Why I think "All Too Well" resonates with Swifties

I walked through the door with you, the air was cold,
But something 'bout it felt like home somehow and I
Left my scarf there at your sister's house,
And you still got it in your drawer even now.

It’s been years since Taylor Swift penned All Too Well into the minds and hearts of Swifties everywhere, yet two eras later (at the time of this writing), it’s still the song that gets her fans sobbing uncontrollably while shouting the lyrics at the tops of their lungs. Being in a sea of ugly criers as Taylor deftly navigates the entire dynamic spectrum of vocal prowess—from what feels like an intimate whisper, to a rueful exclamation—is perhaps one of the more awe-striking things I’ve ever experienced at a concert, vicariously or otherwise. It’s always fascinated me as to why and how All Too Well became the singer-songwriter’s unofficial fandom anthem, but I think hidden in the answer to the song’s success lies the greater allegory of why Taylor Swift, herself, has endured as such a treasure to her fandom—snake emojis be damned.

Oh, your sweet disposition and my wide-eyed gaze.
We're singing in the car, getting lost upstate.
The Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place,
And I can picture it after all these days.

When you look at the lyrics of All Too Well, one thing is obvious: this is a very specific vignette about Taylor’s life. There’s no pretention, here. Taylor is putting her own agony on display—something over which I imagine most record labels would find apprehension. “It’s not relatable! How will fans sing along to something so specifically not about them?” Yet to this day, All Too Well is one of the most participated-in songs at her concerts. It’s not a single. It’s not even an up-beat song. So what’s the deal? Why is it the loudest song at every show if it’s so “unrelatable”? I think it’s because it’s not trying to be.

And I know it's long gone,
And that magic's not here no more,
And I might be okay,
But I'm not fine at all.

'Cause there we are again on that little town street.
You almost ran the red 'cause you were looking over me.
Wind in my hair, I was there, I remember it all too well.

No matter what you think about Taylor Swift, she is adept at making her fan base feel like they’re more than just her fans—she makes them feel like they’re her friends. And if you think about your friends, I absolutely guarantee that you’ve been there to commiserate with them about a traumatic event in their lives. Taylor even said in an NPR interview that “people have essentially gotten to read [her] diary for the last 10 years. [She] still [writes] personal songs, and sometimes people like to put a very irritating, negative, spin on that—as if [she’s] oversharing; as if it's too much information—when this has been the way [she’s] lived [her] life and run [her] career the entire time. So [she does] think it's really important that [she continues] to give people an insight into what [her] life is actually like, even though it comes at a higher cost now.” And that’s what friends do—they share their lives with you. All Too Well is a snapshot of Taylor’s life. As her “friends,” we sympathize with her, and we want her to feel loved and validated, so we do that in the only way we really know how: we sing along. Loudly.

Photo album on the counter, your cheeks were turning red.
You used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-size bed
And your mother's telling stories about you on a tee ball team
You tell me 'bout your past, thinking your future was me.

And I know it's long gone
And there was nothing else I could do
And I forget about you long enough
To forget why I needed to

That being said, I believe that All Too Well (and, frankly, Taylor’s entire catalog) is far more relatable than people give it credit. Think about a really good movie you saw recently. Now, think about the plot of that movie and ask yourself, “is this relatable to me?” Chances are that maybe you relate to the protagonist of a story, but I bet you don’t relate to the specific story—very few of us are billionaire superheroes, but we wrestle with complex ethics and morals daily, so Batman and Iron Man feel relatable to us. Taylor Swift has done to her music what filmmakers have been doing to their movies throughout all of time: craft a sympathetic protagonist.

Is Taylor Swift a perfect paragon of relatability and innocence? No, probably not. But what interesting character (or human being, for that matter) is? Batman is mired in the complexities of living a dual life; Iron Man is often the victim of his own hubris (ahem snake emoji ahem). Music that is perfectly agnostic and interchangeable between the artist performing it and the listeners consuming it is fine and dandy. But the satisfaction behind that can be superficial and ephemeral. We crave elaborate narratives because the drama is intriguing, and that intrigue has longevity.

