Alternate title: the mental gymnastics of Swifties

I was doom scrolling and was recommended a post from r/Taylorswift, which caught my attention. Read the post, read some comments, and this one caught my attention the most. Does competition in the industry even apply to most male artists? Don't get me wrong, but from my years of listening, the main voices of pop have always been women, with some clear exceptions going to Drake, Post Malone, Justin Bieber, and The Weeknd. And even then, out of those, Bieber is more concerned with being a husband (yes he had that Yummy moment of shame) and Drake releases almost yearly sub par music just for the streams and to stay relevant, but apart from those outliers, do men in the industry really even care about streams, sales, and metrics as much as the women (and to an extent their fanbases?) like I don't see The Weeknd, Post Malone, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars or Travis Scott (all top 20 artists on Spotify rn) trying to outdo one another like I've seen with Taylor, Billie, Ariana, and when they were relevant, Katy Perry.

I don't want to come up as rude or attacking the person who made that comment, because I understand there's sexism and different standards in the industry and across the country in different in work environments and I oppose that, but I out of all the places to make a comparison to women being held to different sets of rules by society, I do not believe that the TOP FUCKING ARTISTS IN THE WORLD, LIKE LITERAL MILLIO/BILLIONAIRES, is where we need to be having that discussion. I honestly think that Swifties will try their best to make her seem like "she's one of us/ we are so similar and face the same struggles as her" when in reality she is nothing like them. But that's part of the mysticism behind the public figure that is Taylor Swift.