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…
[…] For Swift, this is legitimate fear. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced actual fear for your life, but it’s crippling, and it effects your psyche. To experience that on a daily basis because of an app? You bet your goddamn ass I’m going to talk to my lawyers about what my options are.
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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Levying valid criticism on someone is not scapegoating. You can criticize more than one person for the same thing.
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.
I mean there was a Twitter account that followed Elon’s jet and was banned. That was the first time I saw a big meme around billionaires using jets. And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen other people criticized for it too. I feel like the focus is on Taylor this time around, but it’s just one of many. Although I’m not saying there’s no mysoginy involved, but I don’t think she’s singled out if you think of a couple years timeframe.
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
Lgbtiq have the same struggles as heterosexuals
Coloured people have the same problems as whites
Third world problems are the same as first world problems
Go home mate you’re cooked
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.
No one memed on Elon when he shut down his tracker?
Yes they did? When he announced he was buying twitter/everyone/ was miming on him because they knew he was buying it to shut down that account.
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
Have u ever seen anyone mention any billionaire on this platform?
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.
yep! the memes worked over a year ago. see my sources below. my concern is that the memes are spiking now when the joke has already made a difference. again, this is all valid criticism in a vacuum! but i encourage folks to consider how much the MAGA crowd has latched onto Swift as their “female devil.”
24 flights per month at the beginning of 2022
12(ish) flights per month at the beginning of 2023 while she kicked off her massive eras tour
Recently or a year ago? I think both, as she did get of the other plane just a few weeks ago.
flights were reduced in early 2023. and you are correct that she got rid of one of the planes super recently. sorry for the confusion, hope this clarifies :)
I agree with the general idea here, but when I started following the Swift jet tracker after the Superbowl, I saw her make two flights that next day. Seems to me, some people are taking a whole hell of a lot while the rest of us are left with scraps.
Is this because she’s a woman or because she’s a billionaire? I feel like we make fun of plenty of men too
-
I’m quite confident that, more often than not, women face greater challenges than men.
-
This post is fucking weird.
Yeah, I’m not doubting the validity of the statement that women definitely have hardships men don’t, but I really feel like that’s not why she’s being memed.
-
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.
Tin foil hat take
Looks like the oil company representative found me :)
Its adorable you think swift sent lawyer threats at the request of an oil company
I never said that. You should practice reading more. Don’t worry tones of people have overcome illiteracy. I believe you can too.
tones of people have overcome illiteracy
What did they do about overcoming irony?
Shes getting this attention for the same reason musk got it. She sent legal threats to someone legally pointing out public data about wasteful private flights.
Theres no secret cabal of oil magnates puppeteering internet memes. She is being mocked for trying to threaten someone over public info of her wastefulness.
Yeah, I agree, I think some of this is due to the streisand effect. And I think T Swift is dumb for trying to sue that reporter. But Elon got way less shit than this when he tried to silence the reporter tracking his flights.
As for the secret cabal of oil magnates, your right, they don’t exist. There is a public cabal of oil magnates. They have done several astroturfing campaigns in the past that are now well documented.
It’s because she’s threatening to sue the guy that tracks the jet.
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.
Yeah it sucks they seem to get a free pass, there certainly is an element of truth in this post. However, I still think the post is fighting the wrong battle. Memes will pass and Swift has certainly caused this shitstorm herself by threatening to sue a regular joe over public accessible information.
It’s a general accepted truth rich people and companies have been spewing the majority of CO2 emissions, and this post is just a whole load of “whataboutisms”.
I genuinely can’t believe I’m the first one to actively press the downvote button on this post, what a load of bullshit.
this instance has downvotes disabled which is why you are seeing as though you are the first to downvote.
i hear and understand your position, and fear not you are not alone in your opinion :)
I only know Taylor Swift from Americans talking about her. Presumably she’s “the biggest in the world” just like the Superbowl is the biggest TV or sports event in the world, which it isn’t.
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
This is the issue, not criticising Swift in general.
OP misses the mark in my eyes, not because the misogyny isn’t fuelling the recent wave of criticism from the right (who couldn’t give two fucks about emissions since they don’t believe in climate change), but because it lumps all criticism of Swift together, valid or not, almost feeling like it’s pro-Swift rather than being anti-misogyny, and fuck being pro Swift, and excusing any of her actions (downsizing from two jets to one isn’t worthy of any praise nor defence, it’s not like she can use both at once, and is still flying just as much).
You can (and should) call out misogynists without defending the billionaire.
thank you for your nuanced response :)
i absolutely hear your qualms with my post and i wish i was a good enough rhetoricist to quell them, but i’ll just say i 100% am not in this to defend Swift. when the memes kicked off over a year ago in mind 2022 i found them really funny and rhetorically useful. she deserved the eyes on her that she got because it was proportionate to the damage she is causing.
but now it’s 2024 and she has reduced flights by over half (depending on how you count), and it’s only now that the meme has really become fashionable? this is where i see the issue, that the collective ridicule for her is now disproportionate to the damage she is involved in.
does she deserve the memes still? yeah totally. is she the very best option to meme among the dozens of celebrities and capital owners who do almost identically awful things? i personally don’t think so, not quite. is it concerning that MAGA folks have latched on to her now as evil for encouraging votes, citing CO2 emissions as though they had ever given a flying fuck about them? absolutely.
summary: i have zero defense for Swift or her actions. it is impossible to become a billionaire without exploitation. but the window of peak rhetorical opportunity for these memes has passed by over a year and it’s very unlikely that beating this dead horse is going to make any further positive change in her behaviors. i’m here to encourage you to just see that, and make your own decisions from there.
I appreciate you hearing me out and yeah, I’ve seen you around (in a non stalkery way lol) and you don’t strike me as someone who would support her, but this one meme kinda does? But then, I’m looking at it from the very far left, it would absolutely hit home with a more liberal crowd, which is probably more the target audience, so it might be just right for that. 🤷♀️
I guess it just feels icky to me to have to use she only uses one jet 3 times a day now as a positive thing, plus I have a very low tolerance for lib-coddling lol… 😂(E: nothing against those who can take it for the sake of educating them, I just can’t do it anymore, I’m blunt, and it’s up to them to take it or leave it)
That you for putting this so well. Now we’re entering the next phase, progressives arguing and attacking each other while climate inaction continues uninterrupted :D
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.
This is about Swift trying to take down the guy aggregating PUBLIC flight data because it inconveniences her.
deleted by creator
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
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).
Lmao simp. Taylor Swift does not care about you and will never acknowledge your existence.
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.
Musk made the same argument.
This right here. Posts like that are guilty of what they accuse themselfes: Making it about sexism.
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.
Thank you for saying this. I have nothing else to say but an upvote seemed insufficient!
Remember when Taylor Swift urged her audience to go out and vote? I can’t escape the feeling that riffing constantly on her carbon footprint is a retaliation for that. They finally found something about her to latch on to.
I just don’t understand this. In any reasonable conversation, these two things have nothing to do with each other.
Who is reading Swift memes and thinking “Man, I was going to vote, but seeing how much she jets around has really made me not want to anymore.”
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 🫶
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
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
yeah, they only meme about her because she is a threat to the maga crowd
