here are some hyper-polluting individuals:
- the Rolling Stones’ Boeing 767 (5,046 tonnes of CO2)
- Lawrence Stroll (1,512 flights)
- Thirty-nine jets linked to 30 Russian oligarchs – (30,701 tonnes of CO2)
relevant quote:
But I will say this, a movement can’t get along without a devil, and across the whole political spectrum there is a misogynistic tendency to choose a female devil, whether it’s Anita Bryant, Hillary Clinton, Marie Antoinette, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or J.K. Rowling [or Taylor Swift]. And there’s always gonna be people who seize on any opportunity to be misogynistic. So I would advise trans people and our allies [or environmentalists] to keep in mind, that J.K. Rowling [Taylor Swift] is not the final boss of transphobia [anti-environmentalism]. She’s not our devil. The devil is the Republican Party, the Conservative Party.
—Natalie Wynn (emphasis and bracket text mine)
edit: if you can’t respond to this without using the c*nt expletive it is not helping your case lmao. mods are we okay with this? in any case, please don’t feed the trolls.
edit 2/FAQ: “but why did she threaten legal action against that college kid though?” still shitty, but refer to this comment for a good explanation of the context behind that decision.
She only threatened legal action since those memes started before when her flight movements got the attention of the right in an attempt to make her less credible of a voice speaking out against trump. And knowing how batshit insane trump cultists can be and how she’s basically the single most hated person of his base I’m not surprised that she feared for her security. Those records were public for years but the legal action only happened after someone created that meme and even fox news suddenly cared about plane emissions…
sources/timeline for the above:
- mid 2022, the media begins scrutinizing Swift for her flying patterns
- in response, Swift’s jet drops from 19 to just over 2 flights per month
- her flights pick up slightly with the start of her massive Eras tour but still significantly less than pre-July 2022
- December 6, 2023, Swift embroiled in election conspiracy theory, basically making her MAGA’s enemy number one.
- January 30, 2024, Taylor Swift gets rid of one private jet
- February 6, 2024, news outlets first report on the cease and desist.
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Stop trying to make this about Swift being a woman.
She’s getting all this attention about it because her legal team sent a cease and desist letter to the guy tracking her jet threatening him with legal action over priding publically available tracking information.
How does this make her “actions wrong”? Because you disagree?
Yes, it’s legal for him to do what he’s doing, but it is also legal (and completely reasonable) for Swift to challenge that right because she fears for her safety. This is literally what our legal system is for.
There are a lot of insane people out there (and most of them tracking Swift’s plane at this moment are right wing psychopaths that wish her harm). I really can’t fucking blame her for wanting to do something about it.
How is knowing at what airport an airplane is, public information that anyone can just pull up and find without that much know how, a massive risk to safety.
And if it is, hpw is she going to stop them from dping the neglegable research themselves
Musk made the same argument.
So you think it’s perfectly moral for the ultra wealthy to abuse the legal system to threaten and bully random people into submission because they are ruining the billionaires image?
And again to reiterate, this is all publically available information, anyone who wants to track her jet can do so without the tracker that guy set up. She has no legal standing in her actions.
So you think it’s perfectly moral for the ultra wealthy to abuse the legal system to threaten and bully random people into submission because they are ruining the billionaires image?
Lol yeah bud, that’s what I said.
Dude, I understand it’s public information. I understand that current law (probably rightfully) allows air traffic to be tracked, including private jets.
I was simply doing something that you’re clearly incapable of, and empathizing (you remember empathy right?) with her position. A position that is markedly different than Musk’s, given that she receives a constant stream of legitimate death threats from people known to be violent; she has valid reason to fear for her life right now. I think I would probably do similar in such a situation.
I don’t think it’s “wrong” for her to seek to do what she can to protect herself, and that includes this.
The argument that “what they’re doing is legal” is pretty stupid too… I’m not even saying that I disagree that it should be legal, but how do you think laws change? The boundaries of them get tested in courts. This is not an abuse of the legal system, this is using it as intended.
Lol yeah bud, that’s what I said.
That is in fact, literarily, what you are saying and what you are continuing to say in the rest of your comment.
I was simply doing something that you’re clearly incapable of, and empathizing (you remember empathy right?) with her position.
