Taylor Swift draws ire of conservatives after Chiefs win AFC championship, claim she's a 'psyop'

return2ozma@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 407 points –
Taylor Swift draws ire of conservatives after Chiefs win AFC championship
nbcnews.com
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*Football team that’s been a dominant presence in the league for the last several seasons wins AFC Championship again and will be returning to the Super Bowl*

Conservatives: TAYLOR SWIFT DID THIS TO GET JOE BIDEN REELECTED!!!1!!

Plus Taylor Swift who has been immensely popular for like...What, over a decade now? Only now suddenly wielding her influence to run the government or something? Please, she's rich, popular, and in business, she basically operates as her own independent nation without needing to run anyone else's. 😂

She turns 35 just before the next president takes office, meaning this is the first election she could legally become president. Coincidence???

Absolutely a coincidence. This is all a marketing stunt, but the conspiracies have been fun to read.

She will be 35 in December and could be elected president in 2024.

She's also been doing get out the vote/voter registration campaigns since at least 2018. She has officially endorsed multiple Democrats in the past, including Biden in the general election in 2020. None of this is new or a secret. Conservatives think they have uncovered some grand plot though. Like Taylor Swift needs the NFL and she wouldn't have any publicity or influence without it. If anything it's probably the opposite, with NFL trying to use Taylor Swift to boost their own popularity more.

I heard NPR say that she's brought in roughly $300 million to the NFL because so many more women are now watching

Seriously. There is a conspiracy here, and it's to get the Chief's to win. /s. Probably. Not really. Yes I'm bitter.

All joking aside I miss when we could have "low stake" conspiracy theories. Now we have genuine flat earthers and the like, it's only a matter of time before someone weaponizes the "birds aren't real" meme. I swear god people will look back at pizzagate as the definitive marker where the world forgot 4chan was primarily a joke.

I'm bitter about the chiefs too. Also I feel like "the fix is in" and "script" jokes about the NFL have been ruined by people actually believing in something like that. If you joke about it now Poe's law will kick in, people won't know you're joking anymore. And the NFL is certainly not helping the optics by getting all buddy buddy with sports gambling.

I'm OK with the NFL having its popularity chipped away. It's a destructive sport that's held a privileged position in the US for too long.

It'd be nice if it was for better reasons, though.

I'm especially annoyed when these billionaire team owners with highly profitable teams get taxpayers to pay for their stadiums.

Now that I think about it, how about we convince them it's a leftist plot for them to destroy the NFL? We knew they would hate Swift's involvement, so we fixed the game in her boyfriend's favor in order for conservatives to turn against football.

Well she did dare to encourage her fans to vote! And that's obviously anti-democratic or something.

She's obviously a witch /s

they’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one

These people are unhinged.

🌍👨‍🚀🔫🧑🏻‍🚀always have been.

i feel like society as a whole would improve greatly if they just, you know, didn't exist. it's almost as if we stand on the verge of a complete global catastrophe and the only way to resolve it is to get rid of them all. entirely.

The situation should resolve itself soon, the Earth will survive climate change.

what about all the animals?

We're in I believe the sixth great extinction event. This is won't be in the top three.

Life will survive just fine, it will evolve and adapt as it always has.

I mean, we can't know how it compares to the others for sure until it's over, surely? We could always find a way to make even more things extinct.

Previous extinction events were pretty bad.... Like almost all life dying. It really don't get much worse than a giant asteroid blowing up the entire planet.

i don't care. i refuse to allow innocent animals be caused to suffer because of our greed and ignorance. stop being apathetic.

WTF? She probably has more fans than the NFL and these morons think she’s getting signal boosted?

Obviously this is a psyop to boost awareness that the Chiefs exist.

Are...are they trying to start something with the Swifties? Because I'm pretty sure Y'all-Quaeda is no match for them, and I'm here for it!

if there's any side likely to win a civil war in the US its the swifties. If she told her fans to get guns they would.

If she told all her fans to get open carry permits and assault rifles the GOP would all rally behind smart gun control laws and try to raise the minimum age to thwart her.

Oh no. Please don't target Taylor Swift. Oh gosh. Conservatives, this will just ruin everything for all other people. You can't do this. Her like bazillion fans are definitely too young to vote. Ah. No. Stop.

Let's say it's all true. Who gives a fuck? Endorsements have been a thing forever.

Do they want to burn her at the stake for witch craft like it's fucking 1724 because she's controlling people's minds and stealing their erections elections?

Do they want to burn her at the stake for witch craft like it's fucking 1724

That is a bit further down the path they've started down with criminalising abortion. They've got to decriminalise violence against women before they can actually start burning them. They're getting there, though.

