I

think what we see is as Elon starts to get radicalized, you start to see Grimes' politics evolve as well. And you also see her start to talk quite negatively about the media and to fight with the media. In 2021, she does this photo shoot where she's kind of trying to troll the media, where she's dressed up in this like typical Grimes kind of crazy outfit. And then she's reading the communist manifesto. And this is when she was getting a lot of media criticism for being with Elon and enabling him because 2021 is when he really kicked off like the really awful transphobic stuff and just sort of started to make his more extreme beliefs more publicly known. And so you see her kind of feeding against that. People were like, oh my God, like, is she sending a message or what is this? I think I started to see signs of like resentment of the media and like resentment of her public image. And you see her also starting to fight more with people in the replies. Like people will say something to her and she's like, well, that's not, you know, you don't understand what's going on or da, da, da, da, you know, like she's clearly frustrated. And I've written so much about this and I've experienced it myself. When you see false information about yourself publicly, or when you feel like part of your story is not being told, or you're being chastised in the media, it is such a radicalizing force. I do think with her, she probably felt, I don't want to say persecuted, but I do think that she felt this resentment. And that resentment, if you start to go down that road, you are fed into the right-wing pipeline. The right is so good at taking that resentment and being like, you're right. You're right. And by the way, the media is evil. And by the way, all these people canceling you are evil. See what I mean. Woke people will turn on you. This is it. And so you see her starting to affiliate with more of these like counter culture, you know, like these right wing extremists. That's what they are. Yeah. I don't want to excuse it. It's bad. It's lazy. She shouldn't do this. Right. Like you should recognize like, okay, these people are also grifting off me. They also will throw me under the bus the minute I'm not politically expedient. But when you're feeling lonely, which I imagine she was, you're feeling completely isolated. And then also endearing yourself to these far right radicals also kind of endears yourself to Elon, who's increasingly in those circles. I just see how that she started to go down that path. I

think that throughout Grimes' career and what we've talked about, you see the perfect conditions for radicalization form. Because like we talked about at the very beginning when Grimes emerged as a musician, I think she was undeniably extremely talented, but was often sort of not given her due and had kind of this tense back and forth with the media, like broadly speaking. Because I think she also dealt with a lot of misogyny and sexism from the media and from parts of the media that are not like the same parts of the media that are calling her out now. But I think a lot of people in that position just sort of naturally start to associate anything that falls under the umbrella of the media with like negative, bad treatment they've gotten. And to some degree, like you said, Taylor, I think that for a lot of women in the public eye, that is fair. Because a lot of times as a woman in the public eye, even the best media outlets still treat you through a misogynistic lens. So I think coming into her relationship with Elon, Grimes was already sort of in this standoff with the media. the way her relationship gets covered, I think really like upset her. And then as the relationship in her personal life starts to really visibly become abusive, I think like you see a lot of effects and consequences of that, that only further open her up to radicalization. For example, during the custody battle, she tweeted that her daily schedule would be like sleeping, eating, crying and going to court. And I just think that someone who is in that kind of survival mode where it feels like the world is against you. And in the case of fighting the richest man on the planet for your children, the world kind of is stacked against you. Like, I can see why she became so vulnerable that like, it was just perfect breeding ground for radicalization. And I'll also say that like, that's not an excuse, because a lot of people who are in really heinous, horrible situations do not become radicalized. Right,

right. I

think this more has to do with like the path she went down and the path Elon went down are both because of like who they are. And she's not like a violent, abusive individual in the same way that he is. But she like has co-signed on this rhetoric and some of the really bad stuff that she's done over the years has included like following white supremacist neo-nazis on twitter

she also starts to like physically hang out with these people i

was gonna say it's it's not just uh twitter following i

don't want to be the follow police because like i really i've you follow

everyone

drives me insane because i write about right-wing influencers of course i follow them i monitor everything they do and i can't every day i have some new person in my dms why do you follow this person? I'm like, well, I write about them. What's way more concerning to me, and I do think that you can deduce a certain amount of information about someone from the people that they follow because that is the information. You can tell kind of their information diet. But she also starts to hang out with these people socially. Right.

