- cross-posted to:
- crimes_of_ice@lemmy.4d2.org
- cross-posted to:
- crimes_of_ice@lemmy.4d2.org
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/49053959
Fans of Taylor Swift have been shocked after it emerged that a contractor for the controversial Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) was in attendance at her wedding.
…
It appears that Steven J. Demetriou, the Executive Chair of a company called Amentum Services was also among the crowd gathered to see the happy couple say ‘I do.’
Amentum Services is currently the sole contractor for ICE’s Camp East Montana, a detention centre in El Paso.
The artist has faced swift backlash for her choice of guests, including online commenters who have shared their dismay on social media.
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I dated a swiftie a few years back.
One of the most clueless individuals I’ve ever met. Stanned both Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj then turned around and called herself a leftist.
Fans are fucking dumb.
I’m old.
What does Stanned mean?
backed or vouched for, from a parasocial standpoint.
mega fan, from the Eminem f/t Dido song Stan about an obsessive fan.
Ooooooh.
A stan is a hardcore fan. Stanned is the verb of that expression
How old? Because, it’s an Eminem reference. Not saying you can’t be older than that reference but, it’s been around awhile.
I’ve heard the song but never seen the name used as a verb until recently.
Been used for years and years my man. First time I recall it was all the lebronstans following the Lakers. Then I saw it like everywhere
Absolutely valid. I’m a little slow and only put the two concepts together like a year ago haha. I knew what the term meant, I had heard the song, it took me many years to put it together. Oops lol
Ah you’ll shake it off.
(I’ll go ahead and show myself out the door now)
Haha, you joke but she actually managed to do some psychic damage to me. For no other reason than she accurately deduced what I was doing for entirely incorrect reasons.
She thought I was lying to her because I wanted to manipulate and control her. The reality is that I was much more attracted to her personality (the bits not mired in social media bullshit, like her ability to draw). What I was lying about was the sex being good. My god I have never been more disappointed in a woman, I am to this day convinced she’s gay.
Oh I’m sorry to hear that.
Idolizing other humans is idiotic in general. You can enjoy someone’s artistic output, but always be ready to say fuck them and their art if they turn out to be trash. They owe me nothing and I owe them nothing.
Weir Al’s fans would like a word.
Fans of billionaire shocked to see billionaire does billionaire things.
If I were a billionaire I’d keep giving my money away to bring it down to 900 million or so. Then I could hide better. Also, I’ve always wanted to buy one of those super yachts and a politician. /s
You’re in luck! There is a huge sale on buying politicians under the current administration
The artist has faced swift backlash…
Writer just couldn’t resist, could they?
Dude wasn’t there as an ICE representative; he was there as a family friend. People need to chill.
I don’t think anyone was arguing that he was there as an ICE representative?
It is morally correct to socially ostracize people in your circle who collaborate with the gestapo.
I get your point but continue to disagree. What does excluding this person accomplish? Sure, he would have to sit that out while people with whom he has shared his life celebrate a milestone. It just doesn’t do anything; he’ll still be a gestapo collaborator and they’ll still be married.
What does excluding this person accomplish?
In like, this one isolated case? Probably not much. I’m not particularly invested in this one specific guy and whether or not he went to this one event. What’s important to me is that every ICE agent or collaborator be made a social pariah for as long as they continue to be a part of the gestapo. I want it to be the case that everyone who considers joining or working with ICE has to weigh the fact that they’re gonna lose most of their friends and not be invited over for Thanksgiving with their families anymore before they make that decision. I don’t want to live in a world where someone can terrorize a community and kidnap and ship people off to camps, and then take off their uniform at the end of their shift and go out drinking with the boys like nothing happened. They shouldn’t be allowed to live under the delusion that what they do is acceptable and free from consequence in a civilized society. There should be social deterrences against this kind of thing. We can’t just be like “well that’s just what he does for work but off the clock he’s actually just a normal guy”. Not with this. They can reintegrate into society once they’ve come to their senses and finally understood why nobody wants to talk to them anymore.
Dude is literally a modern day slaver who profits from crimes against humanity
I get that, but in the context of this wedding he is just some dude’s dad. I’m not saying that he is a good dude. I’m just saying that I know fuck all about my friends’ parents, so him ending up at a wedding doesn’t mean much.
In the context of reality, he’s someone that owns a for-profit concentration camp.
That’s it.
Fucking period.
I think that people and situations are more complex than that and have nuance.
Ellipses …
No one is forcing them to own and earn a profit from a Concentration camp.
The only nuance here is the sheer amount of human suffering this person enjoys the benefits of.