Oh wont somebody please empathise with the poor billionaires that are using the insane wealth to bully people for criticising their insane over-use of private jets.
You guys are doing actual mental backflips to try and make Taylor Swift the victim here and its honestly just kind of sad.
given that she receives a constant stream of legitimate death threats from people known to be violent
And those people could find that same PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE information even without the guy’s tracker. So even if he did take it down, she is in literally no better position when it comes to stalkers.
Literally all getting him to take down the website does is stop people from criticising how much she uses her jet, which hurts her image. Thats it.
Like if she ACTUALLY cared that much about being tracked and her safety she could just charter private jets instead of owning her own. That way no one could track her. But she doesnt, because its not about her safety, its about her image.
This is not an abuse of the legal system, this is using it as intended.
Lmao swift stans are actually neurotic.
Lmao swift stans are actually neurotic.
FYI (because apparently this needs to be said), I’ve never once purposefully listened to a Taylor Swift song, and besides maybe two, I couldn’t even tell you if a pop song currently playing is her or not. That’s how little I care about this person’s art/music. My feelings toward her can be described as, at most, ambivalent. I’m definitely neurotic though, but that’s unrelated to this subject.
All I’m doing is empathizing with another human being. Billionaires might be (for the most part, though I’m not sure I can imagine a more ethical way to become one than how she has) awful people, but they’re still people and they deserve basic human rights such as: not being in 24/7 fear for the lives of you and your loved ones because fascists are mad that she told young people to vote.
I’m not even advocating for taking down the site or making the info no longer publicly available. I’m literally just putting myself in her shoes and rationalizing why she did what she did and understanding that I might have done the same.
We seem to be having two completely different conversations here, which I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about given that you clearly can’t comprehend nuance. Your clear hatred for this woman is clouding your ability to be a decent human. Do better.
All I’m doing is empathizing with another human being.
And all im saying is you can empathise with her without excusing her doing something immoral like harassing an innocent student.
Also you keep talking about empathy but refuse to even consider empathising with the guy being harassed by a billionaire celebrity.
Lol yeah dude that’s definitely “all you were saying”. You’re being such a reasonable interlocutor 🙄
She’s not harassing an innocent student. I don’t think it really matters to her who created it. She is just doing the one thing she can do that would maybe give her a fraction of a feeling of security back into her life. Something that I bet most of us, including you, would do. A student being involved is irrelevant.
And yeah, I do empathize with that guy as well. Assuming they didn’t create the app specifically for these types of people to be able to harass and endanger her more easily. Which he may have, I don’t really know all the details.
Isn’t that crazy? Empathizing with both people in a situation? Wild right?
Also, this pretending that it’s about giving her shit because of the environmental impact, give me a fucking break. Let’s not waste everyone’s time with that bullshit. Conservatives only “believe” in climate change, when they can use it as a cudgel against someone they feel threatened by. Actually a textbook fascist move (this isn’t a joke, it really is).
There’s no way musk doesnt get nearly a billion death threats per day, but when your job is to be known by as many people as possible, it scales up the good and the bad.
But if either of them are having a bad day I’m sure they can dry their tears with a couple hundred dollar bills and sue some more poor people into dust (completely legally!) to make themselves feel better
I would bet my next paycheck that Taylor Swift gets at least one order of magnitude more death threats on a daily basis than Elon Musk. At least.
Let’s just say there are certain demographics that tend to lash out in that manner, and they seem to overlap quite a bit with Musk fans.
And yeah dude, I get it. They’re billionaires, it’s hard to empathize. I agree to a point that they should shut the fuck up and just wipe their tears away with $100 bills. But in this case, when we’re talking about legitimate threats against her life constantly, by people who have shown to be very capable of carrying out such threats, then I can start to see why she is doing what she’s doing. Just because she’s got money doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to live a life free from that kind of fear.
That’s all.
I would bet my next paycheck that Taylor Swift gets at least one order of magnitude more death threats on a daily basis than Elon Musk. At least.
I worked in video games, and at one company there were five game designers, one of them a woman, the rest men.
