Your Therapist Needs Therapy 117 - No Ethical Billionaires (Taylor’s Version)

In this solo episode of Your Therapist Needs Therapy, Jeremy Schumacher critiques the ethics of wealth and fandom through the lens of Taylor Swift’s celebrity empire, arguing that she—like Jeff Bezos and other billionaires—profits from systemic exploitation and capitalist excess. He unpacks the contradictions of therapists and progressive individuals celebrating Swift while simultaneously claiming to decolonize mental health or oppose capitalism, framing it as a moral and class hypocrisy. Drawing parallels to Metalocalypse’s satirical band Dethklok, Jeremy illustrates how fandom and consumption blur with complicity, urging listeners to stay critically aware of how capitalism commodifies joy, identity, and activism.

As always, Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube. To show your love for the show you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well! None of my online work would be possible without my media maven Kenny, so check out their work as well at kenlingdesign.com

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

wez-xmsj-hrt (2025-10-07 09:46 GMT-5) - Transcript

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Jeremy Schumacher

Transcript

Jeremy Schumacher: What's up everybody? Welcome to another edition of Your Therapist Needs Therapy. I'm your host Jeremy Schumacher, licensed marriage and family therapist. I am here with another solo episode. Let's talk about politics this time. Sort of mo mostly. we're going to talk about pop culture and then that highlights political state we live in. It's fine. It'll be fun.  I promise I was going to have a guest today. I was trying to get a swifty to come on and talk with me and I don't think it was an issue of backing out. I'm not some sort of master debater that people are spare scared to come on and talk with.

Jeremy Schumacher: it was just a scheduling thing and I'm not somebody who has if I'm well organized I have several episodes banked and recorded ahead of time but I don't know for the past 30 episodes or so I've been going on sort of a weekly basis and that's what happens when you get solo episodes I have a guest lined up and it doesn't work out. but we're going to talk about something I don't want to talk about. I want to talk about politics less than I want to talk about this cuz I like talking about pop culture. I like culture. as a cultural studies minor in college, I am fascinated by and some of that is helping people in therapy and some of that is doing critiques of pop culture and bad breakup songs on my YouTube channel.

Jeremy Schumacher: it's something that I think is fascinating. I think as somebody who is one a mental health professional, but two is also late diagnosed autistic and ADHD, I've studied people for a long time, figuring out how to fit in. And there's a lot of things that people do that still do not make sense to me. And supporting and defending billionaires is one of them.  And when I see people who I like and I respect and I think highly of defending a billionaire, it gets more odd to me and I get curious about it. I get curious and I want to try and understand. And when I dig in a little bit, I get more and more frustrated. And then we have a video like this I'm critical of where our culture is at. Let's start with the premise. I've said this elsewhere. I will continue to say this until somebody can prove me wrong. Not my idea.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm just repeating what smarter people have said and that I tend to agree with which is that there are no ethical billionaires. There is no way in our modern society to accumulate a billion dollars without taking advantage of someone. People do not earn a billion People extract billions of dollars from other people's labor being undervalued.  So, if you think Jeff Bezos running Amazon warehouses the way he does is unethical, but you think Taylor Swift paying her truck drivers $100,000 bonus is ethical, then you need to evaluate what your understanding of your own ethics are because those things are not different. and again, I'm going to juxtapose Taylor Swift versus a couple different things here. One, Jeff Bezos and to some extent Elon Musk, but that's mostly going to be about fandom.

Jeremy Schumacher: again, Taylor Swift is not better than Jeff Bezos. They are both unethical people who extract their wealth from other people's labor being undervalued. that's the whole episode right now. That's not the whole episode because I have a lot more things I want to get off my chest and recording them and putting them on the internet somehow makes that I don't know better. I'm a verbal processor. Taylor Swift is selling you something different than Jeff Bezos is, but what they ultimately are doing is protecting their own wealth and they're commoditizing your own humanity and selling it back to you, right? So, Amazon, Jeff Bezos are selling you comfort, right? The ease of ordering something online and having it delivered to your door.

Jeremy Schumacher: the comfort of, your Halloween classics being up on Prime Video. selling you ease, he's selling you comfort while contributing massively to global warming while not paying taxes in the states where his businesses are located. And they use the infrastructure that us taxpayers pay for, you don't go a day if you live in a metropolis area for I don't know about rural folks who are tuning in, but I'm in Milwaukee.