I own a smartphone. It’s great. If I explore that whole supply chain, am I going to come out squeaky clean or is it possible that I am benefiting off of the exploitation and potential slavery of other humans? Is that a tolerable amount of suffering compared to the Concentration Camp guy?
Let’s just say I agree with your insanely stupid idea, that human suffering is some type of necessary evil.
You owning a product of human suffering is bad, but not as bad as owning the company athat causes the human suffering and profiting off if it.
Tu quoque.
If they weren’t blindly devoted to the brand imagine, they would have noticed she’s just another rich piece of shit
TIL people were still worshipping celebrities after Covid
even before covid, if you can believe it
To the swifty: there’s nothing wrong with liking an artist, and there’s also nothing wrong with liking an artist’s music. You can also like the idea of someone, whether or not that idea is accurate. It’s hotly debated, but I believe these things can also exist independently of each other, and it’s important to recognize they are different.
It is important to recognize that the public figure of Taylor Swift is a business enterprise that is different from the person, the idea, and the music. It is important to recognize that the same enterprise, much like other celebrity enterprises, maintain teams of full-time staff for topics like PR, upon which the entire enterprise is dependent.
They do things that seem good the economically optimal amount to maximize the ROI on those things. If Taylor Swift the person gave a shit about the stuff the enterprise claims she does, she wouldn’t have $1,000,000,000
“Sickened”
Not everything needs to be an evil conspiracy. Demetriou is the adoptive father of Reggie King, a former basketball player who’s been a close childhood friend of Travis Kelce.
I’m sure that they had better things to do than vet every single person on the guest list.
Demetriou profits from Concentration Camps.
Both of these people of probably already pay someone else to check the guests.
Yes he does, and now everyone knows that. But It’s a wedding. Have you never been involved with a wedding? It’s a freaking mad house of female theater and planning.
Im not even a swift fan, but cut them a break. The guest list isn’t what they were focused on.
You seem to have a lot of hate, maybe you should let it go.
My feelings are irrelevant.
Have you ever seen the inside of an American for profit concentration camp?
A well-known Zionist officiated the wedding…
You’re talking about Adam Sandler?
The Waterboy?
Yes
What a fucking letdown that is, I didn’t know. I knew he was Jewish of course but I didn’t think he’s the kind of person to support this much horror. Guess he goes the way of Andy Samberg.
I’m not particularly surprised. A lot of people conflate family origins with personal identity.
“Kiss me, I’m Irish!”
“You’re either with us or against us!”
“Axis of evil.”
Race biases. Class biases. Gender biases. Etc etc etc, and most of it is unconsciousness and subjective.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Carl Jung
Damn it what happened with Andy
I can’t find anything, I think they confused Samberg with Sandler?
So it’s true that there are no good billionaires then?
The class traitors that fund socialist revolution, if there were any, but IDK how long they’d be billionaire.
MacKenzie Scott may be the exception to that rule.
Or she may be shitty in ways we don’t know yet.
In spite of her charity, she’s richer now then when she divorced Bezos.
She married Bezos. I’m willing to allow anybody a redemption arc, and she appears to be doing the right thing… But she lived with that and accepted it until it didn’t work to her liking.
What’s wrong with early Bezos?
Taylor Swift is a billionaire. Those who had the illusion that a billionaire can be anything other than a disgusting member of the unelected ruling elite just got a reality check.
Isn’t she from a wealthy family too?
TLDR her dad works in finance, moved the family to Nashville, and supported her career at every step, to a degree as any parent would.
Given the Music Industry’s history of insidership and hand selecting artists for the highest level of promotion; I think the lack of “smoking guns” such as her parents mass buying her albums or paying off producers etc just shows how inorganic and corporatized popular music is.
My brother Bill and my other brother Jack. A belly full of beer and a possum in a sack.
Now that’s some quality writing right there!
Peak alt-country
Her father bought a shareholding in the record label that then signed her.
Ah there it is.
deleted by creator
Depends on how you define $250,000 in cash. Way more than the average American has on hand, not exactly a crazy amount to have if you don’t spend it on a bigger house and expensive car as soon as you can and save your kid’s college fund. It’s a hefty sum, but people comment like she’s a forgotten Rockefeller.
Yes and most of her friends are suspiciously maga
yes, thus the reason she’s famous. she bought her way to fame to provide the masses with her mediocre music. and if anyone tells you it ISN’T medicore, they’re lying to you and themselves.
I agree she got where she is in no small part due to her family’s wealth. But her staying power is because—to many myself included—she’s a decent songwriter. You can hate her music, perfectly valid, but I disagree with calling her music “mediocre” as though it’s some objective fact.
Like, I fucking hate the Beatles, not my taste, but Paul McCartney and John Lennon were undeniably talented.