I think she got a death/rape/etc threat once a week. One of the other designers had never even been messaged, and another designer was also the Community Manager. So, despite one guy being the literal face of the company, the single named woman on the design team got almost every single threat.
She left the industry, which is worse for it, but I don’t think anyone thought she made the wrong choice.
Na, she is getting this attention because some very powerful people, who benefit from producing a lot of greenhouse gases, would prefer that everyone be mad at T Swift instead of them.
Or, the much more likely thing that private jet usage has become a big talking point on the inter etc recently and swift having by far the biggest jet emission footprint of any celebrity.
Oh yeah, I agree, it is an interesting talking point. But If you have the goal of reducing green house gas emission, is memeing on T Swift the best target for that? Don’t get me wrong it is hilarious. I just get really frustrated when people say they are doing it for the environment, when what they are doing is mostly ineffectual and playing into the desires of the major polluters (who are very wealthy).
So in my mind, either a large group of online environmentalist have decided to be less effective at working towards their goal for no reason. Or there is a significate astroturfing thing going on here. Given that oil companies have done this kind of thing multiple times in the past, I think I have a reasonable assumption. I smell bullshit and I am calling it.
And then they ask why men get disillusioned from the left.
But its not the left, its the center right.
Yeah, criticizing the Rolling Stones in 2024 is totally equivalent to criticizing Taylor Swift, yeah let’s pivot right to that. Ignore the fact that she’s arguably the most popular musician on earth right now, just played a major cultural event, and all recent events… no, let’s go back to a washed up classic rock band and meme on them instead. Yeah, that’ll work.
Fucking Swifties dude…
honestly, for me personally? the fact a “washed up classic rock band,” as you put it, is outputting more CO2 than an actually-relevant Swift? that’s a huge difference and reason to be all the more critical of The Rolling Stones. like what are they even doing all that for lol.
i criticize both and defend neither.
Is this because she’s a woman or because she’s a billionaire? I feel like we make fun of plenty of men too
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I’m quite confident that, more often than not, women face greater challenges than men.
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This post is fucking weird.
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It’s because she’s threatening to sue the guy that tracks the jet.
Levying valid criticism on someone is not scapegoating. You can criticize more than one person for the same thing.
You can, but no one is
The only reason this has blown up is because she threatened that tracker with legal action. It’s the Streisand effect 100%. The same shit happend when Elon Musk shut down the account that was tracking him.
posting this once more for reach— this is a common misconception i am seeing, where people are getting the timeline reversed.
- December 6, 2023, Swift embroiled in election conspiracy theory, basically making her MAGA’s enemy number one.
- February 6, 2024, news outlets first report on the cease and desist.
The uptick in memes kicked off most significantly in December, and while, yes, the cease and desist was embarrassing fuel for the fire, there is no evidence that it was causal in any way.
Gee, it’s almost like she’s worried about stalkers or something. And I was on the net when elon tried it ands it wasn’t like this
You’re treating her better than Elon purely because she’s a woman. That’s sexism
Never said she was better. I am saying boys are treated differently to girls
You’re saying it’s valid and good for her to worry about stalkers. You are not saying the same about Elon. This is purely because she is a woman and he is a man. This is sexism.
Women are not delicate flowers who need to be protected. Men are not tough monsters who do not need protecting.
Billionaires are destructive enemies of humanity - gender doesn’t affect that analysis
Have u ever seen anyone mention any billionaire on this platform?
No one memed on Elon when he shut down his tracker? Or Kylie Jenner for the 3 minute flight?
Totally no one memed Jeff Bezos nor Zark Muckerberg nor Tonald Drump. No one.
Taylor has long had criticism for her jet use, the meme explosion is just about the media wanting to use her as hype prop while at the same time her team sued to shutdown the flight tracker kid. Posts that seem obsessed with possible damage to Taylor’s reputation sound like it is coming from a PR firm. Does Op genuinely believe that someone sees a Jet Meme and think differently of Taylor? Is Op against Taylor being the poster child for Aviation reform? I do not understand why an uninterested third party feels the need to prevent Taylor from suffering consequences of her actions merely because other heads should roll first.
ETA: I had to check if OP was a PR FIRM, check OP’s own response to Taylor Jet Memes: https://lemmy.cafe/comment/4651417
thanks for your commentary.
