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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 13, 2023 19:50:12 GMT -5
First of all: thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts about the topic. Here are my two cents about what you said. Transgender is not a state of being. Someone with gender dysphoria thinks their biological gender doesn’t match how they feel. That’s why it’s a mental disorder. Psychological evaluation will investigate what’s behind those feelings. Transitioning to the other gender will only be reasonable when it’s highly plausible it will fix your issues. Chantel asked a vital question: what could justify transitioning at all? Pretty much everyone is biologically male or female. With the biology come corresponding chemistry (i.e. hormones) and psychology. Even with people that have some anomalies in for example genitals or reproductive organs, it’s not that hard to determine their gender. There’s a minuscule group of people that gets closer to a 50-50 balance of male and female biology. In the western world we’re talking one in a million. For some of those people I can imagine a transition could be helpful. Those people are not the issue. Like you said, they will not take it lightly to transition and they deserve all the care they can get. The issue is with how the definition of transgender is getting watered down. We’ve reached the point that people call themselves non-binary, make up silly pronouns, “change” identity/gender from day to day. I know you’re very empathetic and I praise you for it. BUT…we live in a day and age where empathy is going too far. It’s not healthy to be accepting of everything and everyone as they are at the time. Boundaries are key. You’re not helping someone by agreeing with everything they do or say. It’s actually a bad thing to stimulate behavior that is wrong or unhealthy. The whole point of therapy is to help them identify and reflect on their problems to change their life for the better (in contrast to agreeing with them and stimulate their destructive behavior). And the current wave of empathy is mostly fake anyway. The reason why many are overly empathetic is to make it about them. It’s a sign of narcissism. You can tell that it’s fake because the moment someone pulls them back into reality and disagrees with what they’re saying, they pull out the torch and come after you. Others do it out of fear to be called a biggot or whatever-phobic. Anyway. You see in your example of Miley how loosely we’re using the term transgender. There’s not even a bit of doubt that she’s a woman. Her not liking one of her personas is a separate issue. Same goes for Sam Smith or Demi Lovato. It’s idiotic how they try to label themselves. Not to mention disrespectful of people who are actually dealing with gender dysphoria. As for hormones. Taking hormones for menopause or testosterone for male problems is completely different. In those cases you use it to compensate for a deficit. To change gender, you really need to take a massive dose of hormones. You can’t mutate a body to the other gender by a healthy dose. To get a glimpse of what that does to a body, watch a documentary about athletes from Eastern-Germany. It’s shocking. If you imagine nowadays they’re doing that to kids to “transition”, you’ll run to such a clinic and start punching people. You mention group identity. That’s also an issue. We need to start differentiating within the LGBT community. LGB people are completely different. They’re getting dragged into this. They are normal people with a different sexual orientation, no issue whatsoever. The trans community is different. First of all we need to limit it to the tiny group of people who have such severe biological anomalies that it’s not obvious which gender they belong to. All the others definitely deserve care in some way. But they should be held to sane standards and not be able to blur their identity however they please, let alone get access to intensive hormone treatment or transgender surgery. As for “everybody is entitled to do with their body what they wish”. Yes and no. To some extent it’s your choice and responsibility. But you can’t just do anything. Most importantly you need to be in a state of mind to be able to make big decisions. Also it’s society’s and healthcare professionals’ responsibility to tell you the truth and lecture you on the consequences. Sometimes even protect you from yourself making the wrong decision. At the moment the issue is mostly within politics, not pharma. Politicians are putting a bomb under society by messing with scientific facts and important values. Spinelessly they pretend to help by showing how accepting they are. But they’re actually causing the problems. It will ruin lives. Not only of those directly involved, but also for everyone being part of society. Look at how many dodgy laws are surfacing that won’t even fix the issue they’re meant to fix. P.S. no, I haven’t seen botched, never heard of it. With the people that classify themselves as non binary I kind of wonder if they are basing that on not being conventionally attractive for their sex so they are choosing to be nothing instead. I agree that transgenders should not be included with the LGB. Being transgender is not a sexuality. The gender and sexuality movement kind of goes hand in hand in some cases but each letter in the acronym is its own community in and of itself. It's