'Cause there we are again in the middle of the night.
We dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light
Down the stairs, I was there, I remember it all too well, yeah.

Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much,
And maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up.
Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well.

Okay, so we understand that from a relatability standpoint, Taylor’s music is relatable in an evolved way past being cut-and-paste stories into which we can substitute ourselves. But what about musically? Sonically, Taylor Swift’s music falls squarely in the category of four-chord pop. On the surface, All Too Well is about as simple as it gets. For the musically inclined, it doesn’t stray from the I–V–vi–IV progression once. But there’s something else incredibly interesting about it that satiates the hunger for variety, and that’s its lyrics.

Hey, you call me up again just to break me like a promise.
So casually cruel in the name of being honest.
I'm a crumpled up piece of paper lying here
'Cause I remember it all, all, all too well.

If you listen to the song, you’ll notice that it’s missing something fairly integral to most pop music on the airwaves today, and that’s a chorus. As Bo Burnham eloquently put it, “America says we love a chorus / But don't get complicated and bore us / Though meaning might be missin' / We need to know the words after just one listen / So repeat stuff.”

All Too Well’s only repeated lyric is “I remember it all too well,” which is preceded by what could be interpreted as a chorus, but lyrically and melodically, each of those sections is distinct from another—so it’s not a chorus. All Too Well is five minutes and twenty-eight seconds of pure storytelling—no filler, and we. are. FED!

Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it
I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it
After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own
Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone

But you keep my old scarf from that very first week
'Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me
You can't get rid of it, 'cause you remember it all too well, yeah

'Cause there we are again, when I loved you so
Back before you lost the one real thing you've ever known
It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well

Wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it all
Down the stairs, you were there, you remember it all
It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well.

Conclusion:
Taylor Swift’s All Too Well is pop music’s shining beacon of what a melancholy ballad should aspire to be. It follows the sonic conventions of successful pop music while providing the narrative satisfaction of great cinema and evoking a multi-dimensional sense of social connection (to Taylor and other Swifties). Whether or not you like Taylor Swift’s music, it is undeniable that she is a master of her craft, and that as long as she keeps writing songs that are authentic to her experience, her fans will unwaveringly stand right beside her.

And I think she knows that all, all, all too well.

Dear 20 year old me,

I'm 100% certain that this is a completely unoriginal thing I'm doing, but fuck it. I want to document my musings as a 25-year-old junior writer in the advertising industry retrospectively looking back at his life as a college student, for posterity. Here's what I wish I could say to myself, and maybe if it resonates with someone else in my previous current situation (well that's just unnecessary wording, Alex), then all the better. Here goes:

1) You're just starting at art school after fucking around at Community College for two years. 

It's going to be like nothing you'd imagined it would be. Basically nothing can prepare you for what to expect, because nothing like it has previously existed in your academic history. It's weird. Esoteric. Eclectic. Words you'll come to use far too often to describe your creative after having just learned the difference between the two of them. It's going to be really fuckin' tough in the future. In fact, there will be a few times that you're going to question whether or not you made a foolhardy, naive decision by going to art school. It's expensive. You'll be working part-to-full time, close to minimum wage for a lot of the duration you're in college. You'll have four different jobs—some of them overlapping each other. Sleep? What the fuck is that? But hey, that's part of the process. I'm not saying it's going to be dreadfully impossible, but I'm also not saying that you'll be able to just coast the way you did in high school/junior college. But that brings me to my next point, which is a little bit less scary...

2) You're going to want to do your homework.

