 I'm half black. There. I just wanted to get it out of the way in the intro of this video because the last time I talked about something that was a little bit on the racial side of the conversation, a lot of my fellow brothers and sisters came at me hardcore. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I like to do is pull different topics from the news or pop culture or the YouTube community and try to see what lessons we can learn to try to improve our own lives. And this is definitely a topic that we need to discuss. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So let's get some biases or potential biases out of the way. All right. I'm not a Taylor Swift fan. I don't listen to Taylor Swift. I don't know if you knew that about me, but I have no bias in this conversation. Like I don't know. She makes music, people like it, whatever. But anyways, this morning I hop on, you know, social media and everything. I see like Taylor Swift is trending a bunch of, you know, news articles are popping up in my face and everything like that. I'm like, what is going on? And people are saying that Taylor Swift copied Beyonce by bringing a marching band out at the Billboard Music Awards last night. And the argument is, is that Beyonce brought out a marching band at Coachella 2018. Her new documentary Homecoming came out and it also showed the marching band. So they figured that Taylor Swift must have copied Beyonce, which is absolutely ridiculous. And I'm going to explain why. Now, before I dive into this and prove to you that Taylor Swift did not copy Beyonce, I do want to say cultural appropriation is a very, very real thing. But we're going to talk about that a little bit later in this video. All right. So when I saw this, I was just beating my head against the wall. All right. I was like, are you serious because I have been a fan of live performances since I was a kid? All right. I grew up watching like the MTV video music awards, watching the Grammys, watching so many award shows. I've also gone to a lot of live concerts and everything like that. So I decided to do some research because I was like, this can't be that there's no way there's no way that this is the first two times that anybody's brought a marching band out. And I know this for a fact, because I always thought like it was really cool of artists to like bring out a marching band. I used to be a band geek back in middle school, beginning of high school. I was in the marching band and I was like, that'd be dope. An artist you like bringing out bringing you out there to do your marching band thing? That'd be sick. So I know I've seen it before. So my beautiful girlfriend Tristan helped me out with a little research and let's go back in time. All right. So last night Taylor Swift brought a marching band out at the Billboard Music Awards 2019. Before that Beyonce brought out a marching band at Coachella 2018. Well, let's see what happened before that. Keith Urban brought out a marching band on stage with them in 2018. Papa Roach brought out a marching band with them in 2017. Major laser at Coachella brought out a marching band as he did a collaboration with Odessa in 2016. Odessa at Coachella brought out a marching band in 2015. Those two last ones are important because Beyonce not only was she not the first one to bring out a marching band, she wasn't even the first one to bring out a marching band at Coachella. But let's keep going back in time. All right. 2010. Okay, go. brought out a marching band at one of their performances in 2009 at the Grammys Radiohead brought out a marching band. And in 2006, Kanye West brought out a marching band as he did his song Gold Digger with Jamie Foxx. All right. So when I see this, I think this is absolutely ridiculous. And here's the reason why we need to discuss this. Okay, here's why it's an issue. There is such a divide in the world today, not just in the United States, but in the world. So my my suggestion to everybody is is pick your battles. Okay, this is why I tell people to start trying to rewire their thinking. If you are constantly looking for the negative, if you're constantly looking for something to be outraged by, this is why outrage culture is so ridiculous, because you have trained your brain to hyper focus on the negatives because you are going into every situation looking for something to get mad at. All right. This is what they call selective attention theory, which I've done plenty of videos about. Your brain will find whatever you try to focus on. So if you're constantly looking at the negative, if you're constantly trying to figure out things to be outraged on, logic goes out the window, you know why? Because your emotions come into play. And then you get a ridiculous topic like this trending claiming that Taylor Swift copied Beyonce by bringing out a marching band, even though this isn't new. This is nothing new. All right. But the next thing I want to talk about is copying in the realm of creators. Okay. So I was actually going to make a video. I'm still gonna make it. But anyways, another creator made a video on a topic that I've wanted to make a video on, I've been looking into it and everything like that. I'm like, Oh, that'd be interesting. But another creator made a video on it. I'm like, Oh man, well, now I got to wait a little while or it's gonna look like I'm copying them and everything like that. Even though there's other videos made on this topic as well. But I know how it would look. And Donna from Psych IRL actually just did a video with Swoop about this about people copying Casey Neistat and his style and everything. And it's just really interesting in the realm of creators because a lot of people are just inspired by certain things, right? And pretty much the conclusion that Donna and Swoop got to was just like being influenced by something without directly copying it, right? You got to put your own flair on it. But here's the thing, like something I learned like when I first got sober almost seven years ago, something I learned is like, there's nothing really original, right? Like everything I heard everything I learned, like people would like humble themselves and say like, Hey, I didn't make this stuff up. Like I learned this from this other person or this person, they learned it from this person and everything like that. A lot of the stuff that I talk about on my channel are just things that I've learned from my own personal experience, from books, from articles, from studies, from research, from, you know, just YouTube videos, whatever it is. I am just putting the information in a different way with a spin of my own thoughts and opinions on it. All right. But we live in this time where like people are just so focused on who's copying who who's trying to steal from this and who's trying to steal from that and check it out. Like I said, coming back to the idea of cultural appropriation, it's a real thing. It is a very real thing. I get that. I get that and that's okay. If you want to speak up about that, if you feel that certain cultures are not getting the credit that they deserve and you know, it wasn't a big deal until white people or another nationality started to pick it up. Like that's cool. Like talk about it. Like in my opinion, like credit should be given where credits do and where it came from. All right. But but the problem is, is that we live in such a culture of outrage that people are getting offended for other people, even when they don't want to be offended. And here's what I'm talking about. I remember what was it last year was the last year a year before that. But a young woman wore an Asian inspired dress to her high school prom. And some dude called her out on Twitter like this high school girl, right? He called her out on Twitter. It blew up in this huge thing about cultural appropriation, right? Then people looked into this dude, and he was appropriating he was an Asian man appropriating black culture dropping n bombs like they were going out of style, right? So people called him out on that. But then, then like some I can't remember who it was with some like representative or somebody from like, I can't remember if it was China or Japan spoke up and say, Oh, no, like we don't mind this. We're actually very flattered when people, you know, use our culture and, and they appreciate how beautiful it is, right? Like you see what I'm saying, like, we need to understand this. And this is one of the issues and like, I don't know. Maybe this kind of stuff is in the forefront of my mind, because it is currently 2019. Next year, a new president is going to get elected. And bad things are going to happen. If people don't chill the hell out, because here's the problem. And I'm just just me and you real quick, just me and you. All right. Outrage culture makes all of us look ridiculous. All right. It dampens the message of serious subjects. And it's really hard to take people seriously when they're getting outraged over the silliest of things. All right. Like claiming that Taylor Swift copied Beyonce, like Beyonce put a freaking trademark on bringing a marching band out on stage when I just proved to you in this damn video that that is not the case at all. All right. So everybody, let's all take a chill pill and start caring about things that actually matter. All right. That's the end of this rant. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You're all amazing. And if you like what I'm doing here and want to help support the channel and get access to our monthly Q&A and other perks and benefits, click or tap right there on that Patreon icon. All right. Thanks again so so much for watching. I'll see you next time.