Comment by furgooswft13 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by furgooswft13 | Hacker News Reader

And she's had to deal with plenty of them too. The two I remember recently were some guy climbing on and trying to break into her NY apartment, and some guy on social media threatening to kill her when she performed in Australia. The story is often familiar, the stalker guys will profess their undying love for Ms. Swift and lament that they'll never be with her so they must harm her in some way.

And then there's the regular crazy Swiftie fangirls who obnoxiously battle each other on Tumblr and concerts to get noticed by Taylor while despising all the people who have gotten picked to meet her. There have been numerous incidents at concerts of people jumping up on the stage and trying to grab her. I remember a few moments during the Reputation tour where she appeared very distracted between sets, snapping her head to the side as if she thought someone was about to jump her. I don't blame her for being paranoid, fans can be crazy.

I think also these big ticket venues are rightly more paranoid as of late, especially since Manchester and the shooting in LA. I made this really cool (I thought so at least) wearable LED matrix tee shirt (RGB Neopixels driven by a Teensyduino and cellphone battery pack) that displayed various Taylor related animations, but was only able to get it in 2 concerts out of uhm...several that I went to (Hackers can be Swifties too ok). The rules seemed arbitrary and highly dependent on what security guard you got when entering, which did not instill me with much confidence (one guard said the LED's were fine but I could not take the battery. Well ok then, even though the battery was just a regular cellphone charger that they explicitly did allow. And several times after I had been denied I go into the concert only to see other people with light up LED signs on full display).

Anyway, it's one thing for a private venue to employ these measures for security to voluntary participants who knew damn well they were surrounded by guards and had to abide by certain rules, and an entire other sinister thing for governments to arbitrarily collect this data on everyone to do god knows what with backed by the power of the state.

Between you know, John Lennon and the recent sad story of Christina Grimmie, I'm very glad Taylor Swift is taking security seriously.

These things can be serious. In another life I was co-managing the tour of a semi-successful boy band (we couldn‘t afford any Taylor Swift sized security measures, then again the concerts were usually less than 1000 people). The breaches were egregious. One day, one of the guys came home into his hotel room exhausted after a concert and there were three nude girls in his bed. Another walked out from his shower into a similar situation and was more shocked and angry than anything else. None of this could have happened without the help of Hotel personnel. On top, all of these intruders were getting very hostile when they weren‘t being „taken advantage of“ but sent out. Being famous, even slightly so, isn‘t as nice as it seems from the outside.

> Being famous, even slightly so, isn‘t as nice as it seems from the outside.

It's not that I don't believe you. I can rationally accept that what you've said makes sense. However, being on the outside, it takes some mental effort to make the fame you've described not seem extremely nice.

There's a level of fame, the more superstar type level, where simply walking by yourself in public is much less feasible because of the tendency to get mobbed or attract unwanted attention. This is probably the level where problems like stalkers are much more serious. I'd guess that this is the level where it isn't "as nice". You no longer can do things without considering potentially crazy fans or overly uncomfortable levels of recognition.

A long time ago, I remember the difference being illustrated at a Dragoncon in the early 2000s. Guests on the fame level of, say, Babylon 5 cast members, could walk around the convention just fine. They could do standard things like, say, go to the restaurant and have a meal without being heavily interrupted. Walking around they'd maybe get some hellos and photo poses and whatnot but it didn't seem terribly intrusive.

And then there was Alice Cooper, who walked around the main convention floor one day and instantly got mobbed by a huge crowd.

My hunch is that Taylor Swift probably is at the fame level where she needs security of some sort merely to walk around in public. That's a negative in my mind.

Babylon 5 is probably a bit too obscure, but you don't even need to be a Taylor Swift to get that "treatment"; I'm guessing anyone playing a main character of, say, Grey's Anatomy is probably getting constantly interrupted in public (meals, gym, parks, everywhere can be fair game for shrieking fans to badger you and demand you act like the character). At least that's my experience living with someone who got such a part (although at the scale of a small country, not worldwide like Grey's).

There’s a Sev2 bug report sitting Unassigned in God’s JIRA, something about humans fundamentally lacking the capacity to understand how even the poorest people can shine and how even the richest can suffer.

There’s no magical set of circumstances that result in happiness or joy. In fact I think the external things that we most often identify as bringing happiness or joy, apparently when most people are faced with these things, it results in quite the opposite.

In my opinion Taylor Swift has one of the hardest and most unrelenting jobs on the planet. Going out night after night trying to appeal to the teeming masses sounds like absolute hell. Everyone you meet more likely to be a vampire than not. No thanks!

It takes all kinds, I guess. None of what he describes seems pleasant to me.

Maybe I'm just old :-)

> taken advantage of

Are you insinuating that the goal wasn't to have sex with a pop idol but instead to blackmail them?

Seems to not be mutually exclusive...

If the goal is blackmail, sex is just the means.

Indeed. There are some fucking crazy people out there. I was at a relatively minor gig, right at the front and someone threw a full beer can at the frontman and smashed him right in the face. He picked a stage speaker up and threw it at the guy, then dived off the stage and tried to strangle him. He had just lost it by then. So gig ended there and when the police turned up and took statements, I overheard that apparently this guy had followed the frontman round the last 5 gigs and thrown cans at him at each one.

Sounds like a cool gig, how did you end up in the tech field?

This is one of the best things I have ever read on HN.

Full-disclosure: I was a very excited mid-20s adult male when Taylor finally decided to be on Spotify.

Taylor Swift fans on HN? We do exist!

(1989 won me over.)

Hello yes checking in, not a HUGE fan but love her!

My daughter won me over.

Add me as another HN Swiftie!

There are dozens of us!

> it's one thing for a private venue to employ these measures for security to voluntary participants who knew damn well they were surrounded by guards and had to abide by certain rules

It sounds like you were not subjected to "certain rules" but rather arbitrarily enforced, unknown rules.

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