Meme Report 7/9/26
You KNOW I'm Gonna Talk About The Wedding
Taylor Wedding
Well, I got what I wanted out of this weekend. It was thrilling to find out that, for once in her life, Taylor Swift made the right sartorial choice and went with Dior a la Jonathan Anderson instead of whatever Stella McCartney disaster we were all imagining. It was exciting to piece together the guest list as people arrived. I nodded solemnly when Karlie Kloss showed up in gold, which is significant to me for reasons I can’t explain here (iykyk). It was fun that we could see Travis’s hand in the choice to have Adam Sandler as the officiant. As far as events designed for celebrity gossip, it did the job for me. (AND it’s awesome that 5 days later, not only are we still talking about the wedding, Margaret Qualley and Jack Antonoff divorce rumors are circulating BECAUSE of the wedding)
For me, there are three defensible positions about Taylor Swift’s wedding.
I love Taylor Swift, and I want to see what her wedding looks like.
This is a more or less normal desire in modern times. Pretending to not understand this is moronic. We experience her first through the music and second through a collection of images. What is a wedding if not a collection of images?
I hate Taylor Swift and do not care about this wedding.
Totally fine. Absolutely defensible and understandable. The girls on the news who said, "We don’t know, we just got here from Schenectady,” set the standard for not knowing and not caring. If you fall into this camp, strive to know nothing.
I love Spectacle and Celebrity.
This is my camp. I love entertainment and to be entertained. I want to see how big it can get. I used to be a hater until I realized I care too much to actually be a hater. Celebrity is storytelling, and I’m invested in the story being told. That makes me categorically a fan. Once I reconciled this, I was a lot happier with myself and with the world. Yeah, I care about Taylor Swift’s wedding. I want to know what happens next!
It’s not that I think she’s above criticism. I just think most people criticizing her are doing it wrong. They don’t seem to understand the level they’re playing at or the place she occupies in the world. To see tweets on Saturday afternoon bravely calling the whole affair “tacky” or “not romantic” felt like amateur hour. She’s the most famous woman in the English-speaking world, bring out some real barbs, or don’t waste my time. Taylor Swift’s wedding wasn’t properly romantic enough for you? Are you a conservative 45-year-old woman whose only friends are from church?
Do I think the wedding was perfectly executed? Kind of. It fell exactly where it needed to on the line between intrigue and invitation. She understands that people want to feel a part of it, and it’s easier to throw them a bone and then close the doors than it is to get full privacy. The train has left the station on normalcy, and anyone expecting it is totally in the wrong. Everyone’s wedding is tacky and narcissistic. Weddings that aren’t narcissistic are sad.
I find a lot of criticism of Taylor comes from her failure to perform morals I don’t share. A puritan humility I don’t believe in, cloaked in left-leaning ideals. A belief that on the leftist commune, there will be no desire for spectacle or entertainment. We will all do our chores in perfect plain harmony, and no one will be more special than another. At night, we will read quietly to ourselves from books about the virtues of the worker and the evil of the before times. No one should be a billionaire. We should never take pleasure in the spectacle of money. We should never take pleasure in spectacle at all.
What makes me most upset about leftist aversion to popular culture is the denial that it might be good or enjoyable to both the average person and the people arguing against it. I’d be more willing to sympathize with their cause if they were willing to say, “I abstain from the popular thing because I find it morally reprehensible, but I do enjoy it.” Then we might listen. Sell us on the virtue of going without. It’s not impressive to skip something one doesn’t enjoy, and it’s even less impressive to spend days picking apart something one is claiming not to be invested in. I simply wish all the people who didn’t care about Taylor Swift truly didn’t care about her.
She’s not above criticism, but if the point of criticism is to make the audience consider things they haven’t before or bring new ideas and analysis to a cultural object, “it’s tacky” and “it’s a flagrant display of wealth” aren’t cutting it for me. Tell me something I don’t know.
Mitch McConnell
Let me know when something happens. I can’t wind myself into a tizzy every time an old person goes to the hospital.
TikTok
Love Island
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Happy to report Love Island has broken containment. I have learned the names “Trinity,” “Bryce,” “Sincere,” “Kayda,” “Jen,” and “Titi”. I’m circling some discourse, but nothing too interesting. It all blends in my mind, and I am neither hooked nor grabbed by conversations of lust or being a “girl’s girl”. In my mind, this season is a flop, but those of you who are actually watching can beg to differ in the comments.
Halley Kate
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After a defense of Taylor Swift, I’d like everyone to lock in for real misogyny hours, where I tear into a woman I don’t know who I think is annoying for reasons both justified and coming from the core wound that we will never be desired in the same way.
