New Taylor Swift Hostility and Parasocial Relationships
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UCF chapter.
Content warning: Please note this article mentions topics of violence against children and women, stalking, murder, and hostile treatment of celebrities.
Taylor Swift has been a pop-culture icon for nearly two decades, so while there are many adoring fans, it only makes sense that she would collect haters. She’s never let these haters bother her, though, and instead dismissed them as inconsequential in her song “Shake It Off” with the lyric, “haters gonna hate.” However, these haters are becoming dangerous in a way that threatens not just Swift and her fans but everyone.
Photo by Paolo V distributed under a CC BY 2.0 license
Taylor Swift’s hate has become extremely prevalent in the past year with the success of her Eras Tour, her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and her 2024 Grammy Awards win. When her stardom achieved unthinkable levels, many people started to scramble for ways to bring her down. People have become unashamed to comment on their distaste for the singer. There have been many comments on TikTok, such as “If Taylor Swift has no haters, I’m dead,” among others.
This hate becoming a social norm has allowed specific individuals to feel comfortable with committing violent acts towards Taylor Swift and her fans. A stalker was arrested earlier this year for attempting to break into her New York City home.
The degree of violence only increased from there. In July, a 17-year-old broke into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, killing three children and injuring ten others, according to CNN. Variety reported that Swift’s three Eras Tour shows in Vienna had to be canceled because of a terrorist bomb threat at the stadium. Three children died in Southport, and thousands more could’ve been killed in Vienna simply because they liked Taylor Swift. As someone who took a Taylor Swift-themed class at UCF last spring, I find this thought terrifying.
Netflix
That being said, this violence stems from a dangerous parasocial relationship. Many people think of obsessed fans as having parasocial relationships, but haters also have these. People may dislike celebrities because of what they think they know, but the reality is that no one truly knows Taylor Swift besides her friends and family.
Speaking of parasocial relationships, it’s important to define this term more clearly. Parasocial relationships refer to the bond a person feels with a celebrity. These relationships are almost always one-sided and nonreciprocal, but psychologically, a person feels like they really know the celebrity.
There are three types of parasocial relationships, according to an article from Simply Neuroscience. The first and most common is entertainment social, which means celebrities are mainly a source of entertainment for a person. The second type is intensely personal, when a person has deeper feelings towards a celebrity. People that consider themselves “stans” of a particular celebrity would fit into this category. The third type is the rarest but the most dangerous: borderline pathological. People in this category have such strong delusions that they resort to behaviors such as stalking to act on these fantasies.
Photo by Stephen Mease from Unsplash
The stabbing and bomb threat are examples of people with borderline pathological parasocial relationships to Taylor Swift. Normalizing the discussion of parasocial relationships will help those with potentially unhealthy relationships to seek help and be discouraged from violent behavior.
These dangerous incidents have not only happened to Taylor Swift. The New York Times reported that there was a bombing at Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman Tour in Manchester that killed 22 fans, and Variety reported that singer Christina Grimmie was murdered at her own concert in 2016. Celebrities are real people, and we need to reevaluate our parasocial relationships to prevent future dangerous behavior. It’s especially important to remember this since Taylor Swift is coming to Miami this week for The Eras Tour.
Haters are always gonna hate, but we need to take threats seriously for the safety of everyone.
<p>The post New Taylor Swift Hostility and Parasocial Relationships first appeared on Her Campus.</p>
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