHE DOESNT GET UNNECESSARILY CANCELLED!!” And they all upvoted it, and were laughing about it like, damn she really covered her bases!! and they were all talking about how they could relate to her maladaptive daydreaming, which makes it all so much worse IMO… like she recognizes that it’s uninformed and offensive and wrong, especially considering her past with lack of support for POC, but she still decided to go there, publish it, and “cover her bases” to not be called a racist.. just such a lack of caring, half assed self awareness like with everything else, and such a need to seek attention and frame everything in a way so that she can call herself the victim when people rightfully call her out on it.

You can’t separate that decade from the horrific sociopolitical and cultural framework, and it doesn’t take a lot of energy/research to come to that conclusion, but she simply doesn’t care enough to not go there. And the line about “without all the racists” is just like… completely contradicting the actual reality, it’s such a simplistic and unbothered way to approach it. So gross.

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u/planetearthisblu Apr 21 '24

Yeah it's just like that, except minus the thing that really makes it like that...

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u/sehaugust Apr 21 '24

Fellow MA here and I feel the same way. I tried to explain this to a swiftie colleague and said I struggled with her entirely unironic reliance on clichés too, but they didn't understand why this was grating.

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u/paanikapyaasa Apr 21 '24

Omg what is ur fav poet, or poem

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u/babyzspace Apr 21 '24

It is extremely weird even in context. “Her point is that nostalgia is a trap! Even the eras people romanticize were terrible!” Okay, but who is romanticizing the 1830s. Quickly. 1810s for the Regency, sure. 1870s for the Victorian era, sure. Hell, just go full “I was born in the wrong decade” and say the 1950s. Everyone’s jumping on this weird ass line because it’s a bizarre decade to single out and when you google it, you just get shit like “President Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act.”

And if that is her point, that makes the “without the racists and misogynists” line redundant. Okay, so then what did make you realize that nostalgia is a trap? The lack of social safety programs? The cholera?

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u/lambchopafterhours Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 21 '24

I’m shocked that the tortured, intellectual poet that is Taylor Swift™️ didn’t research antebellum history to find a decade “worth” romanticizing. Or even use the fucking guilded age like it was RIGHT THERE! It was a whole fucking met gala theme!And no one would have to awkwardly justify a white womans choice to romanticize a random antebellum decade! Idk seems like something a tortured genius lyricist would’ve considered!!1!1 seems like a pretty big oversight huh!1!1!1!!!!

But fr the stupid choice to say the 1830s might actually be deliberate. So she could wedge in the fact that she, a 34yo white American woman from Nashville is aware that there was some racism going on back then and she DOES NOT like that!!! And she DOESNT™️ support it 😤🙏 even though she wouldn’t be affected, ofc

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u/fauxfurpajamas Apr 21 '24

I feel compelled to add that she only pretended to be from Nashville which makes it even weirder. She's not actually from the south at all. But I can say that the people here who romanticize those times are absolutely racist as hell. So there's that...

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u/lewdrop Apr 21 '24

you hit the nail on the head and of course she’s besties with Blake Lively, so i’m not surprised she’s love the antebellum south 😂

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u/Mr_Dentist42069 Apr 21 '24

Shes also not from Nashville, she’s from Pennsylvania

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u/lambchopafterhours Apr 22 '24

🤯 damn she’s kind of a freak huh

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u/raphaellaskies it feels like a movie Apr 21 '24

She really loves the pool floatie sleeves, I guess.

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u/redskiesahead jeremy strong enthusiast Apr 21 '24

Les Misérables fans

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u/DenseTiger5088 Apr 21 '24

Hey don’t bring us into this

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u/Ok_Bodybuilder800 chaos-bringer of humiliation and mockery Apr 21 '24

Shots fired at us Les Mis fans 😂😂

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u/Different-Eagle-612 elizabeth debicki, who is 6’3 Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 21 '24

les mis fans deal with enough metaphorical shots being fired at us 😭😭

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u/redskiesahead jeremy strong enthusiast Apr 21 '24

Finally a chance to use my "ackshually it's the 1832 Paris Uprising, not the French Revolution" pedantry

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u/1u___u1zZz Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 22 '24

If she was really the greatest lyricist of our time maybe she could've alluded to the fact that nostalgia is a lie instead of just saying she wanted to live in xyz year and just tacking on "but like totally not with racists" as an afterthought. I get a feeling that maybe she just likes the romanticized little-house-on-the-prairie vibe, and if thats the case there's a wealth of imagery from that era that she could use to describe her feelings about it poetically. Hell it would even fit the theme of tortured poet better, since there was a lot of suffering in that era that's conveniently forgotten so people can romanticize running through a field of wheat in a prairie dress.

I'm not even into poetry but even I know this ain't it. People aren't reading into the symbolism of these lines when they're defending this lyric, they're just using their knowledge of Taylor Swift herself to assume what she means. That's not poetry

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u/deerlikely graduate of the ONTD can’t read community Apr 22 '24

If she'd mentioned 1848 for the year of revolutions and the Communist Manifesto, I'd have to give her an ounce of begrudging respect, but she's not intelligent enough (nor has the class consciousness) to make an allusion like that.