- taylor swift absolutely should face the consequences for her actions. there is no good billionaire.
- these memes kicked off in 2022, and Swift reduced jet use (significantly, but not perfectly) in response, something i have never seen from any other individual. she is still worthy of criticism but i question if what she is getting is proportionate.
- it is now 2024. i am concerned to see that Fox News is using this debacle to discredit her (good and positive) call to increase voter participation.
She isn’t getting the most hate because she is the worst offender, she is getting the most hate because she is the most famous and most beloved offender right now. People already hate the likes of Musk. Not saying this is the only reason and there’s no sexism etc involved, but it certainly is part of it. And I’d argue if calling attention to rich people’s environment sins, it’s going to get more attention the more famous and well liked the offender is. It’s ‘yes ALL billionaires are bad, even the one who’s likeable and pretty and makes good music and never says unhinged right wing stuff’.
Objectively and demonstrably false
The point is that the scapegoat is usually female. Why is Taylor Swift being singled out for her private jet use? Is it because her use is assumed to be less legitimate because she’s a woman?
A quick Internet search brought up this:
Among the most polluting jets covered by the list was a Boeing 767 wide-body aircraft used by the Rolling Stones. It emitted an estimated 5,046 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of someone taking 1,763 return flights from London to New York City in economy class.
Aircraft owned by Lawrence Stroll, the billionaire owner of the Aston Martin Formula One team, recorded a combined 1,512 flights since the start of 2022. His private aircraft, including two helicopters, also made the most journeys of 15 minutes or less.
Thirty-nine jets linked to 30 Russian oligarchs – including Roman Abramovich, Leonid Mikhelson and the recently deceased leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin – were responsible for 30,701 tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to the total average carbon footprint of around 1,000 Russians).
So, attacking billionaires who are abusing private jets is totally fair, in general, but always singing out the woman who does so is misogynistic.
Where are the Rolling Stones or Laurence Stroll memes?
There have been memes about lots of shit head billionaires. The Taylor Swift ones are popular right now because she Streisand’ed it by trying to get that tracker taken down.
This isn’t wrong, but the uptick in these memes coincides ridiculously with Trumps recent desire to latch on to her name.
The narrative is constantly being spun by these fucking goons.
The uptick is due to her threatening legal action against the flight tracker dude and being all over TV for football this season. I find it hard to believe the trumpers give a shit about the environment. But I suppose they could hop on the bandwagon if it fits their “enemy”
this is a common misconception i am seeing, where people are getting the timeline reversed.
- December 6, 2023, Swift embroiled in election conspiracy theory, basically making her MAGA’s enemy number one.
- February 6, 2024, news outlets first report on the cease and desist.
The uptick in memes kicked off most significantly in December, and while, yes, the cease and desist was embarrassing fuel for the fire, there is no evidence that it was causal in any way.
Please show me an onslaught of memes even 1/10 comparable from December to this past month. I’ll wait. Just because Trump is shit doesn’t mean we stop criticizing others who are wrong as well, even if they are against him. Trump is a billionaire asshole, Swift is a billionaire asshole, neither gets a pass.
will you actually change your position if i provide the requested information?
because here you go. documentation of an onslaught of conspiracy memes tracing back to September 2023 but continuing into December. and, as you correctly note, it transitions to the airplane memes again in late January 2024.
edit: make no mistake, i do not defend her. just clarifying the order in which things occurred. conservative anti-Swift sentiment was strong well before the Sweeney cease and desist, which provided the strong foundation for recent trends.
in response to public pressure, Swift recently cut back on private flights and downsized to one jet
So the memes worked?
She donated one of her private jets to an underprivileged kid who didn’t have any private jets.
Wtf does this have to do with her gender? Are you claiming she does not top the charts in celebrity carbon emissions, but is being used as the scapegoat instead of a man?
