Why'd you have to be so mean?
I love taking road trips with my girlfriend. I don’t mind driving, the company is always top notch, and snacks are generally provided. Music is the only point of contention. Usually my girl is an angel who lets me have first choice, and in return I try to avoid punishing her by making sure what I’m listening to is at least tolerable.
Our tastes luckily overlap on a couple artists, one of whom is Taylor Swift. We were driving back home the other day, listening to Speak Now, when the song “Mean” came on. The premise of that track is a universal trope everyone feels they can relate to. Taylor conjures a childhood bully and attempts to be the bigger person. The antagonist tries to get her down, but she’s got her sights set on more important things.
“One day, I’ll be living in a big ol’ city, and all you’re ever gonna be is mean.”
That certainly came true for Taylor, who is about as outwardly successful as humanly possible. Anyone who bullied her probably feels real fuckin’ stupid these days, watching her chill in a million dollar Super Bowl suite counting money and being lavished with gifts by Shaquille O’Neil.
Everyone hopes their story will turn out like that. It’s the one little twist of karmic fate we all hold onto. The idea is so engrained in our psyche that we’ve created archetypal characters around it. The unassuming nerd eventually gets the hot girl. The high school quarterback becomes a loser who never leaves his hometown. It’s basically the plot to every coming-of-age teen movie. Deep down, we have an urge to rub our success in the faces of those who said we wouldn’t be shit.
How often does that actually happen, though?
Self confidence is key to success, and while holding onto a high-school revenge fantasy can feel inspirational, deep down, it’s probably born from the type of inferiority complex bullying instills in people. Being picked on kills self-esteem. It teaches people to hide and stay quiet, or to never leave their comfort zones. No amount of karmic magic is going to address those internal insecurities for a bullying victim.
On the other hand, “cool kids” sitting atop the middle school food chain are usually born confident. They have well-developed social skills and make friends easily. They know how to be assertive and go for what they want. The notion that these people are somehow destined to fail later in life because they were assholes before their pre-frontal cortex developed seems misguided to me.
Most of the cool kids at my high school turned out fine. They really enjoyed their twenties and have now gone on to start families or make a decent amount of money doing some sort of trade job. The biggest dickhead in my middle school is now the enterprise account executive at a software development company. Meanwhile here I am, in sweatpants, rebutting a Taylor Swift song at 1PM on a Monday.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually on the receiving end of this karmic retribution Taylor Swift was talking about. I was never cool or popular, but I certainly was mean. I was bullied pretty hard in elementary school, and for a very long time, the only way I could feel smart or important was by putting others down.
Hurt people hurt people. For every pointdexter who ends up getting rich off their interest in computer science, there’s a hundred little weirdos in an incel chatroom fantasizing about violently taking what they’re “owed” from those who “unjustly” rejected them. That phenomenon gets to the crux of what’s wrong with the whole “meek shall inherit the earth” narrative. It breeds entitlement.
It conditions people to believe they’re owed something for their suffering. “Those people who picked on you? You’re actually better than them. Just wait and everyone will see.” When pain turns to anger, some people lean on this line of thinking without stopping to examine how backwards it is. If you’re really a good person, don’t you want to be celebrated for your talents and success instead of belittling others for falling off?
I’ve been interpreting Swift’s “Mean” as an inspirational message this whole time, but it’s more likely a cautionary tale. The bully is actually the main character, drunk and loud talking over “some football game” about how Taylor “still can’t sing”. Sure, bullying could give someone the type of resilience necessary to become wildly successful, but that requires a lot of work on their part.
The more likely scenario is someone internalizing that hurt and letting it stop them from achieving what they could. Add some teen movie-inspired entitlement to the mix and you could be staring into the eyes of a broken, miserable person. Swift’s message isn’t that you’ll reach her level, it’s to avoid becoming the bully.