Music

Ariana Grande’s Fans Are Hurling Death Threats At Writers Because Of A Single Tweet

And Grande is *kind of* defending them.

by Joseph Earp  26 April 2019
Ariana Grande Thank U Next

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

For the last few days, Ariana Grande has been in a curious spat with the critical establishment.

Well, maybe ‘the critical establishment’ is too strong. These days, critics tend to be solitary creatures, freelancers who work alone, usually with limited benefits and for not very much pay. The bottom of the establishment fell out years ago.

See, it all began when the singer found herself the subject of criticism after her Coachella set. Rather than ignore the criticism, Grande chose to hit out against it, writing a now deleted tweet that combined the patronising with the misguided.

“People are so lost,” she wrote. “One day everybody who works at all them blogs will realise how unfulfilled they are and purposeless what they’re doing is and hopefully shift their focus elsewhere. That’s gonna be a beautiful ass day for them! I can’t wait for them to feel lit inside.”

Grande’s tweet generated a shedload of memes, but more than that, it revealed just how disconnected so many artists are from the critical industry they rely on for exposure. Nobody these days ‘works’ for a blog. They either run their own blog that they don’t get paid for, or they juggle three or four jobs in an attempt to eke out at least some living writing about the music that they love.

Since deleting the tweet, she has an offered an apology of sorts to one writer, Roslyn Talusan, who has been the subject of the ire of Grande’s fanbase since daring to speak out against the singer.

“I find your craft extremely valid,” Grande wrote to Talusan in a direct message. “I apologise for not being clearer or wording that better.”

But, when confronted with some of the death threats Talusan has been recieving, the singer balked. “They’re just reacting with the same energy to what they’ve read, honestly,” she wrote.

The whole mess will serve, hopefully, as a teachable moment for Grande. Her tweet made her seem like a millionaire condemning an industry of economically at-risk writers who will never earn even a slither of what she makes in a year. Hopefully she realises that.