kind of like a neighbourhood and each letter is it's on house in that neighbourhood. Also one of the most prominent figures of the Stonewall Riots, which lead to the sexual liberation movement as we know it today, is Marsha P Johnson, who is typically referred to as a transgender woman but actually never identified with that label while they were alive and it may be more accurate to refer to them as gender non-confirming (thank you wikipedia), but that's a big reason why T is part of the acronym even though the first 3 letters are sexualities and the 4th one is a gender identity. Of course the acronym has expanded and here in Canada it's typically LGBTQIA2S+ which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (or queer, people use both), intersex, asexual, two spirit (that's a term used by indigenous communities here) and plus for everything else. |
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Roman
Next Level Swiftie
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Post by Roman on Feb 14, 2023 3:20:51 GMT -5
First of all: thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts about the topic. Here are my two cents about what you said. Transgender is not a state of being. Someone with gender dysphoria thinks their biological gender doesn’t match how they feel. That’s why it’s a mental disorder. Psychological evaluation will investigate what’s behind those feelings. Transitioning to the other gender will only be reasonable when it’s highly plausible it will fix your issues. Chantel asked a vital question: what could justify transitioning at all? Pretty much everyone is biologically male or female. With the biology come corresponding chemistry (i.e. hormones) and psychology. Even with people that have some anomalies in for example genitals or reproductive organs, it’s not that hard to determine their gender. There’s a minuscule group of people that gets closer to a 50-50 balance of male and female biology. In the western world we’re talking one in a million. For some of those people I can imagine a transition could be helpful. Those people are not the issue. Like you said, they will not take it lightly to transition and they deserve all the care they can get. The issue is with how the definition of transgender is getting watered down. We’ve reached the point that people call themselves non-binary, make up silly pronouns, “change” identity/gender from day to day. I know you’re very empathetic and I praise you for it. BUT…we live in a day and age where empathy is going too far. It’s not healthy to be accepting of everything and everyone as they are at the time. Boundaries are key. You’re not helping someone by agreeing with everything they do or say. It’s actually a bad thing to stimulate behavior that is wrong or unhealthy. The whole point of therapy is to help them identify and reflect on their problems to change their life for the better (in contrast to agreeing with them and stimulate their destructive behavior). And the current wave of empathy is mostly fake anyway. The reason why many are overly empathetic is to make it about them. It’s a sign of narcissism. You can tell that it’s fake because the moment someone pulls them back into reality and disagrees with what they’re saying, they pull out the torch and come after you. Others do it out of fear to be called a biggot or whatever-phobic. Anyway. You see in your example of Miley how loosely we’re using the term transgender. There’s not even a bit of doubt that she’s a woman. Her not liking one of her personas is a separate issue. Same goes for Sam Smith or Demi Lovato. It’s idiotic how they try to label themselves. Not to mention disrespectful of people who are actually dealing with gender dysphoria. As for hormones. Taking hormones for menopause or testosterone for male problems is completely different. In those cases you use it to compensate for a deficit. To change gender, you really need to take a massive dose of hormones. You can’t mutate a body to the other gender by a healthy dose. To get a glimpse of what that does to a body, watch a documentary about athletes from Eastern-Germany. It’s shocking. If you imagine nowadays they’re doing that to kids to “transition”, you’ll run to such a clinic and start punching people. You mention group identity. That’s also an issue. We need to start differentiating within the LGBT community. LGB people are completely different. They’re getting dragged into this. They are normal people with a different sexual orientation, no issue whatsoever. The trans community is different. First of all we need to limit it to the tiny group of people who have such severe biological anomalies that it’s not obvious which gender they belong to. All the others definitely deserve care in some way. But they should be held to sane standards and not be able to blur their identity however they please, let alone get access to intensive hormone treatment or transgender surgery. As for “everybody is entitled to do with their body what they wish”. Yes and no. To some extent it’s your choice and responsibility. But you can’t just do anything. Most importantly you need to be in a state of mind to be able to make big decisions. Also it’s society’s and healthcare professionals’ responsibility to tell you the truth and lecture you on the consequences. Sometimes even protect you from yourself making the wrong decision. At the moment the issue is mostly within politics, not