She may not have won Album of the Year, but Beyoncé was the highlight of the Grammy Awards last night—her performance was almost universally praised, and Adele actually broke one of her Grammys in half and gave it to the Queen Bey.
But not everyone was impressed—Piers Morgan got a lot of online hate after tweeting that Beyoncé’s performance was “heavier on the narcissism than the music.” And of course, Grammy contrarians also found a home on Reddit. One discussion thread in particular, called “Who the fuck does Beyoncé think she is,” was being upvoted by the haters this morning.
“Lately, between her pregnancy photos, wardrobe and performance, she’s strutting around like the Virgin Mary,” original poster TheNewYorkRipper wrote. “While the world sucks on the teet of her narcissism, I can’t help but wonder what do people see in her?”
Other posters called her a “slutty Christian” and wrote that “if I hear ‘Single Ladies’ one more time I’ll kill myself.”
Most other users, however, recognized that by giving Beyoncé attention through internet hate, TheNewYorkRipper was invalidating his own message. Because of this, the thread was taken over by a whole bunch of fans defending Beyoncé and calling out the original poster on his self-own:
- “You know, this stuff doesn’t help. Your posts and disagreement to her is part of what she’s using. You’re also suckling at that ego-teet. Stop letting her be relevant in your life.” – Bottombottoms
- “As much as I think obsessive fans of pop stars are kind of stupid, this is way stupider. Are you their antifan? Just pay attention to something else if it makes you so angry.” – dishragnarok
- “I’ll take Beyoncé’s extreme empowerment over Taylor’s faux-surprise every time she wins an award despite the fact that she’s basically the poster child for white Christian values in modern pop music and therefore, unsurprisingly, fawned over by most popular music institutions.” – JoeyBulgaria
- “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” – Banaaninkont, referencing Kanye West’s meme-worthy moment with Taylor Swift
- “She’s been culturally relevant for 20 years, she’s won 22 Grammys and she’s worth 265 million. She’s an icon for black women and she’s politically and socially active. She also happens to be a phenomenal singer and philanthropist and (by all accounts) a good parent and role model for her daughter. Maybe you should look at yourself and ask why it bothers you that she’s a popular figure. You seem to be confusing ‘narcissism’ with her being herself and then it blowing up online by her fans. Maybe you can argue that her fans and the media hero-worship her and that bothers you, but even if you don’t like her music I’m not sure how you can have a problem with her. There’s actual people that deserve hate out there, let the woman be.” – Incognitoast
All the positive and negative Beyoncé commentary was silenced, however, when the moderators of r/Music removed the post because it apparently wasn’t “directly relevant to music, music technology or the music business itself.”
The page’s users were confused by this, leading to a chorus of “Fuck you, mods.”
“This is a discussion about a musician, in the music business. How is this not directly relevant, exactly?” sprite_n_halo asked.
Maybe this is just Beyoncé’s way of shutting down the haters where they live.