Jeremy Schumacher: I generally say it's a mid-tier city. It's the 31st or 47th largest metropolis in the country depending on how many suburbs you're willing to count in that. but I generally as somebody who lives here say about a million-ish people city and direct surrounding suburbs, not going too far out into the suburbs. which is not small. I don't go a day without seeing multiple Amazon trucks driving around. and I'm not throwing shade at individual human saying, " s***, this thing is needed. The only way I can get it is by ordering through Amazon, ordering it tomorrow." I understand. I'm somebody who's had a Prime membership before.

00:05:00

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm somebody who still has a Prime membership and there are things that I will order from Amazon because when it is a thing that I need or when it is something that I'm getting for a child of mine, my wife who's a teacher, or, whatever, I try not to order comfort things off Amazon anymore, but it is usually like a necessary thing. if I buy books or I buy vinyl, I'm trying to buy directly from the author. those are things where my convenience isn't worth it. that's my ethical choice. I'm not saying everybody has to live their life that way. I'm in a position where most of the things I'm buying are not a necessities. I mean, my mortgage and our groceries are our largest things we spend money on. The health of my dogs because I have two elderly dogs and they're not cheap.

Jeremy Schumacher: but again, the idea of you shouldn't have an Amazon thing is not what I'm saying. I'm judging the systems that people are forced to participate in and highlighting that the billionaires who are running the system, who are spending millions of dollars to ensure the system stays the way it are corrupt, are evil, are unethical. Again, I think the difference between Bezos and Taylor Swift are how they market themselves.

Jeremy Schumacher: Bezos just doesn't care, I don't know that he's full-on leaned into the evil millionaire, trillionaire, whatever he is, billionaire persona, but man, he wears some real terrible glasses and he's shaved his head bald and he married that very plastic looking person and, ruined a bunch of local ecosystems so he could drive his mega yacht around. if that's not comically evil, I don't know what is. when I grew up watching Batman and Superman, Lex Luthther, the evil billionaire who used his corporation to destroy the planet was the bad guy, right? And so I think it's easy to see the exploitation with Bezos, which is why I'm juxtaposing Bezos and Swift here so people understand no, it's not different, but the PR around it is much different. Bezos doesn't care about his PR. People are going to use Amazon anyway, right?

Jeremy Schumacher: he has bought up so many small markets and put so many local businesses out of business that there isn't always a better option. Even using something like local bookstores, if you order from them, they might just turn around and order from Amazon because there's nowhere else for them to easily get that book. So again, it's the evilness of accumulating these things. Taylor Swift is not different than that.  Taylor Swift is marketed differently and understand I don't know Taylor personally. I honestly don't really think of Taylor as a person and not for misogynistic reasons. I actually defended Taylor and her early relationship to Travis Kelce in a YouTube video that is up about how the Republicans were talking about them because it was so incorrect. The criticism was all wrong and unwarranted and I was willing to say, "Hey, this is just misogyny."

Jeremy Schumacher: and call that out because I think we need to call that out. but that doesn't mean that Taylor is a good person or is even an ethical person. I've always sort of viewed her work as the most aware entity that has ever pop cultured, she's not this young upstart who figured it out and rose to fame and had to struggle.  She's a Nepo baby whose dad was super f*** wealthy and she was raised very privileged. And when her music career didn't magically take off, because that's exceedingly rare, her dad bought a record company, that's what happened.

Jeremy Schumacher: whether she wants to own that or she puts her spin on look at what a strong feminist she is because she had to fight to get her recordings and the rights to them because of the evil producer that she worked with. whatever that sucks that you were affected by capitalism for a tiny bit of your life, but also no that's not what other people had to do. That's not the struggle.  And again, there's stuff like that where people are "Look at but she's doing this." And again, she's part of the ruling class. She's part of the capitalist class. She owns the capital that makes the money for her without having to do any labor. She didn't change the system. She didn't fight for other people to do that. Have other people followed suit? Yeah, but it's a very expensive thing and not every artist has been able to do that, She didn't dismantle ticket master.

00:10:00

Jeremy Schumacher: She bragged about selling out so many stadiums and crashing the site. She's not dismantling any systems. She's not speaking out against any systems. She is participating in the system and wants her fandom to do the same because that's where she gets the most money from. Now, it's easy to pile on at this moment because she has a new album out  I haven't listened to it because all of her music to me, in my opinion, seems like it sucks. I'm not the target audience for cringey 13-year-old lyrics and nostalgic millennial white lady s***. no. I don't know.