There's gonna be three sides to the next civil war: secede, stay, and the swifties; and the swifties are going to have the largest army. I don't know why they think picking this fight is in any way intelligent.

Why is it her fault? Was she their quarterback?

See it all started when JFK came back from the dead...

ROFL! Holy shit I laughed out loud at this! Thank you. I needed that.

She's dating a Chiefs player. If you're an idiot, this means the game must be rigged in their favor.

Political brain rot being inserted into everything now days, exhausting.

So....talk to me like I'm a MAGA moron with less brain cells than teeth and a family tree that doesn't always fork in all the right places.

What's the problem here? Seriously. Even if Taylor Swift were personally touring the country, knocking on every single door, and telling people to vote for Biden. So? Isn't that what their staffers should also be doing so they can get re-elected? So what if she stands on the podium if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl and says that everybody in the stadium and watching at home should vote for Biden?

Like at what point does it cross from the political activism that thousands of people across the country engage in all the time to some kind of "psyop" (side note: This is the stupidest term I have ever heard, by the way), "election interference", or whatever other term they can come up with to imply what she's doing is illegal?

Are they scared that Taylor Swift commands a bigger audience than Trump? Are they worried about millions of Swifties marching in lockstep to the ballot box to vote for Biden? Are they really all that concerned because a celebrity who has so far shown absolutely no desire even dip a toe into that political shitstorm might say something that might cause people to vote for Biden?

Are these people seriously getting all worked up over a celebrity who has shown no desire to give political commentary at all simply because she might endorse Biden? Or is this another situation where they're pre-emptively setting Taylor Swift of all people up as the person to blame if Trump loses? Last time he did this, he said that everything is rigged and that's the only way he could lose. Is the party really setting up for a round 2 where they blame Taylor fucking Swift?

Because that's not going to work out for them. Taylor Swift is probably one of the biggest celebrities in the country right now, maybe only rivalled by people like the Rock. And that's a hell of a maybe. Do they think pissing off a shit-ton of Swifties in red states is going to work? Fucking LOL. Try that and they'll be lucky if all that happens is a few purple states go blue. Swifties are not going to be abandoning Taylor Swift on the word of Donald fucking Trump.

I hope she continues to make all the things happen that pisses them off.

She is a woman. She is smart. She has a platform. She tells people to vote. She is the absolute worst in the eyes of fascists.

Among football fans we also like pointing out how Kelce, a superstar player, just about as high as you can get... essentially makes lemonade stand money next to her. It was the same for Brady and Gisel to. I imagine there's a certain stripe of person that drives a little nuts.

Personally I love it. Those guys are absolute top of their field in something insanely demanding and stressful, and the money is essentially pointless. So the relationship must be pretty decent. It's also just funny to picture THOSE guys going through the dance you have to if you've ever dated someone with a very different income/lifestyle. Like you can navigate it in a committed relationship, but the early stages can be a bit dicey. "ughh, I need a release, after the seasons over do you want to go to that place in the Mediterranean?" .

We should consider it a faux pas for a news organization to report on the punditry of other news org that is "two steps below it".

If nbcnews wants to cover something "conservatives" are saying, they shouldn't reach deep. They should consider the twitter account End Wokeness to be so far beneath it that reporting on it directly should feel dirty.

Now if fox news or even newsmax picks it up, then maybe start attacking this nonsense. Right now it seems to the crazies that we are taking them seriously. Why else would NBC News cover it?

It would be like CNN reporting on our Lemmy posts. It doesn't make sense to treat Twitter as if it's the news. It's how Trump had a stranglehold on the news cycle from a White House toilet. The news couldn't stop reporting on his tweets.

If I wanted to get my news from Twitter I would go to Twitter. I go to news organizations to hear real news, not stream of consciousness thoughts from public figures. I'm concerned how much actual news we've missed because news pundits are too busy checking social media to actually report on the news.

i’m seeing this more often recently and i appreciate people who identify it and call it out

Maybe they should pray over the outcome and see whether Jesus magic is stronger than a DNC plot. It's just a regular sporting event though, wouldn't want them taking it as a confirmation of their powers if the other team wins.

Either way, I'm sure the choose-your-own-adventure political mystery novel they're writing has win and loss branches mapped out. Chiefs win? Play victim since losing means the other side obviously cheated. Chiefs lose? It's a sign that the pendulum is swinging in your favor. Both cases conveniently ignore the fact that it's just a damn football game.

I wish mainstream outlets would stop propagating this nonsense as news. Stop giving them a platform.