The Conservatives aren’t attacking her because of her gender, it’s because of
theirher influence. Misogyny has nothing to do with it, they’d do the exact same with any celebrity of any identity/orientation because they’re influence conflicts with their agenda, not because of their gender.This smells a lot like ground-laying for radical feminist arguments, I can’t find any other reason you would be here making a mountain out of an imaginary anthill. Moreover, I can’t understand why anyone upvoting this would care to see a non-humorous PSA in a “hello fellow teens” vaporware frame on a surrealist/(whatever it’s called) shitposting community unless it is meant to be satire.
edit: gendered a pronoun to make it concise who the subject was
Let’s not forget that at least 50 of Lawrence’s flights are F1 races scattered around the globe in a horrible order for environmental concerns and are increasingly hosted in oil barren countries because F1 loves blood/oil money more than anything
It’s a valid criticism, I’m just wondering where 90% of those folks criticizing were the last 10 years, when it would have also been a valid criticism against her, but only a select group of people called it out and I recall precisely zero memes on this specific topic. Curious, that this has only become a mainstream meme now that there is a defamation campaign actively being conducted against her by right wing media.
All billionaires are evil. That includes all female billionaires
I mean it’s hilarious that we pilloried Elon Musk for trying to sue someone for tracking his private jet with publicly available records and posting this online, but the same people are defending Taylor Swift for doing the same.
I don’t think it’s a gender bias so much as it’s a bias towards people we don’t like.
Do you have a list of people that you’re cross-checking to make sure they’re the same? Because you know how the internet works right? Those were likely not the same people.
In my opinion, they both have the right to challenge this, so there’s nothing wrong with her doing that. Second, conservatives are currently foaming at the mouth to do harm to this woman, so I really cannot blame her for feeling unsafe. Musk is just a crybaby.
Thinking rich people have the right to threaten people for knowing and stating public information is such a bonkers take. Thats like calling organ donors unethical.
I assume the jet thing is just an excuse because Taylor Swift is the target du jour of the MAGA movement. They don’t care about the jet use of anyone else but are actively making up shit about Swift.
This isn’t about principles. It’s just about othering.
I just… I can’t bring myself to give a shit about Taylor Swift’s airplanes when BP and Shell still exist and capitalism is still the dominant economic system.
BP and Shell only have that much power exacly because people buy fossil fuels from them. If demand would drop, their profits and political power would drop accordingly. As long as we don’t even hold the biggest financiers of these companies responsible, how can anything change? Demand drives supply.
It’s like saying “As long as hitmans exist, I won’t give a shit about the people who pay hitmans, all consumption under capitalism is unethical anyways so anything goes.” As long as we ignore those who actually fund the problem, we won’t be able to fix anything.
No they have so much power because decades of lobbying have made it impossible to get anywhere without traveling on a road in a car— Which uses gas. This is not a problem citizens can feasibly solve, this sort if problem can only be fixed with government intervention.
Maybe this time we can solve our problems by simply just hating a powerful, successful woman though.
*By simply hating a billionaire.
Some of the criticism levied against Taylor Swift is definitely rooted in sexism, misogyny, and political bias: but not all of it.
To lump everyone criticizing Taylor Swift into the same group as the misogynists and sexists is disingenuous. She deserves criticism and is not free of it just because she’s a woman.
She’s also one of the most famous people in the world. So of course she’s going to get more flack from her visibility alone.
Thus the following can be true: Taylor Swift isn’t the only one that deserves criticism from her private jet usage. And there are those that would criticize her in bad faith because of her political alignments/because she’s a woman. But even then the criticism she has received is still completely valid.
No billionaire deserves or needs special treatment.
I mean yeah definitely fair, i don’t disagree billionaires shouldn’t exist.
I appreciate the reply. I feel like a lot of people in this thread are failing to articulate themselves properly. Though there are clearly some commenters that have (very) misogynistic views that need to be checked.
I can give a shit about both and more.
Imagine if we could only give a shit about one threat to our existence at a time. We’d be ignoring a billion others.
I mean, kudos to you for having the energy to get so far down the list of things that actually matter about climate change that you reach the one person and a few private jets section of the list, but I’d rather use that brain space to play a board game or something.
Yet you have the energy to complain about me doing it.