It sucks, but sometimes the rich and famous do have some talents that many enjoy. I think she’s one to a certain extent.
she’s a decent songwriter
Her early attempts to write songs by herself were her least commercially-successful albums. Her songs are good (if you like that sort of thing) because they’re written by a large agglomeration of professional songwriters.
Everyone has talents many people could enjoy.
Only the rich have the ability to develop those talents without having to worry about everything else. This allows even the mediocre to become passable.
Although I am sure that I have heard them in passing, I have never knowing listened to a Taylor Swift song.
Almost all of my exposure to recent pop music is either from late-night grocery shopping or from the swim club a block from my house that has a DJ three or four nights a week during the summer. Unfortunately that’s enough for all of it. I can even sing along to fucking Imagine Dragons.
Thank you.
Also how can anyone see that hairstyle and not think hunger game republican.
My theory is she went with bangs early in her career to hide the wrinkled forehead that she didn’t even have yet. Cheaper and more effective than botox.
I don’t listen to a lot of her music, but the stuff I have heard was good enough. People really have a difficult time separating their opinions of a person from their opinions of that person’s work.
I don’t listen to a lot of her music, but the stuff I have heard was good enough.
Yeah, that’s about where I am with it as well. After the umpteenth time someone was like, “No! It’s genius! You haven’t given it a chance!” I listened to a handful of what they said were her top picks. And yeah, it’s not bad. In fact there’s a lot to like about it: incredibly good production, use of all the things that make a song interesting (varied tempo and use of speeds, chord changes, dynamic volume, etc) but beyond that I found it kind of meh, maybe even just a tiny bit formulaic, and they started to blend on me.
And they all sound like Taylor Swift, which is objectively NOT a bad thing for an artist to create, but compare and contrast artists and bands that evolve so much they constantly have songs and albums that don’t sound like themselves, not just over time but from one album to the next. This is my own preference and taste, and I think I got it from listening to a lot of jazz and/or jazz-inspired music created by musicians that take every limit and push it just a hair farther or in a different direction than expected.
No shade to Taylor fans at all, and I mean no disrespect. It’s NOT bad music. I’m even a tiny bit jealous they have the fan community that they do because it sounds like a lot of fun. But the music just doesn’t appeal much to me.
dynamic volume
I’m gonna disagree with this one, at least. That is definitely not a characteristic of modern pop music and Swift’s music is no exception.
People know that listening to music supports the creator, and they don’t like supporting shitty people. There’s tons of people making really good music, so you can satisfy both the desire to enjoy good music and support good people.
Her look, stage show, music is all the efforts of many people in a large, profitable corporation.
Every notice how female singers need to look like fashion models??
I mean, Adele tore up the scene during the 2000s-2010s and she wasn’t no fashion model. I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good argument. I could name many, many female artists who don’t fit that mold.
Adele has a god-tier voice, something that is absolutely not true of Taylor Swift.
Yes, so if the production is the product, not the singing, it makes sense to have models or actors. Just like a boy band or girl band. Some can sing, bit its not a requirement.
Unfair standards for women as usual.
People whose only exposure to her music is the radio hits and people who were never a teenage girl are the ones complaining about her music. If you don’t get it, that’s fine. Its not for you. It’s not for me.
Lady Gaga has done the same thing yet gets a fraction of the hate. Radio bangers fund the real artist.
People whose only exposure to American for-profit concentration camps from FOX news and people who never had to a gun pointed at them because of the color of their skin are the ones defending inviting a modern day slaver to a wedding.
If you don’t get it, that’s on you.
She could be the best artist in the world but if she hangs out some of the worst human being in the world it shouldn’t matter.
For real. The sanctimonious bullshit of Lemmy is probably the worst part. Who cares if people like her music?
People also love to hate famous people just because they’re famous. Which is stupid and a waste of energy.
Hating anybody is stupid and a waste because hating them doesn’t really affect them. It only hurts you. That doesn’t stop me from hating certain famous people, though. What can I say? I guess I’m stupid.
This is exactly why people hate Keanu Reeves and Tom Hanks and Dolly Parton so much!
or hate her because she invited a Fascist to her wedding? Some celebs did not RSVP.
Yes, hate her for that.
I have no idea what celebs RSVPing has to do with anything?Some people made an ethical decision not to attend this event.
Let’s get real, 0% chance of this lasting 5 years.
Thats just because you haven’t heard the 100 better musicians who’s daddy couldn’t buy them into the business.
I don’t think the existence of better musicians means other musicians are objectively bad, though. There may be hundreds of people who can write better comments than me, but that doesn’t mean my comments are bad.