That's what I was going to mention. I mean, she's like, there's write ups about her friendship with Curtis Yarvin, who is this avowed white supremacist. Yeah, he's a he's a eugenicist. On January 19, the night before the inauguration, she was DJing sort of like MAGA hangout party. She's on Twitter, you know, all the time defending Elon. Someone just a couple weeks ago said, girl, please, you were in love with a Nazi. And she just responded to that person, quote, hysteria will get you nowhere and told them to read Confucius and study history. We

did study history. That's the problem.

Right. I

wish that she would just admit it. I wish that she would just acknowledge it, but I think she's into denial. And I think she feels resentment because again, when you're in love with someone and you're in love with someone and you have kids with someone and then you see yourself being hated, I don't know, it's hard. We all want to defend ourselves online and we all think of ourselves as like doing the right thing and the moral thing. And I just feel like she's gone down this path so far that it's, you know, a tweet is not going to get her out of it. Also, I just want to say like the MAGA stuff, like especially the inauguration, I mean, I was at a lot of these inauguration events and stuff because I was writing about it. Again, their goal is to radicalize people and to bring people into a movement. And so you see this a lot where somebody sort of starts to associate or they're in this vulnerable spot and you see the right just like vultures, like seize on them, again, because they're opportunists that don't actually give a shit, but this person is vulnerable. And then you see the anger, like the anger from the left, rightfully so. And that kind of pushes them. And that doesn't mean that it's the last. I hate when people say, oh, well, that's the left fault. Like, oh, you know, you should, that's why we should be nicer to people. No. Whoop, that goes to my ring. No, but I think we have to be realistic and recognize these conditions that people are radicalized under. It

reminds me really significantly, like over the past few years, like since 2018, since like the height of the Me Too movement, I have noticed multiple women who were like high profile accusers in the Me Too movement who have been radicalized and radicalized hard. Tara Reid is like a really good example because she is like literally like in Russia and I think Rose McGowan also has like said some pretty concerning stuff at first when I saw these women getting radicalized it confused me because I was like how could you be drawn to such a like toxic and uh like patriarchal demographic but I think what I initially realized is that like what these women experienced when they came forward is they saw that they said they saw that same patriarchal misogyny from the left. And that is why they got pushed to the right. Because unfortunately, the reality is, there is like no justice in any sense for women who go through these types of situations. Like a lot of victims understand that it is not like a left or right thing. It's like, just because the left mistreats you doesn't mean the right's going to treat you any better. But a lot of victims do fall prey to this. Like they are sort of vulnerable to this radicalization. And I've seen examples of this where it's like, I'm like, well, this guy who you now love is a victim blamer and they're like but not to me like they're like but this person showed me kindness and no one is showing me any kindness and it's like it's really sad to like see this happen and I hate it but it's like it all comes back to the fact that I think bottom line like these men Elon Musk and like his cronies are manipulators they're manipulators and it's like that's the like most important takeaway from this is that he's now done this to so many women grimes and others that it ceases to be about who these women are as individuals and it's more so about just like oh it's the same pattern of abuse and. And Elon Musk is abusing all of us now in his position. So it's like, it just is who he is to his core and he'll do it to any woman he can.

Again, in my own head, I find myself coming back to this point of what is the right amount of sympathy? What is the right amount of scrutiny? How do I hold these things at the same time? Because on one hand, right, and this is what people bring up a lot, Grimes will somewhat regularly go out of her way, especially on Twitter to defend Elon. Like just in January, there was this tweet, let me find it. She was sparring with some random person on Twitter, and continuing to claim that like, Elon is still this like climate change warrior, despite obviously like joining the worst presidential administration the climate has literally ever known. So she continues to do this sort of like laundering of Elon's image for reasons that don't quite make sense. But then at the same time, like a month later, she tweeted, let me find this one. She tweeted directly at Elon Musk. Here it is from the 20th of February. At Elon Musk, please respond about our child's medical crisis. I am so sorry to do this publicly, but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention. If you don't want to talk to me, can you please designate or hire someone who can so that we can move forward on solving this? This is urgent, Elon. I'm not giving any details, but he won't respond to texts, calls, or emails and has skipped every meeting. And our child will suffer lifelong impairment if he doesn't respond ASAP. So I need him to fucking respond. And if I have to apply public pressure, then I guess that's where we're at. Like it goes without saying that that's pretty fucking horrifying. I