pharma. Politicians are putting a bomb under society by messing with scientific facts and important values. Spinelessly they pretend to help by showing how accepting they are. But they’re actually causing the problems. It will ruin lives. Not only of those directly involved, but also for everyone being part of society. Look at how many dodgy laws are surfacing that won’t even fix the issue they’re meant to fix. P.S. no, I haven’t seen botched, never heard of it. There are still a few things I disagree with you about here but if I'm being honest, this discussion is getting a little long in the tooth and I'm getting kind of bored of discussing it so I'll just say this: 1. I think you're only thinking about gender in the physical form and I think this is where the root of our differences of opinion are coming from. The term transgender as I know it just refers to someone who identifies with a gender that's different than the one they were born as. Non-binary just refers to anyone who doesn't feel that they fit in the gender binary at all. People with medical anomalies that give them male and female parts are known as intersex. To me, gender is just a societal construct. If someone tells me they're a girl, who am I to judge? I don't care what's in your pants. 2. I can't exactly call myself an expert on hormone therapy or on any surgery that allows one to change their gender. My stance on those treatments comes more from my stance on bodily autonomy in general. I don't necessarily think that lawmakers who have little to no medical background should have a say in what any specific group of people does with their bodies. This is also part of the reason I think Roe V. Wade should have never have been overturned. 3. I do agree that a lot of these issues have become political debates or worse RELIGIOUS debates when they really shouldn't be. Healthcare looks different from person to person. Maybe the common ground for people who are transgender and debating whether or not to start hormone therapy is not just talking extensively with their doctors and healthcare providers but also people who have had these procedures and gone through these treatments and hear out their opinions on it. As I mentioned priorly, there are people who are transgender who are against the gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment and who feel like you don't need that to be whatever gender you're transitioning to. Maybe we need to invite those people into the conversation as well. After all, they're the ones with the experience. 4. Also, my original comment about Miley Cyrus may have been a bit unclear. Miley struggled with body dysmorphia not gender dysmorphia. 5. Botched is good! It's a reality tv show about 2 plastic surgeons who fix botched surgeries. There are some clips on YouTube of it. I recommend you give them a watch. It just feels relative to the topic, which is why I mention it. What you wrote for point 1 is key to our difference of opinion. I dare to say it’s against the truth. How someone feels or wants to identify is irrelevant. And gender is not even remotely a social construct. Biology, psychology, psychiatry, neurology and even philosophy are crystal clear on this: your biology is directly related to your physical and mental state of being. And thus your identity. Somehow we live in a day and age where some think they can push far beyond the boundaries of reality to gain more freedom than they can take responsibility for. That’s appalling. We’re only limited in a certain extend. Being a man or a woman still gives you plenty of freedom. No one says your life needs to have a restricted pattern. You’re just not allowed to cross certain boundaries. And that’s a good thing, because it keeps you sane and healthy. One of the things why this is so important, is that there’s a pattern to topics like this. Evil movements are trying to brainwash young people. Trying to lure you in with “feelings over logic”, “create your own reality”, handing you victim cards. It’s a dangerous ideology. I hope you guys stay alert and educate yourself on these topics. Think deep and stick to facts. |
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Post by chantel on Feb 14, 2023 8:28:32 GMT -5
Roman what do you think the reason behind this movement is? Transgenders make up a small population yet this has been pushed so hard. If you talk about this topic nearly anywhere else online and have a consenting opinion on the topic you get banned or deleted. Due to that it's giving the impression that most people support this but in reality most people don't.
Some conspiracy theorist think it's to make people more supportive of transhumanism. There's been a gradual build up I think over the past 2 decades of the popularity of elective cosmetic procedures. Prior to 2000 would you have ever seen someone getting cosmetic surgery to look like Kim Kardashian or anyone looking like Madonna? They may have wanted to fix a big nose or something but they were not getting new bodies and faces. I think Kim was actually pretty pivotal celebrity that helped this movement. She made it popular to have cosmetic surgeries and Bruce was on her show too. I think the popularity of these surgeries made people think it's not a big deal when transgenders have these elective surgeries. Now that transgenders have these surgeries it won't be a big deal when people start having surgeries to merge with technology.
