- Taylor Swift said considering her energy ‘expensive’ is key to her relationship with social media.
- The pop star is well-acquainted with online hate and criticism, including explicit deepfake images.
- Her words echo beyond social media, as the job market reconsiders how employees should spend their time.
Taylor Swift might have worn an $11,400 necklace when announcing her new album, but she spoke more about another luxe commodity: her energy.
The pop star explained how she maintains a “healthy relationship” with social media during an appearance on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast, saying that she ignores a lot of what’s written and posted about her.
“I have so many friends or acquaintances or people where like, they’ll see one comment they don’t like and it will ruin their day, it will ruin their night,” Swift said. “I just want to say to them, you should think of your energy as if it’s expensive, as if it’s like a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.”
Kelce’s sense of humor about online content has helped Swift get to this point of relative nonchalance, she said. And some of her willful ignorance is by design — she said she’s had her Instagram comments disabled for around 10 years and doesn’t miss them.
Swift is no stranger to online hate — last year, sexually explicit AI-generated images of her went viral on X and Telegram, with one image staying up for 17 hours and getting more than 45 million views. The posts reignited calls for laws to fight deepfakes, and Swift herself turned those and other false images into political fuel. In September, she announced she was endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris for president in part because of AI-generated images of her that President Donald Trump posted.
As one of the world’s most successful artists, Swift has to be intentional with how she expends the “luxury item” of her energy, which has itself been a topic of controversy. Though she spent a combined 484 hours singing onstage at the Eras tour and was in a state of self-described “perpetual discomfort,” fans and critics alike knocked her for taking a break after the concerts ended.
As strict RTO mandates are back in full swing and Elon Musk touts 120-hour work weeks, Swift’s comments about protecting one’s own energy may resonate beyond the social media realm. Gen Z workers are avoiding leadership roles to protect their work-life balance, while employees generally may be experiencing “quiet cracking” and struggling to find meaning in the many hours of “expensive” energy, to quote Swift, they spend at their jobs.
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