would not ask anyone to feel sympathetic for Grimes because there are a number of reasons why you may not want to be sympathetic toward her. But I do think that like, in noting that we can also recognize that victims don't have to be sympathetic. And that the way that Elon Musk is victimizing these women, Grimes included, is also reflective of the way that he is victimizing the country at large through all the other actions that he takes in his personal and his professional life. And I think with Grimes and defending Elon specifically, it's like we can look at this behavior sort of objectively for what it is and it's like this is a man who has only ever like persistently hurt grimes and so for her to come out and defend him after all of that is not a rational position for her to take it's coming from an irrational place and so just because victims act you know in some situations irrationally or in a way that is like consequential to others, you know, we don't have to separate those things out from each other. They can exist at the same time. She can be coming from a place where she's reacting to an abusive relationship and her statement on its own can have negative and harmful consequences. This is actually like a very frequent facet of like domestic violence cases is that there are cascading consequences that affect everybody around the relationship. And so I think that that that is true of Grimes. And I also think that like, if we just end the conversation at she's an irredeemable person and we don't feel bad for her, then we're not doing anything to challenge like the rhetoric that underlines Elon's ability to abuse all of these different women. I also think it's important to point out because I referred to the behavior as like rational versus irrational. Some things appear irrational to us because we are not privy to what is going on in that relationship. So for example, this is just a hypothetical, like sometimes within abusive relationships behind closed doors, the way that abusers treat their victims is they see how far they can push them and things that they can get them to say and do sometimes publicly to sort of like, it's part of the process of coercive control. Victims will oftentimes like privately and publicly respond with like the FON response, which is to like, tell the abuser that they're a good person, tell them that like, they're not being abused, like deny that the abuse is happening. Because it's a way of like, maybe making sure that the abuser stays calm and doesn't become angry and doesn't flip out on you. Or maybe it's a way of like bargaining to try to get things like being able to see your children, for example, or getting your abuser to respond to you if like your child is having a medical emergency. With like the tweeting at Elon, we don't really know what's going on in that relationship because the parties who have knowledge of it haven't told us. All we can really do as bystanders is like guess. And that is a really imperfect way of like handling this situation. But I think that because it's the one we're all in together, you see how people just repeatedly do not give victims the benefit of the doubt. They actually tend to like villainize victims and like cast the worst possible, like guess of what is going on in that situation and project that onto the victim. So I think like knowing what we know, it's fair to say that there are probably elements to Grimes's behavior that involve factors we are not privy to and may make her look more sympathetic or may at least provide like context that we don't have. Well,

and speaking of behavior that seems from the outside, pretty irrational and like straight up bizarre. Did you guys see the tweet about the video games? She like she tweeted about Elon, like being good at video games. here's the tweet from january 18th just for my personal pride i would like to state that the father of my children was the first american druid i'm sorry i don't know video games i'm sorry if i fuck up these words was the first american druid in diablo to clear the abattoir of Zir and ended that season as the best in the USA. He was also ranking in Polytopia and beat Felix himself at the game. I did observe these things with my own eyes. There are other witnesses who can verify this. That is all.

She ended up with egg on her face with this because, right, because then it came out that like he did actually, I think, like have someone playing for him or something. But I was like, did he make her tweet that? When I saw that, I thought it was so incredibly bizarre. And I don't know if it came from a place of either... I mean, all of the hypotheticals are equally dark where it's like, either she noticed that this is something that was really bothering him on the internet and she's trying to curry favor by espousing this, but ultimately like kind of false information about like how great he is. Or he asked her to back him up because at that point he had not come clean. There was now ended up being irrefutable evidence that he cheated.

On the video game? On

the video game. Yeah.

