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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34885 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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There is a related trend in pop music made by female Zoomers (or at least performed by them) wherein there’s this surprisingly huge corpus of songs about how bad guys are at sex and how women are better off pleasuring themselves. (I’m happy to provide multiple examples if people insist on it.) The tinfoil hat conspiracy theory is that these songs are being written by (((Them))) as intentional propaganda warfare to stoke division and mistrust between the sexes. Assuming that’s mostly or entirely untrue, though, it does reveal a very concerning element of young people’s consciousness.

And to be clear, I don’t think this began with Zoomers, although I think it’s gotten worse under them. Personally, I have a ton of neuroses about sex that I picked up as a result of being exposed to all of the (frankly, quite vindictive) complaints about men’s sexual performance by Millennial female comedians and cultural commentators. It makes it very hard to simply lose oneself in the moment sexually if one constantly has a voice in the back of the head saying, “What if she’s actually hating this right now? And she’s going to tell her friends or social media followers how bad it was later?” I don’t know how Zoomer men are supposed to function if this cultural norm is exacerbated further.

these songs are being written by (((Them)))

Taylor Swift is neither Jewish nor a Zoomer, but you're correct: every single one of her songs is about exactly this. And she's been Top 40 for over a decade, so you turn on the radio (yeah, implying zoomers use radio, but this is true on random streaming sites) and you'll usually hear one within the hour.

Alternately: "cuntry music".

And she’s going to tell her friends or social media followers how bad it was later?

Which is kind of interesting, considering the traditional standard is that women are generally more embarrassed by bad sex than men, where men would be more likely than women to be extra proud of the fact it happened in the first place. But then again, this is the age of competitive simping (whether the above is correlated or causative, I couldn't say), so the fact the man couldn't satisfy the woman is the more salient point.

I don’t know how Zoomer men are supposed to function if this cultural norm is exacerbated further.

They throw literal bags of money at "woman who doesn't hate you"-as-a-service products. Unfortunately for real women, technology makes this easy to scale. And that's ignoring the AIs.

Taylor Swift is neither Jewish nor a Zoomer, but you're correct: every single one of her songs is about exactly this.

This is not even a remotely accurate characterization of her lyrical content.

If you're tied up about it specifically needing to be about the sex act itself, sure.

That doesn't not make every Taylor Swift song the PG-rated version of that.

No, she literally has a ton of songs that are not about break-ups, not about disappointment or angst about a former partner, etc. This idea that all of her songs are breakup songs is nothing but a meme, assisted by the fact that she’s, well, had a lot of breakups in her personal life. It’s not hard to look up her lyrics, though, and a large chunk of them are actually something close to the polar opposite of what you’re suggesting.

This idea that all of her songs are breakup songs is

what you're naturally going to converge on if you turn on any random Spotify playlist. It's not so much a meme as it is what actually gets played; I have no problem admitting that not all country songs are some variation of the guy's wife/dog/truck leaving him, but it's most of what actually makes it onto the airwaves.

Huh? Literally some of her biggest hits are not breakup songs. “You Belong With Me”. “Mine”. “Love Story”. “Shake It Off”. “Delicate”. “Wildest Dreams”. “End Game”. “Lavender Haze”. “Fearless”. “Anti-Hero”. All of these are either very sincere love songs, or about something other than relationships entirely.

And considering your list contains literally every Taylor Swift song I know the name of, I for one have no fucking idea what Sin is talking about.

I'm pretty sure if you do a statistical analysis of the primary themes of Taylor Swift singles discography the majority are not breakup songs. But she has produced a huge amount of stuff that gets played on Hot 100 type radio/streaming, so it's easy to forget some. For example "I Knew You Were Trouble" and "All Too Well" are explicitly breakup songs about "bad" former lovers. They both got substantial air play and feature in the Eras Tour set-list. The set-list is a bit over three hours so the statement:

you'll usually hear one within the hour

is probably true. Assuming the set list is representative of what gets played on a all Taylor all the time stream, and I have forgotten at least one of her breakup songs.

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