Sometimes I think we should all just turn around and climb back up the trees. Maybe evolve a little more.

You are in good company.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

douglas adams quotes warm my soul

Agreed. As do Terry Pratchett's as well.

warm my soul

Teach a man to light a fire and he is warm for a night. Set him on fire and he is warm for the rest of his life...

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Rock climbing is just glorified monkeying around. Safely.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh described Watters’ commentary as a “conspiracy theory.”

“We are going to shake it off,” she told Politico, referencing a popular Swift song.

Unexpected Pentagon humor

Anything that further divides Conservatives is something I welcome. Especially when they do it to themselves.

BWAHAHA THE EVIL PLOT TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT BY CAREFULLY CONTROLLING THE POSITION OF A POINTY BALL IN A FIELD OVER A SPAN OF TIME IS UNFOLDING EXACTLY AS I HAVE FORESEEN!

NOW WE JUST NEED TO CONTROL THE POSITION OF A BOUNCY BALL ON A SHINY FLOOR AND MY CURSE WILL BE UNLEASHED, ENSURING THAT ANY DIMPLED BALL HIT BY A CONSERVATIVE'S METAL STICK WILL LAND IN TREES, SAND, OR WATER.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I want them to start going crazy because Beckham and Messi are getting all the boys to wear pink. Mwahahaha!

Telling people to vote, either in a general sense or for a specific party, is just communication. That's not a psyop. Simply appearing at football games is also not a psyop.

all this bullshit does is make this heavy metal head want to listen to Swift. Good job numbnuts.

I toyed with the idea that their union was manufactured, but by the NFL, not for the purpose of endorsing Biden. They could easily do that on their own. Maybe two rich attractive successful people just actually like each other?

A friend of mine wondered about that, too. It's hard to understand what the NFL could offer Swift, given how much money she already has, and how much she'd lose if she somehow pissed off her fans with a scheme.

I'm pretty sure it would have unraveled or ended by now, too. They definitely seem to be into each other at this point. Good for them, I hope they're both happy beyond their wildest dreams.

The same dipshits also think Ted (pedophile) Nugent is an American hero.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the Republican primary race this month, shared his own conspiracy theory on X Monday, suggesting that... “an artificially culturally propped-up couple” whom he believes will reveal a “major presidential endorsement” this fall.

No but seriously. Enough about Tim Scott.

Man I never gave those people much credit, but I’m not sure what’s below giant fucking idiot… DJT maybe?

could be part of an orchestrated plot to drum up hype for the Democratic Party.

What if it was? Then what? Isn't that just marketing? Commercialization? I mean... what? Why even care?

There are many fine establishments that allow you to bet on the outcome of NFL games.

So all those conservatives are placing bets now, right?

I mean..

They didn't really think that the Lions were ever going to win something, did they?

Like, thats the counterfactual, so...

Even backing up to the quarterfinals, it’s clear to me that the whole thing was orchestrated to ensure no matter what, football fans would have to cheer for Taylor Swift, Union Auto Worker team, The Wire team, or Pinnacle of Capitalism Destroying a City team.

It’s alllll a psyop to make those poor impressionable football fans cheer for big city liberal things.

Well, it would have been the Ravens, but yes, let's all make fun of the Lions as is tradition.

I wasn't aware it worked like that, that because a certain team won, everyone has to do what Swift wnats...

In fact I'm sure it doesn't....

I know Conservative arguments don't often make sense, and by design are meant to be catchy slogans more than accurate precise arguments, but... shit sometimes they make it too obvious.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Swift’s appearance on the field following last night’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens sparked a fresh wave of social media vitriol and the resurgence of some conspiring that her near-dominant place in U.S. pop culture must be the result of some sort of psychological manipulation effort — known more colloquially in fringe circles as a “psy-op.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the Republican primary race this month, shared his own conspiracy theory on X Monday, suggesting that the Super Bowl will be rigged to favor “an artificially culturally propped-up couple” whom he believes will reveal a “major presidential endorsement” this fall.

The Pentagon shut down similar right-wing accusations earlier this month after conservative commentator Jesse Watters claimed that Swift was a potential “front for a covert political agenda.”

In 2019, she shared an open letter urging Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican, to support the federal Equality Act, which would enshrine protections for LGBTQ+ people.

The singer netted the highest favorability rating of any public figure tested in NBC News’ November 2023 national poll — with 40% of registered voters saying they have a positive opinion of Swift and only 16% saying they hold a negative one.

Some online, including those in the football world, have wondered why right-wing pundits seem to concern themselves with Swift’s relationship with Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce.


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