I’m going to point out something else that, unfortunately, will feel like an attack to some, though I hope my viewpoint is sound:
Taylor Swift is a product of an industry supported by us. Maybe not you, the reader, specifically, though by a couple billion around the world, across often only dozens of artists. That is entertainment. That is the industry. A byproduct and need of this career is travel and you certainly aren’t taking a sailboat across the Atlantic to meet deadlines. Now, I am not blaming us. As always it is the industry and those expectations that should be blamed. We are a tiny part of a larger, global issue, though discriminated against and blamed due to our lack of individual authority. Gaslighting is a hell of a drug.
So while I can question Swift’s initial amount of private flights, I will also point out that her hopping in a plane is likely akin to us driving a car, in the essence of usage of resources. We all use in excess to some degree and she did dial it back. That alone is important. Finally, I want to call out the bandwagoners and the envious.
I haven’t knowingly listened to a single Taylor Swift song. Not sure I could name one tbh. Though for all the energy those of you who are envious put into criticism of what I can tell is one of the lesser evils amongst the many billionaires ruining this planet, you could be doing more and better. I’ll admit, many of the memes were rather funny and dunking on someone with the wealth to afford a team of private therapists can be enjoyable, it has bothered me that we leaned so hard on seemingly (so far) the one wealth enjoyer with a bit of empathy.
Anyway, on the toilet at work. So if you need a reason for this there you go. lol I recognize that I probably don’t have all the info. Plenty of people will likely come out with some nitpicked story or article or claim. On the scope of actual problems though? Taylor isn’t one of them, I feel. At least not yet. Hopefully not ever.
I’m really of two minds on the private jet thing, because she undeniably was doing it way too much and for way too short distances, but for longer distances, I can see someone of her level of fame needing to fly privately for security reasons. I doubt Taylor Swift walking through an airport and getting on a Delta flight would be especially safe for her.
I do not like the idea of celebrities traveling in private jets overall, but when you’re at Beatles-level fame? The Beatles chartered private flights too. Maybe she should charter, but I can see why flying commercial is a bad plan.
Let the mass downvoting commence.
Maybe we all need to stop subsidizing the airline industry so that these rich assholes who want to fly around all the time for their convenience can pay the entire price themselves. Airlines and airports are publicly funded and utterly unsustainable without massive infusions of government cash and protection at every step along the way.
The fact that we pretend these airline companies and airports are in any way actual businesses Is just a way for the wealthy who get to fly all the time (private jets or not) to offload the cost of their convenient transportation onto the American people.
I’m fine with government-run airlines, but I don’t think that would change the security issue I’m talking about.
I think the security issue is a non-issue, and there’s no way to “solve” it without creating greater problems and degrading other people’s rights.
The truth is, she doesn’t give a flying fuck about the consequences of her wealth getting. In some ways she is opposed to the right wing noise machine, but she is still acting as though she’s entitled to special treatment from the government including extra rights just because she’s rich.
She only decreased the number of private jet flights she was taking, and decrease the number of private jets she owned because of the public pressure. Her security is not more important than the environment.
She volunteered to take the heat off of Elon. I don’t know why she would do that, but she definitely volunteered for a lot of negative attention when she decided to target a private citizen doing something they are legally entitled to do and use her money to intimidate them out of exercising their rights.
That’s who she is deep down inside, entitled.
A non-issue? You think she doesn’t get mobbed wherever she goes? I’d call that a huge issue. Unless you think it’s okay for fans to paw at her, tear at her clothes, etc. That is what they do.
Exactly, she’s a victim. A victim of the life she chose and worked really hard to achieve. I bet she cries herself to sleep every night on her Scrooge McDuck style piles of cash.
No, she’s not a victim, she’s a security risk. Are you not reading what I’m writing? Do you think she would be the only one hurt if there were a riot?
Spujb is good people. I appreciate all the content you post.
So in all honesty, I have been adamantly anti Taylor Swift since the moment I learned there was a new pop star, but this is only because I hate all pop stars and anything corporate. I appreciate the reminder to check yourself on misogyny though. That really does slip into our subconscious so easily.
You know what hate brigade I am praying for? Dave fucking Grohl. I cannot think of a more neutral ass corporate shill.
holy shit homie this means a lot thank you 🫶
Is this Reddit?
Gtfo I can’t downvote this shit enough.
Ah yes, a text post with informative links… This must be Reddit!
What could possibly even be your problem with this post?
