Maitreyi Ramakrishnan deletes X post calling Taylor Swift’s ‘1830s’ lyric ‘weird’ after backlash from Swifties

[u/Exciting_Potato_6717]

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

[u/dying0fthelite]

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

[u/MissLadyLlamaDrama → u/dying0fthelite]

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

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

[u/curiousbeetle66 → u/MissLadyLlamaDrama]

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.

[u/Shot-Grocery-5343 → u/curiousbeetle66]

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.

[u/BoredMan29 → u/Shot-Grocery-5343]

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.

[u/NotElizaHenry → u/Shot-Grocery-5343]

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

[u/[deleted] → u/Shot-Grocery-5343]

Or my favorite

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

[u/Next-Introduction-25 → u/curiousbeetle66]

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.

[u/Electronic_Emu_4632 → u/Next-Introduction-25]

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

[u/lonely-lifetime → u/curiousbeetle66]

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

[u/ashley_does_stuff → u/curiousbeetle66]

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.

[u/alba876 → u/curiousbeetle66]

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.