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Last week, Taylor Swift kicked off her highly anticipated Eras tour!
The star unveiled a setlist comprising 50 songs that stretched for three hours as she made her long-awaited return to the stage.
But one particular detail from Taylor’s incredible performance has inadvertently attracted heaps of attention online after being scrutinized by none other than artist Anna Marie Tendler.
Anna Marie, who used to be married to John Mulaney, got internet users talking after accusing Taylor of copying one of her art pieces for the set design of the Eras tour.
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Posting a video on TikTok, Anna Marie firstly showcases fan-filmed footage from the crowd at Taylor’s show, in which the singer can be seen wearing a striking orange dress and tidying a dining table before performing her song "Tolerate It."
Anna Marie then says, “Uh, Taylor, my girl, people who designed Taylor’s tour? This 'Tolerate It' setup looks strikingly like one of my photographs in tone and in aesthetics.” The multimedia artist later made it clear that she was referring to one of her portraits that is currently selling for $5,000.
“It doesn’t totally feel like parallel thinking to me,” she continues in the TikTok. “I’m a small artist, [an] independent artist who is trying to make money and live off of my artwork.”
Anna Marie concludes, “I don’t know what to do about this. Maybe somebody can help me.”
The TikTok video quickly went viral online as several social media users questioned whether Anna Marie was being serious.
“she can’t seriously be accusing taylor swift of stealing her idea of setting a table,” one person tweeted, before adding: “it obviously does not look like her photograph at all but sure piggyback off another artist to get your name out there.”
“‘i don’t know what to do about this’ nothing girlie, you are embarrassing yourself. you didn’t invent dining tables as an aesthetic,” someone else wrote, while another TikTok user echoed: “did you hear about the girl who lives in delusion?”
After facing more backlash, Anna Marie wound up deleting the TikTok video altogether and making her account private. And later, the artist went a step further by commenting on a reuploaded version of her original video to clarify that she’d been “joking.”
“Hi! This was meant to be a joke,” she wrote. “Most of my videos are jokes or satire! When I realized it wasn’t landing as a joke I deleted it. Didn’t mean offense.”
Several people have since defended Anna Marie, suggesting that the video was “obviously a joke.”
“IT WAS SATIRE!!! she had cleared it up, saying that she was joking. i’m so sad that she went private because everyone took it seriously,” one person wrote.
“this is so obviously a joke can yall be serious please,” another user added.
But others didn’t seem so convinced, instead theorizing that Anna Marie had backtracked after her video landed poorly.
“Ahh the ‘it was just a joke!’ defense when the thing you meant seriously turned out to be horribly out of touch!” one person wrote.
“ppl are saying the person is joking and sorry i can’t read tone especially irl like this,” another added. “it sounds so serious.”
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