Opening your phone to the news that Kanye has yet again said something despicable, Future now owes the mother of one of his seven children $15 million and Travis has been indicted as a “criminal probe of the crowd surge” leaves you with no choice but to turn your phone right back off. 

It doesn’t matter anyway, though, because your screen lights up with notifications of “sent a post by Billboard” and “sent a Reel by Rolling Stone” followed by question marks. 

“Have you seen this?” “What do you think?” “Don’t you listen to him?”

Head in your hands you have no choice but to swipe them all away. There’s no way you can defend yourself when someone brings up the fact that he let his fans die in a crowd surge, and “separating the art from the artist” just doesn’t seem to cut it.

“But what does that have to do with me?”

Though this may seem oddly specific and like it was maybe, possibly, a personal experience, many young people today find themselves in similar situations. 

Social media has us much more connected with the artists we love, for better or for worse.  Every award show repost, we feel a little proud, too. Every engagement announcement, hope flutters up within us like the hearts on the screen.

But every criminal charge, hateful remark and questionable resurfaced video hits even harder. 

Clearing reposts from Instagram and TikTok is its own type of grief, when someone who you loved, even if through a screen, has let you down. 

But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t somewhat performative. After all, I’m not deleting my playlists; at worst I’m privating them.

 I mean, I’d never want someone to think I agree in any capacity with what Kanye is saying online, but he did make “Graduation”.

So, in situations like these, the question becomes: Is it okay to separate the art from the artist?

For many of us who don’t want to support hate speech, unpaid child support, assault, murder—you get the picture—the most logical solution is to stop streaming the artist’s music entirely. This way, we stop supporting them financially. 

On paper this sounds great, as historically, boycotts lead to change because money makes the world go round. But in reality, this course of action only makes sense with a very idealistic world view. Because since when has society financially rewarded “good” people?

Furthermore, if your intention is to boycott an already established artist, like Kanye, not only are those artists already likely multimillionaires, but individual streams don’t even contribute that much anyways, like a tenth of a cent per stream.

And, sure, that adds up over time, but again, even assuming that society is capable of a large-scale boycott is generous. The closest we’ve seen recently to a successful artist boycott in the music industry is the LOONA incident (the boycotting of the girl group’s merchandise, social media, music and other promotional activities to bankrupt their label) from 2022–and that was boycotting their label, not the girls themselves. 

This makes sense, considering that most people don’t care enough to stop listening to an artist just because they don’t agree with what they sing about or stand for. Realistically, many can barely make it through the day without our headphones, and asking people to give up the songs that bring them joy and keep them going just to make a vague point does more damage to the listener than the loss of a few streams would ever do to a major artist.

Furthermore, boycotting is not only impractical for most, but also immoral in its own way. If we were to rid the internet entirely of all the art we didn’t agree with, the only thing we would be left with is a couple Getty stock photos. Soulless, spiritless stock photos. 

Interacting with content we disagree with is crucial to ensuring we maintain our freedom of speech, especially in online spaces, where censorship is much easier to enforce. 

No matter how wrong you think Kanye and Ty Dolla $ign were for “Carnival,” you have to remember that by putting yourself in a position where you decide what the general public can and can’t listen to, not only do you assume that you have the moral high ground, but you also begin to infringe on artists’ First Amendment Rights.

Then what or who even starts to draw the line at what’s acceptable to judge people for listening to and what’s not? Where does the reflection of your friend’s character end and their gym playlist begin? 

Well, if there’s one thing most people can agree on it is that even under the First Amendment, hate speech is unacceptable—meaning songs and artists that target minority groups and promote harmful ideology are generally looked down upon. 

And for good reason. For example, even though it’s been scrubbed off the internet in preparation for his latest release, several streaming services publicly denounced Kanye’s Nazi propaganda anthem, with many fans citing the release as an irresponsible use of his platform. 

This especially holds true in today’s political climate, where the United States has seen drastic increases in anti-semitism after the start of the Israel-Hamas War.  Especially in times where ignorance and hate are clearly demonstrating real world consequences, most people agree that, at the very least, artists shouldn’t be spewing hate speech at minorities.

Even in extreme cases like Kanye’s, many longtime fans still listen to his older work considering he’s already worth well over $400 million dollars, making our streams practically worthless either way. Others, however, stopped listening to and supporting him entirely. These are both valid choices because his words hold real weight, especially now.

With all that being said, where does that leave you, wondering how much the media you consume is indicative of your character and whether or not you can re-follow Eminem even after your girlfriend confronted you about it?

At the end of the day, people are much more than the media they passively consume and the things they repost. Not only that, but separating the art from the artist is necessary to maintain a relatively uncensored online space, and boycotts are often just fruitless pursuits to make ourselves feel better about last year’s Spotify Wrapped. Future sitting at number one isn’t exactly a good look. 

So, maybe don’t archive all those playlists just yet.