Jeremy Schumacher: I haven't listened to her album and I have already pigeon holed it in my brain as Lonely Island did it better when they recorded I just had sex because the lyrics that I've seen posted online seems to be that's the whole bit there and Bo Burnham's Jeffrey Bezos song is what actually made me inspired to do this juxosition between Taylor and Jeff Bezos because and girl boss too close to the sun Bober  Burnham did it better with Bezos song about how Musk and Zuckerberg can suck it and he wants Bezos to drink their blood or whatever. it would be funny if it was satire, right? And I don't know if you guys remember what's his first Joe Mansion. he used to be a Democrat. He's not anymore.

Jeremy Schumacher: but he got in a lot of the Biden administration's way being one of the last holdouts of the Democrats cuz it was split Senate and he was a bad guy, right? he was comically evil except we're so devoid of a frame of reference anymore.  He blocked a lot of things that would have benefited climate change and could have led to some real structural change around climate change because the oil barons in his state paid him to hold out. And when confronted about it, he fled to his super yacht. Again, a guy who's taking money from giant oil corporations who are destroying the planet, who's avoiding any accountability by hiding out on his yacht. That's a bad guy. That's Dr.

Jeremy Schumacher: evil from Austin Powers level of bad, And that's just an elected senator. That's crazy. Taylor has been not directly skewered, but I'm going to have another juxaposition here. We've done satire around the idea that somebody could get so big that this is what would happen. And that's the show Metal Aocalypse. not everybody likes metal, so not everybody's cup of tea. What started as a sort of funny 11minute adult swim show grew into a much larger thing with the fictional band Death Clock becoming a real band and touring and selling tickets and is really silly thing. Mark Hamill is one of the voices in Luke Skywalker's in it, so it's good.

Jeremy Schumacher: and it sort of found its footing in this idea that Death Clock in this universe was the largest metal band of all time. They were skewering various metal bands across different episodes. but Death Clock became the sventh largest economy in the world. Right now Taylor Swift is not that. But we do know that when Taylor Swift tours, local economies change.  We do know that local infrastructure has to change plans for having Taylor Swift in town. she is not the seventh largest economy in the world, but she is an economy of her own. She is this tornado of its own ecosystem that moves around and the ecosystems where she goes have to adjust accordingly. She is the one who holds that power.

Jeremy Schumacher: and so Death Clack is this fictional band. When they release albums, it's a worldchanging event. When they tour, they kill tens of thousands of their fans because they do things that are incredibly dangerous. And it's metal. So that's very brutal and it makes their fans love them even more. And this is where I think the satire starts to blend with reality. It's such a hard time to do satire, I think, because that's the fandom this is Taylor selling cheaplymade synthetically woven b**** cardigans for 40 bucks in addition to her $40 vinyl because this color is lavender and this color is lilac.

00:15:00

Jeremy Schumacher: it's such a consumerrist mindset for somebody who does not need to tack more b*** on and shouldn't be contributing more to destroying the atmosphere. she's one of the biggest polluters on the planet. And again, people want to push back and say no, she's not blah blah blah blah. She's renting out her plane, right? Again, she's participating in the capitalism.  she is continuing to extract as much money from wherever she can when she already has so much wealth that she will never need to do anything with it, a fraction of that most of us could not spend in our entire lifetimes because we just have no frame of reference how to live that indulgently over the top, right? And so Death Clock was again like they destroyed things.

Jeremy Schumacher: They killed their fans then recorded a song called hate which it's called fan song but it's about how they hate their fans and they think poorly of them and they don't care about them and their fans will continue to buy their music and I don't know what the life of a showgirl is other than that it is poorly written. again, I didn't listen to it. Sonically, the music doesn't do it for me, but I will judge the lyrics. and it's poorly written. It seems like she ripped off a lot of artists without giving them a ton of credit for their work, which again is something that she's deeply familiar with because she's gone out of her way to sue other people and force them to give her credit so that she can make money off of their labor.

Jeremy Schumacher: And again, sampling is weird and there's some weird things that happen in the music industry. I just bought a small independent artist's music for 35 bucks on vinyl because I saw their show live and it was great and I wanted to support them. I don't think you shouldn't do some of this. But again, this is about looking for the pattern of where is she extracting wealth without doing any of the labor, right?  I'm guessing those cardigans were not handsewn by old granny's who are big Taylor Swift fans. I'm right? she could be making a stand on a lot of these things and She's partnering with Target.