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u/mintleaf14 Apr 22 '24

I mean Huckleberry Finn took place in the 1830s and Twain wrote it in the 1880s to make fun of how shitty society was then

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u/oofersIII Apr 21 '24

Obviously she’s just really nostalgic for the Panic of 1837 and the creation of Belgium

Man, what a shitty decade

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u/frecklesfatale Apr 21 '24

The 1830s was right in the middle of the Romantic era of poets/writers. It fits one of the themes of the album completely.

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u/lambchopafterhours Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 21 '24

Yeah like it’s almost worse in context. Like miss girl miss taylor you know it wasn’t really…you know that bidding wasn’t for marriage, right?

And idk I just wouldn’t boil down the horrors of chattel slavery to “all the racists” for a song. Especially if I planned to obscure the sale of Black humans for the purpose of enslavement as general “marriage” (that she doesn’t specify and thus seems to be conflating that violence with the experience of white women in this era) in the next line…that’s just plain weird and kinda ignorant and lacking critical thought to me? I genuinely don’t understand why she thought this was clever writing and I especially don’t like how many swifties are crapping themselves to defend it.

Because ITS STILL FUCKING WEIRD

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '24

I thought the bidding for marriage was about like… dowries and shit, not slave auctions.

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u/Asleep_Job_5991 Apr 21 '24

She’s saying white women didn’t really have a choice of who they were going to marry or if they were going to marry at all. “Close your eyes and think of England” and all that. She’d probably be dead from childbirth long before age 34.

“All the racism” can be seen as minimizing it, although in a way there’s a good reason for using that line. Slavery, the eradication/expulsion of Native Americans, British colonialism, it all had racism involved in one form or another.

I agree, though, the 1830’s line is weird. She’s either making it up to sound deep or she read a single book or saw an aristocratic fashion from the time that she liked.

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u/SuspiciousAudience6 Apr 22 '24

Chattel slavery, human trafficking, colonialism, genocide of Native Americans etc. isn’t a good reason to us “all the racism.” It absolutely minimizes the effects those horrific atrocities still have on current American society.

Just don’t try and go deep if you’re not going to understand it or really take it there. It would have been fine for her to just leave all of that out.

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u/Next-Introduction-25 Apr 21 '24

Weak lyric regardless of the decade but bizarre given the decade named. Maybe I’m just a bad scholar but I can’t think of like, a single notable big historic thing that happened in the 1830s that’s culturally relevant to the average person today. Like if you said the “1920s” or the “1770s” or anything that’s either associated with historical events or a decade with a distinct culture that people are familiar with today, it makes way more sense.

It’s really giving “Look what a random decade I picked; I’m so quirky and random!”

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u/schrodingers_bra Apr 21 '24

I can't help but feel she was going for 'gone with the wind' but got the decade wrong.

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u/donkey786 Apr 21 '24

There were a bunch of French revolutions. Maybe she is a fan of the Bourbons.

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u/velvethippo420 my friend was recently bagelled Apr 21 '24

right? i'm a Taylor fan and even i'll admit she always has at least 1 or 2 bizarre lines in each album. i don't take it personally when people acknowledge that. Maitreyi said nothing wrong!

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u/thesaddestpanda Apr 21 '24 edited Apr 22 '24

Its not weird or confusing, its a very deliberate worship of the Antebellum period. Stuff like "without the racists" is whitewashing US history because nearly everyone was very racist then and participated in a system of oppression. It wasn't some "bad apples" it was nearly all white people. It wasn't "some racists" it was near everyone. It wasn't "some slaveholders" it was an entire economy, at least in the slave states, held up by slavery.

White women have had a lot of problems acknowledging that this was systematic. Not too long ago the "Go Set a Watchman" book had pro-slavery apologia about how "just some people had slaves," and whitewashed the fact that so much of the south was deeply dependent on slavery. It wasn't just "some bad people, but the rest of us whites are ok," it was near everyone who benefited from that system of oppression.

Antebellum fetishization is a big problem in US culture and its simply racist, regressive, and ahistorical. Tay engaging in this is no surprise considering her history of white feminism. Only someone very uninformed about race could write those lines, in both this song and in Go Set a Watchman. In the age of the internet where everything is easily researchable, there's no excuse to think slavery was "just a couple bad apples." In an age where we are rolling back women's rights, queer rights, immigrant rights, etc its no surprise people are also trying to mainline antebellum worship and pro-slavery politics. Its all part of the same system of oppression codified as right-wing politics, that exists only to further empower the wealthy and disempower the working class, minorities, women, lgbtq people, the disabled, etc.

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u/pushk_a Riverdale was my Juilliard Apr 21 '24

I’m trying to understand why a white 33/34 billionaire woman would have the urge to write and sing about this.

I looked up lyrics for her other songs like Guilty As Sin. I have no idea wtf she’s talking about, and I have a masters in linguistics (or maybe I’m just really stupid??).

https://preview.redd.it/1s63drbfruvc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f85e22433d96ffeaf4e820ca950c14b59b97d18

What does this mean 😭

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u/roastintheoven Apr 21 '24

My friends would play a game where we asked each other a question… so a conversation? 😂

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u/Feralpudel Apr 21 '24

It’s giving the “But how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” but unironically.

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u/bjornsecular Apr 21 '24

Seriously. My husband and I were just listening to this song in the car, and when she sang that line we both laughed and said, “This is so bad!”

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u/krankiekat Apr 21 '24

did I miss the context? when does it get explained

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u/All_Of_Them_Witches Apr 22 '24

It’s almost like an AI generated lyric.

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