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.
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.
thank you for this! your link didn’t work for me but i think this is the one.
and note that posting a taylor meme doesn’t make you misogynist—it just means you are playing into misogynist tropes and unfortunately giving freak MAGA propaganda a disproportionate platform.
not here to call anyone out, just asking us to consider what effects our trends and memes have on the broader world.
The rolling stones are at least two people (corpses?) which makes their use (presumably to and from an elderly home) at least twice as efficient as taytay
This changes everything
in response to public pressure, Swift recently cut back on private flights and downsized to one jet
So the memes worked?
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 :)
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 mid 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)
I always criticized her and every other ultra wealthy PoS. Celebrity culture needs to die off as it is anyway
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.
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.
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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.
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 :)
Oh that didn’t occur to me, I retract the last part of my comment!
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.
I’m just speaking to how she recently set a world record
The Rolling Stones have become the first act to reach the top 10 in the United States with new albums in every decade since the 1960s.
They may be decrepit, but they’re still massively popular. Just not so much among young people.
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.
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.
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.”
ThatThank you for putting this so well. Now we’re entering the next phase, progressives arguing and attacking each other while climate inaction continues uninterrupted :DSpujb 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 🫶
Thank you for saying this. I have nothing else to say but an upvote seemed insufficient!
thanks bestie 🫶
yeah, they only meme about her because she is a threat to the maga crowd
We already did Elon Musk, now we’re on Taylor Swift, the next one? Who knows
The Taylor airplane meme has basically been played out and is no longer funny.
But for me the reason I found those memes funny is the same why I find it more interesting to take the piss out of Bill Gates rather than Musk. Everyone already knows Musk is a complete nut job. But there seem to be an alarming amount of people that think Gates is genuinely a good person because of his stupid charity.
From what I see Taylor Swift is just a business woman doing business, and she is very good at that. So most decisions she makes are because she assesses that they are good for her brand, and this includes political decisions/ standpoints. The airplane angle is one of the few things she can not control in this regard, and that is why I find/found it funny to stress that point.
The concept of the airplane meme might be loosing steam, but I enjoy the creative works and get thrilled when I see a new level added on. The airplane for bed, airplane for an airplane, it’s the same category of humor in which I can find an Onion article entertaining even if I read a serious news article about the same subject.
Based take
Feminism goes brrrr, as it should ✨🚀