Jeremy Schumacher: And this is where it starts to sort of come into my world where I see therapists who I like and respect who will post things about how we need to decolonize mental health and then they will post real after reel of the new Taylor Swift album and how they took the day off or how they're making the little friendship bracelets or they're doing the little things. It's  That seems problematic to me that you can say I support my LGBTQ plus clients. no, Taylor is partnering with Target who has gotten rid of all their LGBTQ plus protections and we're boycotting them still And whoops the daisies. It's okay because my favorite billionaire said to do this so I'm going to participate in capitalism the way that I've been told to consume. that's b*******.

Jeremy Schumacher: that's not okay. And this is where privilege comes into it because it's mostly white women therapists and I'm not trying to throw women under the bus. I'm one of the few professions that is female dominated. And so it's a lot of white lady therapists and I can make fun of a lot of things about that.  I can make fun of, the white woman Instagram office decorations that 90% of the female therapists I know employ. it's whatever. I'm not a white woman, so it's not for me. And it seems a little cringy.

Jeremy Schumacher: but it's missing the point of saying decolonize mental health to then say I'm going to dip in and out of activism. I'm going to dip in and out of social justice when my favorite privileged entity lets me be privileged. Because rgin commun Marginalized communities can't pick and choose when they want to participate in social justice. It is survival for them. And if you're able to say, "Hey, we should decolonize mental health spaces.  we should be boycotting these giant corporations that are cutting back their LGBTQ plus protections who are not standing up for trans folks who are, jogging out their rainbow flagged colored media during June and then the rest of the year supporting the Trump regime. that's a problem. You don't get to just drop that when another new mid album comes out from your favorite artist.

00:20:00

Jeremy Schumacher: And again, I'm trying to stay away from making fun of the music because that's not the point. If you like mid pop music, I'm happy that you have something. If you like the little friendship bracelets, I love the idea of community around around art. A big proponent of supporting your local theater. I'm a big proponent of going to see independent music and go it Support them. Get rch from their merch table. put your money where your morals are. But for these these white women I know who seem to speak the liberal, maybe not progressive, I'll say as America understands the liberal talking points. It's like, yeah, that's where this falls apart is when you would need to sacrifice or when you need to change anything that you're doing, you don't. And that's the privilege of it. I think it highlights that we're all flawed, right?

Jeremy Schumacher: We all have biases. There are things that sneak through, But again, I think the trick is not to get it perfect. The trick is to be continually critical of yourself and the spaces that you participate in. And not critical in the sense that you're like this naysayer who doesn't want anyone to have any joy ever, but that you're constantly analyzing and checking in to make sure that you're not falling into this. capitalism is the water we swim in.  to note it and work against it is active work, right? And I think especially for those of us who have some privileged statuses, it's important to hold each other accountable. And it's also important to call it out when we see it.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's s** that I, as a white dude, have to say certain things because marginalized community, people who I know and respect and are honestly more wellspoken and more educated on it, would not be listened to because some racist out there would be " playing the race card again, right?" And so maybe if they see me make that same point, they might listen to it. It might hit differently. And f*** racists, right? I'm not pandering to them, but I am trying to call out people who are otherwise progressive who are then just going to drop it all because their favorite capitalism is going to capitalism and now they're going to capitalism with that. that's s**. Be better. I don't know. And right, my true Jeremy, not the therapist, Jeremy the person wants to have better tastes in f****** music.

Jeremy Schumacher: go listen to a much more talented artist who has good songwriting without the PR machine behind it, right? Because I grew up listening to Pink Floyd. I don't know if they are billionaires. I don't think so, but put on massive tours, arguably one of the largest bands of all time who changed the way that touring happened because they built a giant** wall in the middle of their concerts and then blew it up. And it was awesome and remains awesome.  I saw Roger Waters in 2017 or something like that. but again, Roger Waters is somebody who's been labeled an anti-semite for most of his career because he spoke out about the mistreatment of the Palestinian people, And an artist who's taking a stand, I don't think celebrities need to or even should take stands on everything. I think especially athletes are for the most part illinformed on these topics.

