2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

I was watching the Iowa/Iowa State game at the American Legion on Saturday and there was one guy there who didn't know who the Hawk Tua girl is.

[Valmy]

I was watching the Iowa/Iowa State game at the American Legion on Saturday and there was one guy there who didn't know who the Hawk Tua girl is.

He is one lucky bastard.

[Admiral Yi]

He is one lucky bastard.

  She's a blank slate that people can attach any opinion to.

I think she's cute and contentless and reactions to her are fascinating.

[Valmy]

I stand with DG with this as well.  If he doesn't know pop-singers, he don't know pop-singers.

It's fine. I get it. I do make an effort to at least know a little about what is going on in culture. Like I know who Taylor Swift and Beyonce are and I am familiar with lots of their songs. But then I will see some end of year video about the #1 huge song and artist of the year that it is invariably somebody and some song I have never heard of.

Somebody named Sabrina Carpenter is big now. Apparently she has been a hit maker and dominating the charts since 2022. I only just heard of her the first time a few days ago and I swear I had zero familiarity with any of her stuff. It is just a different world in pop culture than it used to be. In 2001 I couldn't have escaped Britney Spears and Ludacris if I had tried. Now I make a half assed effort and I miss it all.

[Valmy]

He is one lucky bastard.

  She's a blank slate that people can attach any opinion to.

I think she's cute and contentless and reactions to her are fascinating.

I don't have a problem with her. Just the phenomenon 

[The Minsky Moment]

I find her music uninteresting but as a cultural phenomenon, she is very significant on an international scale. I was impressed by the way she handled her beef with the music publisher.  It showed real discipline and will as well as the savvy to take advantage the weaknesses in the way the labels exploit copyrights. If I inhabited that world, I would not cross Taylor Swift.

[jimmy olsen]

Aye. 10 years ago it might be expected not to know her if you don't care about pop music. When I first learned of her existence, having started working in a high school, she was already apparently huge. Just seemingly out of nowhere all of a sudden.
But these days she pops up in general news.

She's tied with JayZ for the most #1 albums after the Beatles. There's no excuse not to know her even if you don't like Pop Music.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.  I guess my ignorance of Taylor Swift is a reflection of the age of algorithms, where anyone can be almost perfectly focused on news stories of interest to them, and everyone getting their very personalized feed assumes that everyone else is getting the same feed. 

News stories about business impacts of travel itineraries of some celebrities have never interested me.  Or business stories in general, for that matter.  If I ever need to have surgery, I'll ask the doctors to use CNBC to put me under.

Even if your only source of news and information in the entire world was Languish, the search function shows that Taylor Swift's name shows up 48 times around this place.

https://x.com/mulvihill79/status/1833899148803981475?t=jA8lt_GMYjYyl79idLwUyw&s=19

Last night's debate earned an overnight rating of 32.8 and a 70 share across eight networks. That's +28% higher than the Trump-Biden debate earlier this year.

[Valmy]

Aye. 10 years ago it might be expected not to know her if you don't care about pop music. When I first learned of her existence, having started working in a high school, she was already apparently huge. Just seemingly out of nowhere all of a sudden.
But these days she pops up in general news.

She's tied with JayZ for the most #1 albums after the Beatles. There's no excuse not to know her even if you don't like Pop Music.

Well who has heard of the Beatles or JayZ?

[grumbler]

She's tied with JayZ for the most #1 albums after the Beatles. There's no excuse not to know her even if you don't like Pop Music.

Who the fuck is JayZ?

As an aside, I only became aware of Taylor Swift's massive popularity (I'd heard the name but never a song) until I had a rabid fan of hers as a student a couple of years ago.

[Valmy]

She's tied with JayZ for the most #1 albums after the Beatles. There's no excuse not to know her even if you don't like Pop Music.

Who the fuck is JayZ?

As an aside, I only became aware of Taylor Swift's massive popularity (I'd heard the name but never a song) until I had a rabid fan of hers as a student a couple of years ago.

She became big around the 2008 and 2009 era which was probably the latest possible time I could be considered "with it" 

[HVC]

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, pop culture comes and goes.  And if she was only known within pop culture then I would also not know about her.  But she is pervasive. She is a shrewd businessperson, a brilliant promoter of her brand, and has constant air time when she shows up at a Chiefs game.

She is probably the most well-known person on the face of the planet.

[Sophie Scholl]

I really love Taylor Swift's music. I'm not a full-on Swiftie, but I have friends who are. I tend to hang out with a much more mixed age group of folks due to personal choices and past professions, so I'm usually still somewhat in touch with most trending things. I admit, though, not engaging with movies or tv for... quite a while now has definitely made me feel a little more adrift in certain cultural things.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Some of you are very ill informed, really big pop stars have regularly been front page news in major outlets like the New York Times, WSJ, Washington Post etc. I can get not being into pop music, but do you also not even scan the major news journals of our time?