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Post by chantel on Feb 14, 2023 9:04:41 GMT -5
Oh I meant to ask you this yesterday Sydney since you were talking bodily autonomy. What did you think about people being pushed from their jobs that refused the Covid shot during the pandemic?
Also any thoughts on transracials?
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 14, 2023 10:57:00 GMT -5
Oh I meant to ask you this yesterday Sydney since you were talking bodily autonomy. What did you think about people being pushed from their jobs that refused the Covid shot during the pandemic? Also any thoughts on transracials? That’s kind of a tough topic for me cause I worked through the entire pandemic and I had this discussion a lot. There are a certain portion of the population who couldn’t get the shot due to medical conditions, the vaccine shouldn’t have been pushed on those people. As for everyone else, as long as other people were following other public heath protocols (like masking, sanitizing your hands), I didn’t care if you got the vaccine or not. We’re at a point now that enough people have gotten the vaccine that we mostly have group immunity. I feel bad for the people who had to lose their jobs for it but there were a lot of people who put their own freedom above the greater good and I can’t help but look at those people like they were selfish. Race and gender are two very different things. Someone who transitions from one gender to another doesn’t bother or offend me. It takes nothing away from my femininity. However, I’m white as hell. No one is going to discriminate against me for the colour of my skin and for me to claim so or to wear someone’s culture as a costume would be wrong. |
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Roman
Next Level Swiftie
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Posts: 5,780
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Post by Roman on Feb 14, 2023 13:32:20 GMT -5
Roman what do you think the reason behind this movement is? Transgenders make up a small population yet this has been pushed so hard. If you talk about this topic nearly anywhere else online and have a consenting opinion on the topic you get banned or deleted. Due to that it's giving the impression that most people support this but in reality most people don't. Some conspiracy theorist think it's to make people more supportive of transhumanism. There's been a gradual build up I think over the past 2 decades of the popularity of elective cosmetic procedures. Prior to 2000 would you have ever seen someone getting cosmetic surgery to look like Kim Kardashian or anyone looking like Madonna? They may have wanted to fix a big nose or something but they were not getting new bodies and faces. I think Kim was actually pretty pivotal celebrity that helped this movement. She made it popular to have cosmetic surgeries and Bruce was on her show too. I think the popularity of these surgeries made people think it's not a big deal when transgenders have these elective surgeries. Now that transgenders have these surgeries it won't be a big deal when people start having surgeries to merge with technology. That’s a good question. It’s a lot deeper than this issue. The root of it started in the 1960’s with the intellectual/cultural ideas of postmodernism. Postmodernism brings forward the idea of subjectivity of truth. In fact, it rejects the concept of truth, facts, knowledge, morality and reality as we know it. Postmodernism believes everything is up for interpretation. Everything is just a social construct. While it’s true that objective truth is limited by our human boundaries, that doesn’t mean truth and knowledge aren’t accurate. Besides, what’s the alternative? Postmodernism sees the answer in leaving it up to every individual to make their own interpretation of what they experience. That may sound appealing, but it’s not hard to see that it would cause mayhem in society if everyone acts completely egocentric. To deal with that problem, postmodernism embraced marxistic, socialistic, communistic ideas. You belong in society by being part of a group. Group identity is more important than the individual. You probably see the irony in this: postmodernism wants to promote the individual, but ends up promoting group identity. It also introduces the concept of going against hierarchy. According to postmodernism the world as we know it is a hierarchical tiranny of oppression. Since the 1960’s, times of unlimited freedom, this made its way into social studies in our education system. Social studies are soft science anyway. But you can imagine this movement against rationalism polluted facts and truth (etc.) more and more. Nowadays it even wants to wedge into hard science. You may ask why. It’s the ideal setup for manipulation. If you reject truth, facts, morality and reality, there’s no way for someone else to refute your point. You can fend of every argument by saying it’s their interpretation and it’s all relative. There will be no clean discussion. Also, if you divide people into groups, it’s easy to rally them to revolt against other groups who are considered oppressive, inferior, racist etc. This is probably starting to sound familiar. Fast forward to today. It’s a beneficial environment for politics and activism. Both can rally the masses for every cause. Make up the convenient truth and set up one group against the other. Trigger emotions, appeal to empathy and victimhood. Promise them a victory or claim to free them of oppression. You might recognize this all too well in nowadays topics of debate: right wing vs. left wing, gender identity, feminism, racism, the patriarchy, climate change, the pandemic, wars. The topic isn’t even the most important. It’s the power over people to shift their views and actions. |
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Post by TimeOfMyLife on Feb 22, 2023 7:41:45 GMT -5
If it makes people happier to change their identity/ sex/ gender, why not? Let them do what they want, even if it's a (big) transition. They pay for it themselves, they have to live with the changes and it often makes them feel better. So who are we, who don't change our identity/ sex/ gender, to judge their feelings? Give them their freedom to do whatever they want.