Jeremy Schumacher: If you went to Duke University to play basketball, you're not wellversed in the world, Because the big university you went to picked your classes for you, made your schedule for you so that you could play basketball. That's not saying you can't speak out on anything. It's just saying there's certain things I don't think athletes need to speak out on or should because they're woefully uninformed. Kyrie Irving's take on whether the earth is flat or is not relevant to whether he's good or not at basketball. It's not shut up and dribble.  It's like, "Hey, if you're informed, I would love to listen to Nicola Jokic talk about horse racing because I don't know s*** about horses." And he seems to really love them. And that's cool. I will listen to Aaron Rogers talk about football. Not now, but I used to. what I don't need is his thoughts on vaccines because he's woefully uneducated on the topic, right?

Jeremy Schumacher: And so I don't need Taylor to be out here doing every single topic, but I listen to metal. There's not an artist that I follow who at a live concert Trump, hasn't labeled him a fascist, hasn't called out these behaviors as being deeply unamerican, right? I'm asking for more than one Instagram post in which he made cookies and put the presidential candidate on it cuz again, you're an economy to yourself.  you could make a much bigger difference. And there are people who want to highlight her charitable work, but it's such a small fraction of what she does. The truck driver thing has gone around, she's so great. She gave her truck driver bonuses. if you dig in at all beyond the PR surface is that the truck drivers were going to not keep working with her tour because the working conditions were so grueling.

00:25:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Not that she wasn't paying them their wage or whatever, but this was a bribe to continue the tour, And again, when you look at it as what would Bezos do? He has no problem throwing money at people to make the problem go away. He will fight against unionization. That's a problem. He can't just buy off. But I'm sure he's tried to buy it off. I'm sure he's offered whatever the American understanding of a legal bribe is now.  I don't even know how the Supreme Court defines it. You just wait 3 months and then you do the bribe and it's not bribery anymore. I don't know. America's again just turned into satire. but I mean from what I've read about that which is limited to just prepping this episode cuz I don't care about Taylor Swift. I'm not some anti-swifty person. I don't care. Her music is not for me. She's a walking PR machine.

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm pretty deeply skeptical about the people who claim she's a great songwriter because again, as a Pink Floyd fan, like Roger Waters is writing Echo at 19, 21 or 22 is when Dark Side of the Moon came out. let me know when she writes a coherent concept album that's actually good. so yeah, if you want to like her music, that is fine. If you want to participate in the capitalism, I'm more skeptical of that. If you're somebody who's been outspoken about decolonization, if you've been outspoken about capitalism is bad and wrong, if you enjoy her art, stream it, listen to it.

Jeremy Schumacher: I would encourage you not to make it your entire personality. And again across the board, I wear band shirts. I wear pro wrestling shirts. in prepping for this I was like wait which billionaires do I like? none. It is convenient for me that I happen to be a Packer fan which is the one sports team that is not owned by a billionaire owner is publicly owned. but I think the NFL is an unethical entity and should not be accumulating the wealth that it does and it's I'm sure very corrupt at its core. And I think it doesn't treat its players well and I think that people are being exploited for their bodies.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think there's an exploitation for their labor and they're paid handsomely for it at the pro level but lots of athletes don't make it that far and they are very much chewed up by the system and spat out and players although there are player unions and it's a constant battle to get things like health care the NFL does not want to pay for CTE stuff post retirement because that would start being everybody who's played in the league  So they might do a cursory. We give this much money to funding CTE research, but That's not benevolence, right? And that's the thing with Taylor, too. the truck thing was It was PR. And we don't need benevolent billionaires. We need billionaires to not exist.

Jeremy Schumacher: If they could not accumulate their wealth, if their wealth was redistributed to make a more equitable, to make a healthier, to make a more well society, that would do far more good than whatever little bit of charity they're going to do, whatever small percentage that they give to charity. and often when they die, whatever puff piece will come out about Warren Buffett when he dies, like he gave so much of his money away.  when he couldn't use it anymore because he didn't like his family, I don't know. there's such a skepticism if somebody is accumulating the wealth and not actively working for it. what's her name? McKenzie Scott who married Bezos and then divorced him and took a bunch of money and is working really hard to give all of her money away while living. I can at least respect that. again that's money that was extracted from other people's labor. She didn't work for it.

