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"Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. Unfortunately for you guys, Dallas you’ve drawn the short straw. You’ve gotten the show where I’ve genuinely just stopped caring. And - ah you see, this show has kind of bled off the stage into loads of different environments, and I don’t mind hollow shallow accusations of being racist or stuff like that, it kind of allows the show to do what it’s designed to do - expose inconsistencies and hypocrisies, I use myself to do that. But I don’t know how familiar you all are with the lore of this band, but we got banned from Malaysia this year. And it has nothing to do with you guys, but unfortunately there’s so many incredibly stupid people on the internet that I’ve just cracked. And everyone keeps telling me that you can’t talk about Malaysia, don’t talk about what happened in Malaysia, so I’m gonna talk about it at length. And unfortunately you have to listen to it. And this is long, so. You’ll be all right. But I am pissed off, to be frank. I’m gonna read from my phone what I have to say about this situation, regardless of whether you care or not because the internet needs to hear this.

The 1975 did not waltz into Malaysia unannounced, they were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band with its well-publicized political views and its routine stage show. Malaysian festival organizers’ familiarity with the band was the basis of our invitation. Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government, it was an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior. Similarly, we did not change our set that night to play, you know, pro-freedom of speech or pro-gay songs. To eliminate any routine part of the show in an effort to appease the Malaysian authorities’ bigoted views of LGBTQ people would be a passive endorsement of those politics. As liberals are so fond of saying, “silence equals violence, use your platform”, so we did that. And that is where things got complicated. Naturally. the Malaysian authorities were irate because homosexuality is criminalized and punishable by death in their authoritarian theocracy. That is the violent reality obscured by the more friendly term “cultural customs”. But it was the liberal outrage against our band for remaining consistent with our pro-LGBTQ stage show which was the most puzzling thing. Lots of people, liberal people, contended that the performance was “an insensitive display of hostility against the cultural customs of the Malaysian government, and that the kiss was a performative gesture of allyship”. To start, the idea of calling out a performer for being performative is mind-numbingly redundant as an exercise. Performing is a performer’s job. The stage is a place for creating artists’ expressions, which are inherently dramatized. That’s why audiences go to fucking shows. Other people, other apparent liberal people, contended that the kiss was itself a form of colonialism. That The 1975, in the rich tradition of evil white men past, was forcing its Western beliefs on the Eastern world. My how the West has fallen, ladies and gentlemen. The East India Company could have saved a fortune on weaponry if they knew that all they had to do was make out with each other to forcibly subjugate the people that they exploited. To call The 1975’s performance colonialism is a complete inversion of the word’s meaning. Colonialism is the practice of forcible occupation and economic exploitation. Once again, The 1975 was INVITED into the country to headline Malaysia’s music festival in an effort to capitalize on our popularity so they could make money. Despite the band being amateur jiu-jitsu enthusiasts, we’re not very good, we have no power at all to enforce our will on anyone in Malaysia. In fact, it was the Malaysian authorities who briefly imprisoned us. So for performers like Julian Casablancas, who took to Twitter to criticize us, this bizarre mangling of colonial identity politics merely served as an expedient way to express their own disappointment with the festivals cancellation because it would be in poor taste, surely, to lament a loss of performance. So these are the types of mental gymnastics that are employed by celebrities to save face with their liberal-appearing audiences who delight in having their favorite academic catch phrases parroted back at them. I’m not waiting for applause, I’m just calming down.

Levying the accusation of colonialism against Western critics is, by now, a standard PR procedure in the authoritarian theocracy playbook. Just last summer, amidst criticism of human rights abuses against the enslaved workers who built their soccer facilities, the UAE’s representatives contended that Western journalists who highlighted this fact were guilty of enforcing their colonial games on their local, religiously-armed customers. But the fact that the UAE employs the Western consultant McKinsey to write this kind of perverted relativism is a great stroke of irony. And the fact that the UAE was the first country to kick The 1975 out for being gay is the cherry on top. There’s a contradiction at the heart of liberals’ outrage over our supposed cultural insensitivity. Their unconditional belief in inclusivity and tolerance has led them to indirectly support a government which is intolerance of their own existence. What responsibility do liberals have to be ideologically chivalrous to those who wish them death?

If you truly believe that artists have a responsibility to uphold their liberal virtues by using their massive platforms, then those artists should be judged by the danger and the inconvenience that they face for doing so, not by the rewards that they receive for parroting consensus. There’s nothing particularly stunning or brave about changing your fucking profile picture whilst you’re sat in your house in Los Angeles. I’m really fucking pissed off with this shit. Malaysia’s militarized enforcement of laws against public displays of homosexuality creates a clear line in the sand for what artists are allowed and expected to do. But elsewhere, this line isn’t so defined. Even here in America, there’s loads of states which uphold illiberal laws that restrict people’s bodily autonomy and gender expression. I don’t know why you’re cheering. But I suspect, I’ve got an inkling, that those who took to Twitter to voice their outrage over The 1975’s unwillingness to cater to Malaysian customs would find it appalling if The 1975 were to acquiesce to, let’s say, Mississippi’s respective bullshit abortion or trans laws. The idea that it’s incumbent upon artists to cater to the local cultural sensitivities of wherever they’ve been invited to perform sets a very dangerous precedent. It should be expected that if you invite dozens of Western performers into your country, they’ll bring their Western values with them. If doing the same things which made you aware of them could land them in jail in your country, you’re not actually inviting them to perform - you’re indirectly commanding them to reflect your country’s policies by omission. This kind of statement criticism goes against the very idea of a site of cultural exchange where differences are allowed to coexist. This, that, is a more valuable idea to protect than the bigoted sensitive of those that wish its demise. Yeah. Don’t forget who wrote this."

