Accountability in Music • Page 542

Lots of people won’t donate without an incentive. It’s sad but it’s true. If this drives donations to the family then I personally don’t understand why anyone would have an issue with it.

 

The only thing I can think of is some people thinking she is using this incident as a way to gain any sort of publicity or attention. Not saying that is her intention at all. But certainly every now and then you see people come out of the woodwork trying to use a horrific incident to their advantage or to promote a brand for their own gains.

I highly doubt that is the case with Phoebe, but I could maybe see people thinking that way.

 

Thanks for clarifying!

 

By no means do I want to police how anyone feels, but i feel like Phoebe has done enough philanthropic work to show her heart’s in the right place. But I understand how some people could take it as a chance for publicity/clout. There’s a thin line being walked.

At the very least, it’s a way to get donations that doesn’t have an effect on the environment or causes more clothes to be made or something that will end up in a landfill and hopefully more people would be down to do that to raise money.

 

Also...she’s publicly posting the writings instead of privately DMing them. A lot of people are requesting the same lyrics, so there is no incentive for people to donate if she’s already posting the lyrics people want publicly for everyone to see.

the more I look into it, it’s definitely a little weird. Someone even asked if she would write “poop” and she responded “yes” (which of course someone responded “what the fuck is wrong with you?”)

 

She’s getting diehard fans to donate money that they might not have otherwise. That’s not “chasing clout” or whatever.

 

I understand people thinking it lacks tact, but the overall is a positive for me, if she’s incentivizing people to donate who wouldn’t be donating otherwise. Bands make shirts and sell them to donate the proceeds to charity, this doesn’t ring much differently to me.

 

Celebrities have been using their status to promote charitable causes since before anyone in this thread was alive. The idea of incentivizing donations through some sort of reward or “free” transaction on the part of that celebrity - a picture, special shirt, performance, even more personalized things like conversations, etc - is so thoroughly ingrained in our culture at this point. It’s probably among the top ways that any given nonprofit ideally promotes their cause.

So I really don’t see how this is any different outside of it being the first time I’ve ever seen people really get mad about a particular instance of it for some reason. Have none of these people ever heard of a benefit concert?

 

All of those things take time and effort and are generally heavily centered around whatever they're supporting. Phoebe's brand is very "online" and off the cuff and I can see how in this instance some people would find it in bad taste. I don't know if it's a lot of people, doesn't seem like it, but I can see where they're coming from.

 

Like mentioned above though I don't really think it's an accountability issue. It's a tough time for a lot of people though, unfortunately.

 

I don’t see how those things taking more time and effort make any difference here, nor how something being “online” or off the cuff have anything to do with people being justified in finding it in bad taste.

If anything, the simplicity and immediacy of it is a massive point in its favor. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars were just donated to a mother who just lost the father of her 2yo child because Phoebe Bridgers decided to send out a tweet and then write some words in cursive. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and bet that she probably doesn’t care that this was the reason why

 

you said "So I really don’t see how this is any different" and I was explaining why to some people it would be different. It's obviously clear you don't think they're justified.

 

There’s a lot of things we should hold artists accountable for, but this ain’t one of them.

 

She raised a ton of money for a family using her clout. Zero complaints from me.

 

Yeah I'm open to the argument but from my perspective it takes a lot of bad faith to suggest Phoebe is "centering" herself in all of this.

 

Also, for whatever its worth, personally I do think this kind of discussion is good for the thread. We're all trying to navigate what it means to consume and participate in music ethically, no one has it completely sewn up, so bringing these more ambiguous cases to the thread for dialogue is really useful, I think.

 

Why does Phoebe get the DUMBEST controversy?

 

there's a lot of things to be upset about right now and a celebrity using her platform to drive money to a needed cause aint one of them. insanely dumb criticisms in those tweets.

 

She's not infallible and I've seen a handful of valid criticisms lobbed her way but generally speaking, her heart seems like it's in the right place and I've gotten weird vibes from a lot of the "controversy" people stir up online. Saw someone excited that the internet finally might "get" her after she had a joke about interns on her label site and that struck me as such a bizarre, bad faith thing to wish on someone

 

Imagine wanting someone to be a bad person so that you can be right about not liking them or whatever. Wild

 

i don’t think the people criticizing her are doing so for necessarily dumb reasons. like, it seems pretty fair. i just completely disagree with them lol.

 

Yeah if anything we should give her shit about repping ****grove not this.

 

Did Soupy not do this same thing last year and no one said anything about it?


Edit: it was for voting. So idk.

 

absolutely fuck-all wrong with either case.

 

yeah that’s what I was getting at. Both seem harmless to me.