He

had like had someone play for him or something because basically somebody that actually knows about video games did this like youtube investigation and found out that like there was no way that he could have played those amount of hours at these times or whatever whatever and so then he kind of sort of admitted it and people were like grimes you're such a liar but it's just like to me when you see that stuff it's so sad there's an audience of one for that tweet which is elon and it's again her sort of lashing out what you know sort of like flailing in public trying to get him to respond to her respect her trying to get favor with him like i mean what he put her through financially emotionally and the way he takes i mean x is obviously his favorite child and he has latched on to X and brings X everywhere in the public eye, which she obviously doesn't like. And it's this constant reminder of control and that's your child. Imagine having your child, which you have to watch publicly, be paraded around. I

do think we can be like, oh, this woman is problematic and also be like, oh, it's like so objectively horrifying that people online, everyone kind of agrees that Elon is carrying X around as like a human shield. Imagine if that is your child. And not only do you have to see everyone basically say that like your kid is going to get assassinated, which is not an impossible thing to happen. But also like his father is not letting you even see him. Like it is so dystopian and horrifying. What Grimes is living through is a straight up horror movie. And what all of like Elon's baby, the women who have his children, what they're all through is like a horror movie. And they don't all have to be like good people for that to be the case. The whole thing is wild. It's like, it feels very like palace intriguey. Like you're getting this window into the lives of these people. And I don't know what, how reflective that is of what's really going on inside. But it does remind me also the last thing I wanted to say, which is, I don't know if you guys have seen that thread. And it's like someone on Twitter was creating like a version of Elon and all the women who are mothers of his children and comparing them to like a royal dynasty, like tropes. And they were like, crimes is like his ultimate love, but she faces the worst punishment because she refuses to conform. Siobhan is like the one who plays the game the best. And she like, her son ultimately gets picked to be like the next person in line. And like, they're doing all the different women who Elon has been with. And Grimes responded to this and was like, LOL. And I was just like, this is so sad is dystopian it's like so reminiscent of historical fiction and how like kings have wives and concubines and all of this historical stuff and i'm like this isn't okay that this is happening and we shouldn't be like glorifying it or like treating it as it's just like palace intrigue about rich weird people like it's kind of like a there it's act of gender violence that's happening in front of us involving the richest and most influential people in the world. I think that ultimately, the biggest story here is not really whether or not Grimes is a person who is redeemable, but rather that Elon Musk is a person who is currently unaccountable. And I think that what is like so often lost is that to consistently oppose abusers and to consistently support victims, that involves cases that are morally gray. And I think that like, it actually more frequently comes off morally gray than it comes off nice and easy because the victim is like so great and easy to support and the abuser is so easy to hold accountable like I think with these cases they're so frequently framed as like the outliers because of how rich and famous and celebrity the people involved are and while I don't want to discount the role that like privilege and other like all these different forms of privilege carry in this situation, one consistent theme throughout this episode has been like, what Grimes is experiencing, it's the same playbook, it's the same pattern as any abusive relationship, love bombing, like hiding who you really are, turning into a different person, the way that the courts and custody system have been weaponized against her. These are things that every victim faces. And so it's never about like the individual victim and their strengths and weaknesses, but rather it's about what abuse is and what we can do about it. And what we can do about it is we can like acknowledge it because you can walk away and be like, I still hate her. I hate everything about her. She's the worst person in the world. As long as you are still like, but he is abusing her. That's like, that's a still positive step in the right direction because we can't do anything about like victimhood and abuse. If we can't even agree on a common definition of what victimhood

and abuse if we can't even agree on a common definition of what victimhood and abuse are. again. In the closet, in my childhood bedroom, reblogging photos of you with some good old DIY bangs. Take me back. Taylor and Kat, thank you so, so much for being here today.

Thank you for having us. I'm

so glad we got to talk about this.

And thank you. I don't know. Maybe all of my episodes are this like rollercoastery, but this maybe it's because of my personal relationship to Grimes, to be clear, a parasocial one, but one that I've been fostering for over a decade. Maybe this just felt so heavy. And, you know, I think objectively it is. So thank you for making it this far. If you have, thanks for listening to this podcast. Once again, if you would like to experience the podcast live, experience our conversations live, and are in a city where we're doing a show, please come through. I'm so excited. Take care of yourself, please, so we can all see each other through the other side of this madness when it's over. And it will be. I love you. And until next time, stay fruity.