Sidenote: The only thing we should not do is to change too much because of a small group. Accepting them is good, but we must not overshoot.
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Post by chantel on Feb 22, 2023 9:10:14 GMT -5
If it makes people happier to change their identity/ sex/ gender, why not? Let them do what they want, even if it's a (big) transition. They pay for it themselves, they have to live with the changes and it often makes them feel better. So who are we, who don't change our identity/ sex/ gender, to judge their feelings? Give them their freedom to do whatever they want. Sidenote: The only thing we should not do is to change too much because of a small group. Accepting them is good, but we must not overshoot. I think most people wouldn't be opposed to them if they were not negatively impacting others with their decisions. Like you said the feelings of a few shouldn't impact the majority of society. |
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Post by chantel on Feb 22, 2023 9:10:36 GMT -5
Any ideas for a new topic?
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Roman
Next Level Swiftie
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Posts: 5,780
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Post by Roman on Feb 22, 2023 9:44:58 GMT -5
Any ideas for a new topic? Alright. Give me your thoughts on feminism. How do you define feminism? Give us your pros and cons. To what degree do you stand behind it? Are there limits? If so, what are the limits? Are you on board with nowadays feminism? |
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Post by TimeOfMyLife on Feb 22, 2023 10:45:56 GMT -5
Any ideas for a new topic? What about the price of merchandise and tickets from artists. I feel like the past years the prices went so much up, much more than it should. I mean, artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran etc have enough money, so why make everything so extremely expensive just to financially squeeze your fans... |
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Post by SydneyPaige on Feb 22, 2023 12:05:44 GMT -5
Any ideas for a new topic? What about the price of merchandise and tickets from artists. I feel like the past years the prices went so much up, much more than it should. I mean, artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran etc have enough money, so why make everything so extremely expensive just to financially squeeze your fans... I think to be totally fair, the artists don’t really have a ton to do with the pricing of things. Sure they benefit from it (obviously), but usually an artist’s merch is run by a completely separate company. With ticket prices (from my understanding), they set a price range but Ticketmaster can do whatever the hell they want to change them. That’s why they’re being taken to court right now. Taylor never meant for tickets to the eras tour to be more than $500 at most (this is for vip, floor seats, early access and free merch items included). Ticketmaster raised the price by making early private sales to scalpers, putting on dynamic prices (against Taylor and her team’s wishes) and charging ancillary fees that cost half of (if not more) than what the tickets were worth. Also they’re so big that if someone tries to go against them they can bar that artist from touring completely cause they own the venues. It’s sad because the artist will take most of the blame even though they are not really the ones with much say in the matter. |
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Post by chantel on Feb 22, 2023 15:31:39 GMT -5
Any ideas for a new topic? Alright. Give me your thoughts on feminism. How do you define feminism? Give us your pros and cons. To what degree do you stand behind it? Are there limits? If so, what are the limits? Are you on board with nowadays feminism? Feminism is advocating for both sexes to have equality. The pros and cons overlap. This topic actually goes hand in hand with the previous topic. A big con is that men benefit too much from it. Women getting their own careers means that women have to do all the housework plus now they are expected to pay half of the bills. Women having control over who their partners are lead to girls being bombarded with "adult" positive media. Inclusivity in the feminist movement lead to men's feelings being more important than women's rights to privacy and safety. It's just a reworking of patriarchy. Modern feminists seem like they hate women and want to appease men. It's actually ironic because men like the incels/ red pill people/ manosphere equate feminism as women that hate men but it's actually the opposite since these women that call themselves feminists are working overtime to prove they don't hate