This is a story about former One Direction member Zayn Malik, his new enemy Calvin Harris, Calvin’s girlfriend Taylor Swift, Taylor’s newish enemy Miley Cyrus, Taylor’s longtime enemy Spotify, Taylor’s almost-enemy Apple Music, and a Twitter user named Bitch Problems. So sit down, grab a cup of tea, and put a few drops of Visine in each eye, because they’re about to do a whole lot of rolling.
Let’s begin.
On Monday, Zayn Malik retweeted the following tweet from Bitch Problems (@femaletexts):
The images compare a Taylor Swift quote (taken out of context) and a Miley Cyrus quote (taken out of context). Here’s Swift’s:
Swift also notes that Spotify could hurt music sales. Music is available for streaming on Spotify even to those who don’t pay for a premium subscription (those users are shown ads).
“[People] can still listen to my music if they get it on iTunes,” Swift told Time. “I’m always up for trying something. And I tried and I didn’t like the way it felt. I think there should be an inherent value place on art.”
And here’s Cyrus’s:
“I’ve made my money. If no one buys my album, cool. It’s fine. I’ve got a house, and I’ve got dogs that I love. I don’t need anything else.”
Malik followed the retweet with this:
Calvin Harris, Swift’s boyfriend and one of Malik’s followers, must have assumed that RTs = endorsements and that ‘G’ = ‘Good’, because he responded to the retweet with a multi-part defense of her actions:
Basically, Calvin told the teens who are on Team Zayn and/or Team Miley to be quiet and stop picking on his girlfriend over her comments about the very complicated and very grown-up topic of streaming royalties.
But Zayn wasn’t having it, and decided to escalate their interaction from spat to full-on dudefight:
This declaration of dudefight shocked Harris, so he qualified his earlier statements in an attempt to cool things down and prevent himself from gaining another enemy:
Once again, Zayn wasn’t having it:
And, once again, Harris tried to calm everyone down:
The two—both of whom are quite rich—have not tweeted at each other since, but the always-useful DoesFollow.com has helped provide some important additional information about their new feud:
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Images via screengrab.