Jeremy Schumacher: whatever joke you want to make about having to be married to Jeff Bezos being work is funny, but also that doesn't undo capitalism. so yeah, Taylor's a problem. People who want to work in decolonizing spaces and call out privilege elsewhere. I think it's the participation at a maximum level spending thousands of dollars on tickets don't do that right that's wealth inequality that you are supporting because of the degree that it's so grossly inequitable right people are going into debt and the satire is death clock fans

00:30:00

Jeremy Schumacher: fans are excited at the opportunity to die at a concert because of how much they like their band. again, going into debt to see your favorite musical artist perform That's gross that the artists do this. And I'm a pro wrestling fan, lots and lots of videos about me calling out wrestlers for being unethical people and Vince McMahon and WWE, which is just super mega coded now. I like New Japan.  AW is not owned by a billionaire, but is owned by a billionaire's child who has access to that amount of money because he's a billionaire's child, I don't know that much about the Khan family. They own the Jacksonville Jaguars and some soccer teams as Americans would call, but football teams in Europe and other stuff. They own a lot of sports and I don't even know where they got their money from. I've never looked into it, but Tony Khan in and of himself is not a billionaire.

Jeremy Schumacher: his family has that money and that's a problem because AW is better than WWE in a lot of ways. They have more of their workers are not independent contractors but are employees. But again I see this in therapy too, and I call it out in therapy. You are not a 1099 independent contractor. You're an employee. And just because some legal team wants to play around with the meanings of those things doesn't change the difference that you are an employee.  And so that's bad. That's exploitative. I don't spend money on all the new merch. I don't spend money on every single wrestler that I like's t-shirt. Even if I really like the t-shirt, I will try and catch wrestlers at smaller shows or different venues. Get things from them directly. I was just at a wrestling event this past weekend and the Outrunners were there selling their merch. I didn't get any.

Jeremy Schumacher: but not because I don't support that, but that would be the space to support those artists as pro wrestling is an art. and so going to see people at local indie events, going to see people at their home promotion where they came up and started working is what I would rather do than give AEW a bunch of money. I love me some Kenny Omega, not a billionaire. but if he's wrestling, might have spent money on the pay-view.  And some of that goes to AEW and a lot of that goes to the wrestlers who I care about and I enjoy, whose body of art as their physical performances I very much enjoy, my children enjoy. I will do that. I will watch the Packer game on Sunday, but I won't buy the NFL sanctioned merch that costs $115 for a jersey, And so, again, I'm not saying you can't participate in your joy. I'm not saying you can't enjoy these things.

Jeremy Schumacher: I am saying it seems deeply hypocritical to participate at the umpteenth level that you can because it is being sold to you that way without being critical of your own behaviors or critical of your artists behaviors. Again, I've put out lots of things criticizing wrestlers who are supposed to be the good ones, plenty of bad ones. It's well established, And I think that's true of the music industry. There's plenty of not great people out there. and when we see their behaviors as exploitative, call them out. But again, a lot of people still defend Taylor. And I think it's unwarranted. And I think it's because people have been fooled by her very fast, very wellthought out from the beginning of her career. It's always been in place her PR team. There was no behind the scenes with Taylor Swift.

Jeremy Schumacher: BTSWTS. getting distracted here because I like acronyms. there's no behind the scenes with that. Whatever documentary she put out that showed man, she really cares about how people think of hers. that's a documentary that was put together by her and her people to make her look better, right? It's the Aaron Rogers Enigma documentary, which I haven't watched. it's a PR spin and when you have enough money, you just pay for it, you just throw money at the problem and make it go away. so that's what all of this is, I think. as she continues to release less and less good music, that might Wayne, but again, at some point she'll just tap into the nostalgia of it. And, she's selling artigan core aesthetic. She's selling 1989 nostalgia.

Jeremy Schumacher: She's selling millennial women some version of feminism that doesn't require you to do any work because that's what she is. And so that's the capitalism. That's the extracting wealth and then selling your commoditized humanity back to Whether it is comfort or it is this very distilled approximation of what's supposed to be art. that's what makes it gross. That's what makes it exploitative. So yeah, I don't like her music. I'm not telling you you can't like her music. I am suggesting that if you're somebody who cares about dismantling harmful systems and speaks out against colonization tactics, that perhaps buying all of her vinyl and posting about nothing but her for several weeks is a problem.

00:35:00

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm suggesting that there is a way that if you enjoy the art or the community to engage with it, that is not so harmful to the capitalism. Although for someone like Taylor Swift, I think that's really hard. I don't think that money is going to other good causes going elsewhere. The only way to be an ethical billionaire is to not be the only way to solve this is to redistribute that wealth. And I think the class consciousness is really important. And I think, people can like different music.