— Matty Healy before singing Love It If We Made It in Fort Worth, Texas (October 9, 2023)

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she's shy

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kisses for matty

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"I made a mistake when we were booking shows, I wasn’t looking into it. I don’t see the fucking point, right? I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with. And I’m sorry if that offends you and you’re religious, but your government are a bunch of fucking [...] and I don’t care anymore. If you push, I’m gonna push back. I’m not in the fucking mood. I’m not in the fucking mood anymore. I saw a TikTok the other day where I picked up a child that I love who’s a friend of mine’s child. And I put them down. And there was a TikTok conversation about whether my finger placement was appropriate. So what, we’re just casually accusing people of being pedophiles now, are we? For entertainment? Is that what we’re doing? No? Well it fucking looks like it. I’m not having a go at you, it’s people filming this. It fucking looks like it. You don’t casually insinuate that shit. I’m not in the fucking mood anymore. Unfortunately you don’t get a set of loads of uplifting songs because I’m fucking furious. And that’s not fair on you, because you’re not representative of your government. Because you’re young people, and I’m sure a lot of you are gay and progressive and cool. So I pulled the show yesterday. I pulled this show yesterday and we had a conversation, we said “you know what, we can’t let the kids down because they’re not the government”. But I’ve done this before. I’ve gone to a country where it’s fucking, I don’t know what it fucking is - ridiculous, it’s fucking ridiculous to tell people what they can do with that [points to dick] and that [points to mouth]. And if you want to invite me here to do a show, you can fuck off. I'll take your money, you can ban me, but I've done this before and it doesn't feel good. And I'm fucked off."

— Matty Healy before kissing Ross and singing I Like America & America Likes Me in Kuala Lumpur (July 21, 2023)

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"I speak about this a lot, the Tumblr times, the simpler days, the golden days. When it was just us and Taylor and Lana and Arctic Monkeys… and Marina and you know, all that lot. It was a simpler time. A time where you could write a song about luring a woman into the back of your van and then having sex with her, and loads of fucking muppets on the internet wouldn’t start crying about it as if they've been sexually assaulted. One, two, one two fuck it up."

— Matty Healy before singing Sex in Singapore (July 18, 2023) (x)

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"That’ll be nice, that’ll be all over social media I’m sure. Actually I don’t even - I don’t give a fuck about social media, I’m not gonna pretend like we gotta talk about it. Ladies and gentlemen. I hate this fucking thing of ‘everyone’s got fucking mental illness now’, it’s boring. But if I forget stuff, I’m not drunk, the majority of it is an act. [waves hand in a so-so motion] I’m not senile. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m trying to convince the guys to un-mute their microphones. There’s a whole world of beautiful offensive things being said the whole time, and I think you should be part of that. [laughs]"

— Matty Healy before singing When We Are Together in Singapore (July 18, 2023) (x)

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Matty Healy once said... 17/∞

Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg (x)

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// 06.07.23 // Mad Cool festival // Madrid,Spain //

© sergiomerka

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Taylor Swift performs onstage during night two of "The Eras Tour" at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on July 08, 2023 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Fernando Leon/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

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Taylor is NOT wallowing in sadness over Joe.

Taylor is NOT hiding because she’s ashamed of how everything happened with Matty.

She is PISSED at fans. Pissed at the world. Fed up of the insanity of the fans.

Either they’re waiting hours on end and tracking / sharing her location, chasing her car or waiting outside her house or they’re ripping her apart and trying to control her life.

This woman LITERALLY wrote songs like Tolerate It, You’re Losing Me and Bejeweled about being stuffed in a basement, about not being allowed to be her and shine and about being her most authentic self and used those songs to describe how it felt to be treated like that. Like her thoughts and feelings don’t matter. Like she doesn’t matter. Like she isn’t good enough. Only for her to find someone who loves her the way she BEGGED Joe to do and share that joy with her fans by saying she’s the happiest she’s ever been only to have those fans completely invalidate her and her feelings and attack her all because of herd mentality and the inability to actually practice skills that involve research or media literacy.

Look at that People article - and people generally supplied by Tree.

"He likes to provoke a response out of people. She's a grown woman more than capable of forming her own opinions about people," the insider adds. "No one forces her into anything, especially not these days. She's on top of the world."

If her fans can’t tell how pissed she is at them with that statement then they’re just ignorant.

When was the last time she “hid”? 2016 and it was because of media backlash and hate from unreliable sources. This time it’s worse because it’s her fans. She literally told them she was the happiest she had ever been and they kept the attack on. Not just on her but on people she loved.

