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.
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We already did Elon Musk, now we’re on Taylor Swift, the next one? Who knows
Billionaires Aren’t People
Corporations aren’t people, billionaires literally are; that’s the problem, no single human should have such an out sized share.
The best way to make it easy to commit crimes against other humans is to turn them into non people.
I however see no problem in this instance. Carry on.
It’s funny because she is not a plane or made of planes, or brushes her teeth with airliners, but the funny pictures say that she is lol
the memes are funny! you’ll never catch me discounting that. i just think it’s good to question who is benefiting from the disproportionate coverage in 2024, and if a stronger case could be made to direct our meming at others. :)
why am i supposed to care about this person? why do people keep talking about her? i don’t care!!!
She has caused Republican thinktanks to panic by not supporting their candidate for president. She is the new Hillary Clinton, and if that name doesn’t ring a bell, I am not trained to help you.
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.
based
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.
I agree that many urban areas need a lot more and better public transport, which is a systemic solution.
In rural regions it’s not practical to build enough infrastructure to replace private transport though. Electric cars are a good solution there and will also get more affordable in the next years (over the lifetime they are already roughly as cheap as gas cars).
Maybe this time we can solve our problems by simply just hating a powerful, successful woman though.
Call me weird but when I condemn an action, I do it equally without regard for what’s between the person’s legs.
My comment has nothing to do with Taylor Swift. In fact, I’m a fan of hers. I’m entirely talking about the companies, BP and Shell.
*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.
Taylor Swift isn’t a threat to our existence, her plane emits 8000 tons of CO2 a year, roughly equivalent to the emissions of two thousand cows. At least she pays for carbon offsets.
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Imagine replying to a comment that is clearly about relative impacts, and twisting it so that it sounds like the person you are replying to has some sort of fundamental deficiency in how they perceive the world.
How wonderfully ironic!
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.
All energy use is equal! Also, nuance does not exist, and actually, it never did!
Thank you for saying this. I have nothing else to say but an upvote seemed insufficient!
thanks bestie 🫶
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.
why is everyone fixated on private jets lmao, it’s prolly not a significant part of billionaires’ footprint
It’s actually by far the biggest part of her footprint.
Most people don’t realise just how bad private jets are.
No, it’s a lot of their footprint. And it’s entirely temporary - a mansion should last generations, but a flight on a jet is instant carbon with zero long term value
Pretty sure it’s a campaign message. Throw lots of ‘oh look Taylor is destroying the environment with her jet’ noise around the interwebs to try and discredit her voice against Trump. It’s a PR campaign designed by toddlers.
Put a carbon tax on jet fuel and use the proceeds to build better carbon neutral public infrastructure and she can fly as much as she wants for all I care
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every day i wake up and am sad that we live in a world where PR designed by toddlers works :(
The venn diagram of people concerned enough about the climate to dislike Taylor Swift and people who would ever vote Trump are two distant, distant circles
And yet, Trump voters just love the owner of an electric car company.
They care more about attacking than consistency.
(They don’t love him because he makes electric cars)
It’s not about Republicans caring about the climate, it’s about delegitimizing Swift’s statements against them. They can paint her as a hypocrite and drown out anything she has to say, basically.
Unfortunately the target audience is also toddlers, so it is very effective.
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
Have u ever seen anyone mention any billionaire on this platform?
Musk gets far worse said about him.
Nice.
Objectively and demonstrably false
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
You are correct in entirety.
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.
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’.
I agree with you but “lol maybe Taylor herself is a jet, that’s funny” is far from PR material
I viewed it as an answer to my question “Does Op genuinely believe that someone sees a Jet Meme and think differently of Taylor?”, I only saw the post because I checked if it was PR firm.
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.
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No u.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Thank you for providing that first source with no mention of plane memes at all, which is the entire point of the conversation.
i mean good news if you are looking for a significant numbers plane memes in December 2023 you are chatting with the choir lol. i don’t claim that those exist in any significant number at that time so i think there was some misunderstanding and we may agree on this point.
my analysis is that a resurgence of plane memes arose out of pre-2024 conspiracy sentiment, to put it shortly. this is in parallel with Pappa_Mo’s comment. i hope we can recconnect and see eye to eye on this. because yeah i do agree that there was a 2024 uptick in memes, though i had originally worded it in a “fuel-to-the-fire” way, your wording is not wrong.
They do give a shit about people who give a shit about the environment, at least.
Following the whole Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce/Superbowl nonsense where conservatives were worried it would provide a platform for Swift to be more vocal about her opposition to Trump, this whole “scandal,” if one can call it that, is mighty convenient in that it drowns out any other message she would have to say.
Now if she says anything against Trump, anyone can just point to her jets and claim “Democrats are supposed to care about the environment, yet Taylor Swift can’t stop flying everywhere in her two private jets. Is a hypocrite someone you should take political advice from?”
This changes everything
I like this format for public address
Your points have been heard and my opinion has been swayed
yo thanks :) take care 🫶
Well, there is Dexter Holland (Lead singer of The Offspring) that flys his own private jet. So you can yell at him now
Flying your own jet isn’t better or worse than having someone else fly it.
But if his private jet is a normal private jet and not a small Cessna then yes he should stop flying it.
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 🫶
I’m not sure I fully understand the criticism to be perfectly honest. Is it actually possible to have a mega pop star of that type without them having a more intensive carbon footprint? Like she can’t really fly commercially for a lot of reasons. Tour schedules are one thing but can you imagine the scene it would make?
Fame is really just letting one person, who we consider special for some reason, use the resources of many. They get to live an extravagant lifestyle and we get the cultural benefit their work.
Bottom line: private jet travel seems to me like a requirement of her job. I’m not about to sit here and shame everyone for the carbon output that their job requires of them. She is not some capital class, passive income, leech. The lady works.