Halley Kate is one of the NYC influencers I keep on a short leash. She comes across my FYP, and I watch, but I’m never that interested, and I’m almost never on her side. She never gets me the way a Brett Chody or a Jaz might. Hayley lacks something I like in an influencer, though I can’t put my finger on what exactly that is. Her recent marriage has incited more eye rolls than interest from my fellow gossip hounds and me. The whole thing with Hayley Kate is that she took back her ex, who cheated on her, and she “doesn’t want a wedding”. I’ll be honest, I don’t really care about the taking back the ex part except for the fact that she is always talking about and defending him. If she let us forget, we might not bring it up all the time. This is the same problem as the wedding. 6 months of vamping about “not wanting a wedding” to having an “elopement party” and a “reception”. I get what she’s doing, she wanted both attention and the pressure to be off to have the wedding her best friend Jazz had (at the blank space mansion). For 6 months, she started her content with “I know you guys are annoyed at me” because she built the narrative of being annoying instead of pioneering the small but still expensive influencer wedding.
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There is a kind of girl whom I truly can’t handle. Someone who wants to be different but does not have the edge to really depart from the norm. The kind of girl who may be outspoken or weird among her conservative friends but wouldn’t last a day among those of us who truly struggle to conform. The kind of girl who really has to try to be different, while some of us simply cannot help it. A conventionally attractive blonde woman whose boyfriend treats her badly wants to have a small(ish) wedding. In her world, that basically translates to not having a wedding at all. Anything less than 250 (both guests and hundreds of thousands of dollars) is an elopement.
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The only reason this… event is worth writing about is that Hayley really went for it with one of her looks: The Hat Veil. We all saw The Parent Trap and tucked away the hat veil look as a possibility. How many women walk into bridal shops, try on a veil hat, and think nevermind, knowing they can’t pull it off? Hayley Kate went for it to interesting results. She has the self-confidence to wear the hat, but lacks the x factor needed to truly pull it off.
Millie Bobbie Brown and Louis Partridge
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Louis Partridge, Orod’s ex, whom the album is about, is currently on a press tour for Enola Holmes 3 with the one and only Millie Bonnie Bon Jovi, who seemingly hates his guts. These two have no chemistry off-screen, and I have nothing to say about on-screen because I haven’t seen any of the Enola Holmes franchise. Every clip I see is of two people who can’t wait to be done with each other. Especially because Millie keeps subtly bringing up ORod, or at least it seems that way in the clips I’m being shown. Really fun wrinkle in the whole story. Can’t wait for Enola Holmes 4!
Netflix Doc
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I’m of two minds about this. Horrified at the reminder of how the main source of entertainment that everyone talks about (coworker media) is Netflix documentaries, and overjoyed that everyone still loves playing pretend. It is a comfort to know that everyone is still pretending to be interviewed for everything. Many of us share a fantasy that one day we will get to explain what really happened or that the world will finally understand what we went through. We’re all normal, and we all just want a chance to explain ourselves.
In my socialist utopia there’d be plenty of room for spectacle and lots of it, but yeah no billionaires. No spectacles of giant private spending. There’d be a range of wealth levels, but far far narrower than what we’ve got.
But when I read something like this I pause. Maybe a lot of people really like watching — even just knowing about — super rich and famous people doing their huge parties, wearing their $100K dresses, driving up in their million dollar cars.
Maybe a lot of people want their royalty, their princes and princesses and counts and countesses — as long as the nobility is putting on publicly visible (if private guest list) events.
Personally I hate those things. Loathe celebrities and the culture that surrounds them. Loathe grotesque displays of wealth. Loathe huge hoards of wealth period.
And I’m no Swift fan. Mostly not her fault — she’s horridly overexposed, can’t escape her even when I’m watching a Knicks game fer chrissakes. But I also don’t like her music much.
But ideally my socialist utopia would let everyone have some of what they really loved. Otherwise it’s no kind of utopia!
So maybe I’ve got to revise my vision to include some way of providing celebrity wealth spectacles. Maybe a kind of contest (Hunger Games style?) to select a dozen people who get to be the rich celebrities for the year? (After which they are sacrificed of course in the tradition of all ancient May Queen rituals.)
But seriously. It’s not utopia if a lot of people want this kind of thing and can’t get their fix. I’ll have to take the celebrity lovers into account, figure out how to provide for their tastes (ahem) too.
So pertinent and beyond sage, and just a barnburner of a post as always!!! I often feel a lot of cognitive dissonance/OCD-induced guilt for being a leftist who also worships at the altar of pop culture/movies/ tv/music due to their inextricable role in endorsing or exemplifying capitalist propaganda. But I also know if I tried to abide by the lifestyles of the leftists who disavow all celebrity and culture, I wouldn't have the anchor toward the interconnectedness of humanity-- or the vitality of connection, community love-- that the best of art reaffirms! Like I know my dreams are to be a screenwriter more than anything, and I'd be the most horrid carpenter on the socialist commune, and just hope I'm not a complete sellout/aligning with the billionaire class for knowing that pop culture and art are my fuel, in the way theory is fuel for a lot of leftists!!