Looked at as social experiment, it’s one that makes it clear the world is broken to the point where every decent person should want to get off. Not, you know, “get off” in the Biblical sense. 

As January 24, 2024 wound down, there was plenty to be outraged about on Twitter. This included the fact that Elon Musk continues to insist that Twitter be called X, despite the fact that everyone with the exception of the ex-Mr. Grimes still calls it Twitter.

There was Moscow “Mitch McConnell” trending for once again kowtowing to Donald Trump, this time over border immigration as it relates to the war in Ukraine. “Supreme Court” clocked in with over 144,000 posts, proving again that America is more fascinatingly fucked up than Canada can ever hope to be. And “Tucker Carlson” showed up because, well, America is more fascinatingly fucked up than Canada can ever hope to be. 

But Trumping everything was “Taylor Swift AI,” with a boggling 27,000 posts, for all the wrong reasons.

And so you ended up faced with a choice: to click or not to click. And if you clicked, there were enough Swifties blessedly running interference that you had to do a deep dive to find out what all the outrage was about.

And if, against your better judgement, you really had to know, eventually it was all enough to make you wonder what the hell is wrong with the world in 2024. 

Once upon a time, pop stars made—rightly or wrongly—their own scandals, whether it was Madonna ending up in Penthouse, Grace Slick getting blottoed in Germany, or Gene Simmons making the world’s most disturbing sex tape. 

Today, thanks to an AI world where you can punch in “Pugs playing spin the bottle while drinking absinthe in a Dildo, Newfoundland dive bar run by bondage-obsessed Albanian circus clowns,” the world is one’s perverted oyster. 

And so, on January 24, the most offensive thing on the Internet wasn’t America’s reigning pop princess engaged in relations with Kermit the Frog. Or—making one wonder who exactly has the Sesame Street fixation—Oscar the Grouch in an XXX co-starring role with the most famous singer in the world. 

Instead...actually, let’s not dignify things here. 

Yes, it was that wrong, for no other reason than one has to wonder what the hell someone punched into AI to get the image. And pray that whoever did it had their Kansas City Chiefs’ season tickets instantly revoked.

Stop the world—which at this point, Taylor Swift is pretty much running anyways. If you’re among those who want to get off, no one’s going to ask you why—first and foremost being the ghost of Jim Henson, who should be almost as outraged as, well, you know. 

There are times when you need to make "Shake It Off" your mantra. And, thanks to this particularly ugly social experiment, this is one of them.