Unpopular Opinion: Taylor Swift Exploits Fans and Contributes to the Continued Discrimination of People With Mental Health Disorders

Taylor Swift is often spoken very highly about by people and has been considered by some to be the music industry itself. From highly publicized feuds and speaking out against the misogyny in the music industry, the is very much darkness within some of the supposed good of such an influential and powerful person such as Ms. Swift

Exploitation of Her Fan Base and Business Practices that Openly Discriminate Against People Who Have Mental Health Disorders

Ms. Swift is definitely very exploitive of her fan base, releasing thousands (an over exaggeration) of various editions of her albums and limited timing them. For example, on her most recent re-recording of 1989, Swift released four limited timed “deluxe editions”, though nothing was truly deluxe about them as all had the same track listing as the standard version, which included different covers, which would later be released to Target stores, and four different sets of photos, similar to her original release of the album back in 2014 where she had release 5 sets of different photos that were random in each copy of the album, and this is very discriminatory towards her fans who have mental health problems on fixed who need time to save up for such things, and while yes she issued them out three times, this still wasn’t enough time to allow those on fixed incomes time to save up for, denying them equal opportunity to those who do not have mental health problems to purchase them.

The reason putting out multiple versions of the same album instead of just one edition with everything on it is exploitive, is because this is just a way to milk fans who enjoy collecting things of more money than she actually needs.

How Her Business Practices of Limited Timing Things Contributes to the Continued Discrimination Towards People With Mental Health Disorders

Due to my own personal experience with the toxicity and bullying of the Swiftie community in defense of my calling Taylor for denying fans like myself the ability to own her music on my preferred format, I preferring CDs over digital/streaming copies, have seen firsthand how discriminatory the fanbase is towards people who have mental health problems. Like most things, the double standards towards people with mental health issues is to completely and utterly ignore and dismiss their problems and make the solution to be “get a job”, something that not all of us with social anxiety or extreme trauma can do, I myself find it very bad for my mental health to work a full or part time job due to my anxiety issues and extreme mistrust of most people, especially with the current rise of in hate crimes towards the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ community, both of which I am a part of.

So, for my own mental wellbeing, I keep to myself and don’t go out unless absolutely needed, such as to get food or other items I may need for daily life, such as cleaning supplies or bathroom necessities, other than that, I stay indoors 24/7 to keep myself safe and out of harms way, something that no one should guilt or make me feel bad for doing. And I am not alone in having such extreme anxiety and well-founded fears.

But instead of being accepting and understanding of the fact that everyone is different, Swift’s fan base instead were dismissive and aggressive towards me, painting me falsely as a creepy person who thought Ms. Swift should be in contact with me directly, something that I didn’t ever once state. And why? Because I said that I felt my requests have been ignored, and somehow that statement got misrepresented by people who I highly doubt were Autistic but claimed to be so, as many autistic people would know not to imply anything more to what was said. And I will make this clear here and now, I didn’t expect Taylor to reach out to me directly, I am not naive or delusional. At the time, what I had hoped for was an an announcement that she would release a red-dressed Target exclusive version of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) that would include her re-recordings of “If This Was a Movie”, “Eye Open” and “Safe & Sound” as bonus tracks so that I could have the songs on my preferred format, CD.

And when I made this clear, instead of backing down and realizing their mistake, these keyboard warrior Swifties continued to bully and discriminate against me and even going to great lengths to harass me by going to a friend of mine’s Facebook page, accusing them of being me, and falsely accusing them of being into bestiality. (See screenshot below)

This horrified me to no ends the extremes at which Swifties would go to openly discriminate against me and my mental health problems to go by harassing my friend and falsely accuse them of being me and of being into bestiality because I spoke against her and only shows how her business practices help aid in the discrimination towards people who have mental health disorders.

Also, the state of $15 CD is clearly false, there’s the multiple copies of the album, the shipping and handling and the state sales tax that are added to this, so this is nearing the hundreds depending on where you’re at, for example, Swift’s most recent album went for $13.98, times that by four is $55.92. Add the sales tax is $59.83 and that’s well more than a misely $15 and with today’s current economy, is not something remotely easy to pay for if you’re on a fixed income, for someone like me who currently has a payee, that’s a huge chunk of weekly check’s worth gone and I have to survive and get food and shouldn’t have to choose between getting something I would enjoy and food for that week.

In conclusion, I do not believe that me asking for equal opportunity to buy something I would enjoy hurts anyone, if anything all it hurts is those who take advantage of Ms. Swift’s business practices to buy these limitless time products to resell at outrageously high prices to exploit collectors. We who have mental health disorders are and can be just like everyone else in certain aspects of life, such as having collections of things that bring us joy and why should we be denied such things because of other people’s lack of compassion, understanding or empathy? Why should any of us be forced to conform to more than we already do? Many of us who are Autistic already have to mask thanks to the open and disgusting discrimination towards our disorder as we are forced to conform to things that usually bring us a lot of social anxiety issues, such as having to go out into an unjust and oppressive society where we have to mentally prepare ourselves and keep ourselves calm, a mentally and physically taxing task, as to not be overstimulated by being in situations we much rather not have to do.

I do not believe that I am asking anything wrong of any artist to be respectful of all members of their fan base and take all into consideration when making business decisions that can cause such openly harmful discrimination towards people who are mentally disabled by asking for equal opportunity and to be able to have a choice of which format to own products. As I have stated, my preferred format is CDs. I like owning physical CDs and should have the right to choose such an option if I so choose then being given no option at all or forced to spend more money on things such as a record player to even have the ability to hear something like “Sweeter Than Fiction” or buy an external hard drive to keep digital copies on should anything happen to my computer and even external hard drives can get damaged and stop working and it is illegal to upload music to sites such as Google Drive as that opens the door to illegal distribution and downloading, something that I don’t want or need to be accused of, so I just prefer CDs as they are just the easiest format to own as I can rip them any time I want, regardless of if anything happens to my computer or external hard drive and store the CDs safely away.