men at their own detriment. The ability to work is also a positive since having your own income allows for independence but women working benefits society as a whole (for the most part -a downside is how children are impacted by not being supervised by both their parents working and what bad children end up doing to society). Work is one of the main reasons why feminism was allowed to progress. After the industrial revolution and all the technology that followed there were a lot of jobs that opened up that didn't need physical labor. Women could contribute to human development and help expand the economy. I think a limit should be with the draft. I remember awhile ago politicians were debating on whether or not women would have to sign up for that. I don't know why anyone would advocate for that. I wouldn't say I'm a modern feminist that supports western feminism. Really the only thing I support with modern feminsm is with the wage gap and the right to have control over our body with the abortion topic. I know you don't agree with the wage gap and we could both find verified sources that support our viewpoint. Overall men and women are not the same and shouldn't be treated the same but we are also not inferior just different. Also something I want to add is that women should be advocating for is the immediate death penalty for men that commit violent crimes against women and children. I don't think they should just be in jail for a few years and then go on to commit more crimes. Rinse and repeat. Tax evaders get longer jail times than these violent criminals. Law makers prioritize money over the safety of women and children. |
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Post by chantel on Feb 22, 2023 15:38:02 GMT -5
Any ideas for a new topic? What about the price of merchandise and tickets from artists. I feel like the past years the prices went so much up, much more than it should. I mean, artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran etc have enough money, so why make everything so extremely expensive just to financially squeeze your fans... It's supply and demand. They want to make the most they possibly can and they know they aren't going to be available to be seen by every fan so the supply is limited and the demand is high. If the tickets were truly expensive they wouldn't have sold out shows because people wouldn't be able to afford them. Now with the merchandise the prices of that is truly money hungry. Taylor is crazy with hers. Taylor will have you pay $1000 for a $15 t shirt with her face on it (hyperbole lol). There are people that buy multiple versions of the same album. I can't believe so many people still have cd players to play CDs. I remember I saw the album wall clock and thought it came as is but then I saw you had to have each version of the album to complete the clock. |
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Post by TimeOfMyLife on Feb 23, 2023 4:47:13 GMT -5
What about the price of merchandise and tickets from artists. I feel like the past years the prices went so much up, much more than it should. I mean, artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran etc have enough money, so why make everything so extremely expensive just to financially squeeze your fans... I think to be totally fair, the artists don’t really have a ton to do with the pricing of things. Sure they benefit from it (obviously), but usually an artist’s merch is run by a completely separate company. With ticket prices (from my understanding), they set a price range but Ticketmaster can do whatever the hell they want to change them. That’s why they’re being taken to court right now. Taylor never meant for tickets to the eras tour to be more than $500 at most (this is for vip, floor seats, early access and free merch items included). Ticketmaster raised the price by making early private sales to scalpers, putting on dynamic prices (against Taylor and her team’s wishes) and charging ancillary fees that cost half of (if not more) than what the tickets were worth. Also they’re so big that if someone tries to go against them they can bar that artist from touring completely cause they own the venues. It’s sad because the artist will take most of the blame even though they are not really the ones with much say in the matter. Well, artists have at least an indication of the prices of tickets and merchandise. If they disagree (and think it's too expensive for their fans), they can probably have influence on it. I mean, when Taylor was quite a new artist, they gave away extra merchandise and the prices were low. Every time I see the prices go up, I dislike it more. C'mon, be normal, have respect for your fans.... |
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