I think if you heard all the objectively better stuff given the treatment it deserves, you wouldn’t have any interest in the stuff that’s being crammed down your throat. Not that it would be worse than it is today, it just wouldn’t get the money and attention and production it gets due to far better things being available on the market.
I already have no interest in Taylor Swift, though. I just have heard some of her music and I don’t think people have bad taste in music if they like it. I’m already an older man, and there’s only so much I can permit myself to become a stereotype.
Anyways, I mostly listen to Japanese music, to try to help me learn/maintain Japanese, and Japanese music I think is even more corporate than American music. If I had it in my heart to dislike corporate music, I wouldn’t have any room to dislike things like 6-7, which is far more important.
She didn’t take any one person’s place. She just jumped the queue. The others could still try and make it without money. It’s just a lot harder.
Yes they can try to be the best producer, mixer, recording engineer, mastering engineer, marketing, PR/AR, distribution, promotion, tour booking manager, in order to rise to the level of those spending millions on it.
A few actually pull that off. But for the most part those things are reserved for acts with money to spend. Stuff like almost all large venues being owned by only 1 company with deep ties to the established record and promotion companies makes it very hard to book your show there even if you had the money to do so.
The truth is that the vast majority of pop stars come from wealthy and connected families who can afford to buy them into the business or who are already established in the entertainment businesses.
Honestly, the majority of famous musicians aren’t that good of people. Shit, even Mozart and Beethoven were dicks.
Some separation of the music and the artists is needed.
Beethoven might have been unpleasant, but he wasn’t a bad person. On the contrary, he was a hell of a leftist, he hated the billionaires of his time and supported liberty and civil rights, which back then put you at the extreme left of the political scenario. I know you just pulled two names for the sake of your argument, just please keep my boy Beethoven out of your Taylor Swift apology.
To add to this: Mozart was a dick and was probably poisoned because he pissed off the wrong person. Dead at 35.
Fun fact: Mozart invented a system that used dice to randomly generate music. My unprovable pet theory is that he kept improving this system but stopped telling people about it and used it to compose all of his greatest hits.
She is Daddy’s entertainment investment that paid very well in return
Out of 1000 people invited to the wedding, the adoptive father of Travis Kelce 's childhood friend is an objectively evil person. Has there ever been a wedding in the world without one total dick that had to be invited because of some family obligation? Does anyone do in-depth investigations of all the plus-ones? Besides the journalists searching for celebrity dirt to exploit after the fact, that is.
I’m not a pop star or anything, but the number of my husband’s friends’ parents who were invited to our wedding was zero.
Did these people run out of actual friends and family to invite? That’s sad.
I’ve literally never heard of anybody inviting their friends’ parents to their wedding.
If you offered a friend a plus-one and they brought a parent rather than a date it could have happened to you.
How many people did you invite to your wedding?
Does anyone do in-depth investigations of all the plus-ones?
If I was a billionaire pop-star with a reputation to preserve, I would.
I guarantee you every single person who was invited at Taylor Swift’s wedding was personally vetted by her. Nobody there was there by mistake.
Taylor Swift is super rightwing, has been for a while.
Why did she endorse kamala?
I don’t really follow her, her music, or her fandom. I just assume she loves money and shallow shit like most celebrities.
Because Kamala is also super right wing?
Amazing how she can be a commie to the right wingers and a fascist to the lefties.
In this thought experiment, a hypothetical politician inside a closed box may be considered to be simultaneously both communist and fascist while it is unobserved, as a result of its fate being linked to a random election event that may or may not occur.
This isn’t the paradox you seem to think it is. American democrats are center right. As in, to the right of leftists and the left of maga.
If they are in the center they’re not fascists or communists though.
Seems like both sides are over reacting.
center right
Seems like both sides are over reacting.
Taylor Swift did not actually endorse Harris, she made a video encouraging people to do their own research and think carefully about who they would vote for, and people wishcasted that to mean what they wanted.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C_wtAOKOW1z/
I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.
I dunno man, reads like an endorsement to me.
I yield to your superior knowledge.
Just a flesh wound! *hops on leg stumps*
@CubitOom It’s not visible to anyone outside of infosec.pub
Are you viewing this Lemmy post on Mastodon?
Here is the link to the article
https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/05/taylor-swift-fans-sickened-ice-contractor-attends-wedding-29047436/
@CubitOom yeah, it looks like just a link. I’ve had mixed success with Lemmy.
@CubitOom Thanks for the update with the story link!
@CubitOom And why are people surprised? People with that kind of money seldom REALLY give a shit about regular people. Class loyalty at the top is basically a given.
I don’t know why but if you view a Lemmy post on Mastodon, the intended behaviour is to redirect the link to a “join the posters instance” instead of the actual link to the post.