Jeremy Schumacher: There are people who pop and I won't understand it. But I'll hold space for you to it, this isn't Taylor's music isn't for me and she is not as good a songwriter as people like to pretend. And just cuz it's apparent right now cuz she released a bad album doesn't mean it hasn't always been true. This is me saying Taylor, the corporation that is the Swifty movement is a f** problem and it's unethical and she's unethical.

Jeremy Schumacher: She's not better than She's the same as Musk. Her PR pitch is different because her target audience is different because she wants the system to stay intact because she has lived her life benefiting from that system. So, I don't know. Go listen to Monica Martin and buy a album. I don't understand Swift fans.

Jeremy Schumacher: So, I can't even recommend things. I would love to do out takes. Maybe I'll put some reals up that are more like the humorous side of this that are just like again the lyrics seem real cringe and very like again it would be funny if it was satire I guess. still probably bad and I don't think it's supposed to be satire. but yeah, some real cringy stuff and she partnered with Target.  One of the things I've seen is "Girl, better." And again, don't think she does. I don't think she knows what normal people care about or are boycotting,'t think she thought that maybe the Target thing was bad or wrong because I think her target audience of white women with money to spend goes to Target and gets their Starbucks drinks every day and does the white woman Instagram thing and has their new Stanley cups or whatever the new cup thing is that we're selling to women who need to hydrate.

Jeremy Schumacher: why is that such a thing anyway? I don't think she's around regular enough people to know that that's a bad move. She's so meticulous in her PR that she's surrounded by sickopants every other billionaire is at some point it's going to crack because she's not around enough regular people who be like, "Yo, pull your head out of your ass. What is wrong with you?" so it's stuff like that. And again, that's where I'm critical of people defending her. Girl, no, does not care. If she did, she would be speaking out about it. And she doesn't. She'd be using her immense wealth and power for good. And she refuses to do that because it might alienate part of her audience, which is her consumer base. That's all that is. It's not cuz she's a good person.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's cuz she wants to continue to make the amount of insane wealth that would make Smog the dragon Billionaires are dragons. They have hoarded wealth under the mountain that they didn't earn, that other people dug up and made into art, and they just extracted the wealth from it and refused to  Easily the funniest thing I saw about the album was the first confirmed case of sexually transmitted CTE, which is only funny because I have a dark sense of humor and we shouldn't joke about concussions or sexually transmitted or STI, but it's so dumb and Travis is a f***** moron. I could do that again. It was work for me to do a video where I defended both of them.

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: because I think they're both deeply unlikable people. And yet I can defend them from criticism that's not valid or is just bigotry. This is not She's not even class traitor. she was born wealthy and continues to be wealthy and is defending the wealthy ruling class. She's not a class traitor. we would need her to come to our side which we have zero evidence of.  So yeah, that's fun. Your billionaire ruling class, your preferred billionaire will never be the solution to our problems. Your preferred billionaire is not going to give you the community that your nervous system and your neighbors deeply need you to participate in. So look elsewhere.

Jeremy Schumacher: And if you want to stream the pop music, you can. But if you're going to dismantle systems and be critical of systems, then you need to look at your own participation in those systems and make better decisions. All right, I do have guests coming up again. I have things lined up. So I think this is the last solo episode for a minute. but I appreciate y'all continuing to listen. It's very cool. There's a lot of things on the internet you could be listening to, and I appreciate that you all stopped to spend time with me on a weekly basis. And yeah, I have some really cool people coming up. I have some cool stuff that I have been participating in professionally.

Jeremy Schumacher: so where I usually have Milwaukee people because I'm a Milwaukee native and to defend my hometown from some of the bad reputation that it gets. Some of it's warranted. I usually get Milwaukee people, I get neurode diverent folks, I get religious drama folks and then special guests is sort of how I try to do my episode release. It's not always how scheduling works out. but we're gonna have a lot more climate science people in the future, too, because that's where a lot of my professional energy has been going. So, that'll be fun and exciting to talk to some different folks with some different perspectives on that stuff.

Jeremy Schumacher: So yeah, tune in for the continued journey of whatever is frontal lobe of my ADHD brain is what I record and talk about and usually with cooler people than me. So we'll start having more cool people soon. All right, as always, take care of yourself, take care of somebody else. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Peace.

Meeting ended after 00:43:00 👋

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