I mean death threats to Matty and his family? Death threats to fans who didn’t support the hatred? The blatant ignoring of any POC or Jewish fan that was trying to explain that it was misinformation twisted by the media and to do their own research - which baffles me because you have these fans hell bent on being total asses to people they think they have the right to control and use the narrative of Taylor not caring about her marginalized fans all while doing exactly that - bullying, ignoring and trying to silence those same marginalized fans because they don’t fit a narrative that is being pushed.

The best being a well known POC tiktoker being called a white supremacist and racist because they were explaining media literacy and explaining the whole situation with a level head that did research.

And the times she has done anything to make a difference or make a statement has been ripped apart. Like her pride statement. That was trashed. Completely. Fans were disgusting over it. She donates to food banks in every location she performs at - that’s rarely mentioned at all. She donates bus loads to foundations and charities that help marginalized fans and sick individuals and no one breaths about it.

All while ignoring the fact that Matty has been a more vocal and active activist in his career then Taylor ever has. (I love Taylor but this isn’t something to argue) all the way from the abortion ban, trump, women’s rights, gay and trans rights, violence etc.

So no. She is NOT wallowing away in sadness because of joy.

Believe it or not - You’re Losing Me was very much a “I’m done” type of song and when you have experienced what she did and you finally hit the point of walking away then it’s been over for months or years and you’d never go back to them. Ever. The breakup brings you peace. Even if you miss them you still find the happiness in life but wallowing isn’t something you do.

And she knows the truth behind who Matty really is. So she’s not hiding in shame.

The fact that the fans who did this to her are completely unable to actually take responsibility for their choices and claim she is wallowing or embarrassed… that’s disgusting.

It’s them. They’re the problem.

And before anyone comes from me - not a the 1975 fan. Big Taylor fan though.

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Oh Lord.....the truth is, there is no such thing as the "perfect guy, " "the perfect girl" or the "perfect relationship" for anyone. Yes, Taylor brings along her own unique set of issues, but it's not like those issues can not be controlled to some degree. She can have a private relationship and still function as a normal human being, and she knows that....Joe just wasn't willing to do it. I'm so sick of fans talking about how she can't find someone who's willing to put up with her life, because she did and she can, IF the majority of you all would shut the fuck up and quit causing her issues. For example, not a single fucking tabloid gave a fuck about her dating Matty until the fans started their online hate campaign and brought up every single stupid mistake Matty had made in the last 6 months. Because newsflash, the majority of people do not care who Taylor Swift is sharing a bed with, whether or not she drinks wine or eats edibles, or where she is 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Tabloids and the media run bullshit stories about Taylor because her fans eat it up like candy, and the more clicks you give them, the more bullshit they write and the more money they make. I'm really beginning to believe that you all want this narrative you've created of Taylor being unlovable to be true because you think if she actually settles down and starts a family, she'll leave you. That's selfish, sad, and misogynistic because she's absolutely capable of having a happy, loving relationship and family while still killing it in the industry.

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she’s so gf

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"It didn't work."

— Matty Healy before singing fallingforyou in Paris (July 12, 2023)

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"This is so cool, thank you for coming! I’m totally sober which is why I’m a little bit weird. [laughs] Sorry. I’m trying to be good to my body."

— Matty Healy before singing I'm In Love With You in Paris (July 12, 2023)

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lives were CHANGED.

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Matty Healy + Taylor Swift Timeline

11/7/13: Matty talking about Taylor liking the band and being asked to tour wither her.

1/21/14: Matty talking about Taylor liking the band. xx

3/31/14: Matty talks about being asked to tour with Taylor and turning it down. "That was cool. It’s like, ‘We can’t, but that is really nice, thank you very much.”

11/4/14: Matty is pictured wearing a deluxe 1989 album cover tee at his concert in Milwaukee.

11/8/14: Taylor reblogs the picture on tumblr and says they are her favorite band.

11/09/14: Taylor likes these two pictures of Matty wearing the 1989 t-shirt.

11/09/14: Taylor liked this gif-set of Matty talking about whether he’s a dog or cat person.

11/19/14: Selena Gomez, Taylor and other friends went to The 1975 show in LA. Video of them singing along to ‘The City.’

11/19/14: Taylor & Matty making a video for a fan. (Jamie’s daughter Kitty)

11/22/14: Matty follows Taylor on Twitter.

11/23/14: Taylor was pictured wearing a The 1975 band shirt.

11/23/14: Taylor likes these two posts of them wearing each others merch.

11/24/14: Matty dedicates ‘Robbers’ to Taylor. Supposedly he’s done this multiple times. xx

11/25/14: Taylor likes these Tumblr posts. And this picture of Matty.

11/26/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post.

11/26/14: Matty likes Taylor’s post on Instagram.

11/26/14: Matty wearing the 1989 t-shirt again.

11/26/14: Matty talking about meeting Taylor “I met Taylor Swift, that was really nice.” and when asked about possibly dating “I mean bloody hell, what am I going to do? Go out with Taylor Swift? She’s a sensation, I wouldn’t say no.”

Keep reading

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a theatrical performance of an intimate moment