FWIW, I don’t really think I could name or identify one of her songs. Everything I know about her is what bleeds through into my media sphere. She could be a real shitheal for all I know.
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How does car get to the place the jet landed? Another bigger jet full of cars? That’s how the presidential motorcade works. Seems really consumptive, but it’s one person who leads a nation of 350M, so it also doesn’t make me angry.
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A swiftie who’s being really fucking obtuse.
:::How does car get to the place the jet landed?
She rents one you smooth brain.
Sigh…
People who have enormous fame or import like miss swift can’t exactly travel public roads in an unmodified car from fucking Avis. Not only is fame a tremendous distraction on the road, but she is also a lightning rod for insane people who are known to be heavily armed.
I mentioned the president’s motorcade because she has some of the same problems. She and the president share security problems you don’t have. Those security problems have expensive and carbon intensive solutions. You’re not smarter than all the people who work on the problem. I promise.
Now, before you start name calling on the internet why don’t you flip that dog’s breakfast of yours into the on position.
can’t exactly travel public roads in an unmodified car from fucking Avis
Eye roll…
Yes they can and they do. I work for one of the big 3 and when I was an intern I had to do things like book travel for artists, including one of the biggest artists in the world, and they literally do just take an Addison Lee to the studio, or talk show or whatever they’re doing.
Taylor Swift doesnt need a fucking motorcade and we dont need to bend over backwards to accommodate pop starts like they’re fucking royalty.
Now please, take a moment before commenting on something you know literally nothing about to think if stating your irrelevant opinion as if its fact is worth anyones time reading it.
How does car get to the place the jet landed? By… driving there? What’s the confusion? Why are you so concerned that someone will John Lennon her yet Keanu Reaves can take the subway?
different cars in different locations.
for example if she flys into a airport on the Eastern side of the country, you’d just contract out a car there. many airports even have multiple car rental companies on site to handle such things. for more upscale stuff, there are usually smaller flight companies around the airport, and they handle all the details.
you just fly the people in, they get the car at that location, and then drive to wherever they’re going.
in the case of musicians, if they’re on tour they usually have busses they charter, along with large semi trucks to drive the gear and stage stuff.
Bleh, she’s a brand, not a person, she doesn’t work she’s just a part owner of the brand, and celebrities need to be abolished anyway.
The issue isn’t that she has a private jet or uses it, it’s that it’s used for 13 minute flights.
https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-private-jet-jack-sweeney-flights-1868272
And also, that someone built software to show publicly available data on how inefficient the use of her jet is, and then her team threatened legal action against them
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/taylor-swift-jet-tracking-legal-threat/
Her jet was 28 miles from it’s destination, the president of the United States still travels that destination by vehicle (granted it’s a motorcade) but still far more environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels in a jet to hop over to the next airport
really that depends on a number of factors. like how big the jet is, etc.
some of those planes are pretty small.
my friend and i worked with a guy for many years, that was also a pilot. he was a pretty frugal dude, but was fairly smart with his money. flying his small plane was a bit of a hobby for him. he owned a store location in the city we were in, but also had another store location about a hour/hour-and-half drive. sometimes he would take his plane, as it was actually cheaper and faster to go to the airport, get his plane prepped, fly out, do whatever he had to do, and fly back.
undoubtedly he was using this as an excuse to fly his plane a bit. but i definitely know he wouldn’t have been doing it if it was costing him any significant amount of money. he wasn’t loaded, and was always about saving some money.
There’s no way that was a jet. A jet is in an entirely different class than a little prop plane… It’s like comparing a motorcycle to a tank
ok but I don’t think many billionaires are out there flying Cessnas to save a bit of money.
Meh, sometimes I drive places a really should have walked. Same shit different scale. I am not moved to anger by this. Eliminate fame or accept that it’s resource intensive.
different scale
Yeah that’s kind of the entire point.
Meh, sometimes I drive places a really should have walked.
sounds like you are part of the problem
Few centuries ago special people (who have power) have slaves but things have changed. Maybe they shouldn’t do concerts every week all over the world, they shouldn’t fly over the country to assist to the opening of some store,…etc.
You know things change and we should adapt.
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.
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Yeah, that was an analysis fail in my opinion. I am sure being a woman has something to do with it, but I think it is way more about the big polluters looking for a scape goat and finding one in T Swift.
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Ok, so first off, it is impossible for it not not at least a little bit that she is a woman. Sexisim is a thing and we could argue about how much it is affecting things, but your dumb if you think it has 0 effects. Multiple things can be true at the same time. Check your brain worms before they eat you alive.
Yes, billionaires are a problem, but jetting around is tiny damage compared to large scale manufacturing, which is where the real money and environmental damage is. And the real money loves what your doing. They love that everyone is shitting on T Swift, because that means, they get some time that they aren’t public enemy number one.
What makes her a cunt?
being a billionaire
So you blame her for being successful? Why not blame the government for not taxing the rich 100% on money recieved over 100 million or some other number so they can’t be billionaires?
Edit: damn… people are pissed for all the wrong reasons.
There is no such thing as an ethical millionaire. Let alone a billionaire. Any person that is fine with having a wealth well beyond what they could even spend is not a good person.
Being sucsessful doea not equate to being a billionaire, to be a billionaire requires mass exploitation. If you think success requires others to be exploited than I truly feel sorry for you, and you have my pitty
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The corpo bootlicking is insane
You do not gain that much money being a good person, but Im sure she loves you dude
“Nothing to do with her being a woman” -uses word that has historically been used as a slur against women-
Unless they’re Australian because they use cunt like Canadians use ‘eh’.
It’s also used against men. Checkm8.
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