From Charli XCX’s “Death of the Dancefloor” -gate, to Timothée Chalamet’s apparent hatred for other art forms, it seems like everyone’s words are getting them in trouble. It’s hard for me to conclude whether I think people truly care about the words of celebrities, or if they already had a preconceived notion about them, and a slip-up in wording gave them the perfect opportunity to let them have it. The more it occurs, the more it feels like the latter.
As a very vocal fan of both celebrities, this might come off as bias, but in the case of Charli and Timmy, I think there are people who simply just dislike them. And as two people who are notoriously very unapologetic, it’s not hard to understand why.
It didn’t occur to most that Timmy was clearly implying that the average person is not keeping up with ballet and opera as art forms, not himself. It has been made clear his whole career that he grew up with his family in the ballet and has been an avid supporter of it for years. Same with Charli, obviously, dance music is not dead; it’s been her entire career and will be for the coming future. Notably, she recently teased that her upcoming (very pop-sounding, not rock) song will be titled Rock Music. Further proving my point that people read one headline about her saying “The dance floor is dead” and run with it.
Celebrities have been overly criticized for the way people take their words out of context for years. The first example that comes to mind is Kim Kardashian’s “get your fucking ass up and work”. I’m not saying that her saying it like that didn’t come off as out of touch, but it was obvious to someone with any sort of critical thinking skills that she was trying to be motivational in saying that people should work hard for their dreams. In our day-to-day lives, we are constantly saying things on the spot that could probably be worded better, or will probably not be taken exactly as we meant them, so why are we unable to give celebrities the same grace we give ourselves?
To be clear, I say this without meaning that some things don’t come out too wrongly, where it shows an aspect of the celebrity that they otherwise would try to hide. Think Kelly Osburne’s comments about Trump deporting Latinos in 2015.
Let’s say Timothee does hate the opera? Is that really so awful that his peers should still be bringing it up in interviews, months later? Should John Summit be posting on his Instagram story calling out Charli for her comment, just a year after beginning her to get on a “slutty” track he made? That’s not for me to decide. This whole discourse has me feeling that this reflects just how illiterate and annoying people are getting online. We are slipping into a time where people are having to censor what they say because a lot of the public cannot critically analyze what people are actually meaning with their words. Not only that, but what used to be something just fans experienced.
Thinking Weekly 
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