shameless

she’s a pop star. cooked numbers has always been their thing, the strategies just change depending on the era

that’s why i think hiphop is still the biggest genre by far. our A-listers flood the charts every time they release with a fraction of the effort

pay attention to cole’s numbers when The Fall Off drops

are you aware that the song is 4 years old, not a new brand new single and was predicted to go #1 anyway before the remixes?

Her job is to sell records. That’s what she’s trying to do. They all do it. Go cry a river till you see your own reflection 🤣🤣🤣

Which is why he’s 🐐

It’s over

Have you realized how you’re wrong yet?

Mid

Remorse

She’s late

Real as f***

64k is great for offset, I hear the album ain’t bad too.

Wym? he did almost 100k on his last joint. That's bout a 50% decrease in sales

Tsk I wouldn’t know

F***ing Fans is the best track on that joint

Taylor Swift kinda blowing the whole stan argument we had on here 1-2 months ago wide open

she made it clear she doesn't really have stans, her fans only started paying attention when she pulled out all these tricks. seems like she doesn't have stans, just consumers

Of course she has stans, wtf

One of the biggest fanbases

The thing is... her stans embraced this whole culture of chart-watching and getting her to #1 everytime. Just like K-pop stans. And the Barbz.

Most fanbases are like this, they care about their favs doing well. But swifties on twitter are obsessed with charts and they don't care about spending their money buying multiple copies of the same album as long as Taylor can go #1

The argument posted here that a few people agreed w/ a few months ago was that stans go out of their way to do ANYTHING to make their fav have success

Taylor Swift fans didn't do anything when they knew Cruel Summer was only 2 points behind #1 last Friday/Saturday, they only started doing something when Taylor put out discounts and all the other stuff

they easily coulda pushed it to #1 without Taylor doing anything if they just increased the songs streams by like 20% which would have been easy, but they didn't care. So how are they "stans" by KTT's definition?

every big pop account on twitter was constantly posting about this s*** all day from last Saturday and still each day Taylor's projections didn't move

They actually have been trying to get this song to #1 for months but there was always something happening (that Rich Men song, Zach Bryan, Paint The Town Red, Drake)

This week is basically their last chance so that's why they (including Taylor) are doing this

If they were trying so hard why werent the point projections moving though over last weekend/monday though? They were too busy listening to other Taylor songs to care

even yesterday the song only did 1.1m on Spotify US
5 million americans went to see her concert film last weekend

the gap between PTTR and Cruel Summer was only 1 or 2 points this week, that's why

I though Bunny was next up

Discussion about charts online has been a thing since the early 2000s, basically. There were forums like UKMIX and ATRL, then stan twitter became big in the early 10s.

But, if I remember currently, they just discussed charts, new releases, radio, etc. They didn't manipulate the charts because this wasn't possible.

And this was mostly common among a specific demographic: chronically online gay men. It was just a hobby. Fans of "pop divas" discussing charts. Mariah, Madonna, Britney...

But starting in the mid 10s, with the rise of streaming and stan twitter becoming so big, chart manipulation and hordes of stans doing everything to get their favorite artists to #1 became common. When YouTube stats mattered, they all tried to break the record of most watched music video in the first 24h with multiple tabs open playing the video on repeat. Funny how no one cares about this today. Who even holds this record currently?

Anyway, it's so weird to me how charts are so mainstream now. Like I said, it was just a pastime for a certain demographic. Now we have average people from all over the world, actual adults with jobs and children, playing this game. Chartdata has 2.3 million followers.

We have a bunch of teenage GIRLS trying to get their favorite singer #1 buying multiple vinyls. We have straight grown men out there trying to get Papi to #1.

But this is a symptom of something large. Society is increasingly more online and lonely, especially after the pandemic. These online communities are the main forms of human interaction of many people and playing the charts is almost like a sport.