And I don't mean that in an imperative connotation, either. I mean it literally. Your first few classes are going to be abso-fucking-lutely fascinating. Roger will try to scare you with the work volume, but you'll grin at it. It'll excite you, because you knew that most every academic endeavor beforehand was a grind—but this one will be an adventure. You'll stay up until two or three in the morning doing homework, sometimes. One night writing 10 different sets of headline, subheadline, and tagline copy. Another night trying to figure out why the absolute fuck bezier curves are so goddamn confusing. Trust me. You'll get the hang of them because you'll make it through that confusion. Your unyielding curiosity and desire to know things will allow you to pick up the software quicker than most. You'll attribute that skill to all the puzzle-solving video games you played previously. You still attribute your quick learning to that, now. 

3) There will be classes you're going to think are completely fucking stupid. But there are enough classes that will inspire you like never before.

This probably has something to do with the degree plan and the teachers along that path. BFA Advertising samples from a LOT of the departments that the school offers. You'll have to paint, and you'll be fucking miserable at it. You'll barely pass because you paint like a fuckin' third grader. That's okay. That class was full of fine-arts students specifically going to that school for painting. You'll learn and understand the color theory—that's the important part. In fact, one of your final paintings will be a Zelda mandala that you'll hang in your hallway for years to come. It's still there now.

By the way, you suck ASS at staying up to date with online classes. Pretty much skip them if you can. You failed one because you always forgot about it. That's okay. No one cares in the industry. Designing Careers will probably be the stupidest class you'll take. It's primarily meant for kids who went from high school to college with no work experience in between. The teacher will try to teach you proper business etiquette that you'll already have plenty of experience in as someone who's been in the workforce for a few years at that point in time. Ironically, you'll fall asleep in this class a bunch of times, though.

As for classes you'll love, they'll be some of the most labor-intensive classes you'll be in. But you'll learn so damn much. Again, that's the important part. In fact...

3) Don't stop learning when you leave school.

That's what'll separate you from the do-nothings who just went to art school because they had to choose college, get a job, or get kicked out. So they chose art school thinking it'd be the easiest option. Realistically, because the advertising department's curriculum is spread about so thinly across the other departments, you'll find yourself in a serious jack-of-many-trades situation. You're going to have to master them on your own. It's worth the extra time spent, because you'll be able to do things at a higher caliber than some others will. That'll separate you from the rest of the pack down the line.

4) It's going to be fucking expensive.

And I'm not talking just tuition. You're going to buy a new laptop because your old one won't be able to hang and will shit out on you. You'll need at least 16gb of RAM. You're going to buy your first DSLR, and you'll fall in love with it. But that'll lead you to bigger and more expensive lenses. A hot-shoe flash unit. A tripod. A dozen other extra parts (and still accumulating). Then, photography will lead you into video. You'll buy the video editing software you use because you like it so much. You'll use that thing throughout the rest of your career. But it's not cheap. You'll buy off-camera sound. You'll have to buy paints, markers, sketch books, course books, EVERYTHING. It'll be totally fucking nuts. But creativity is an expensive endeavor. That never changes. But everything you acquire will add to your greater successes later. 

5) You're going to feel like you're doing absolutely nothing sometimes.

You're going to get senioritis REALLY early. I'm talking, like, two years before you graduate. And it's going to suck, because that whole time, you're going to dread the fact that you'll win zero awards, and you'll start to feel like just one of the other indistinguishable graduates. Just keep plugging along, kid. Because...

6) Things take forever to happen, but when they DO happen, they happen at breakneck speeds.

You won't win shit until your last semester of school. In fact, in your last semester, you'll have a teacher convince you to switch your whole game plan (he did you a favor, trust me). You'll spend nearly four and half years studying to be a designer. You'll learn how to use the Adobe Creative Suite. You'll learn how to Photoshop better than most kids your age. You'll shoot in camera RAW and have a few paying side gigs before you leave. You'll work as a graphic designer. And you'll hate it. It'll make you question your abilities. But that might be for the better.

Mark Edwards will discover you, and question why the ever living fuck you ever thought you should market yourself as a designer. Well, yeah, Mark. I mean, I've always known I was a writer. But I wanted to learn something I didn't know.

No, you're a writer. He'll tell you.

He'll convince you to rebrand yourself as a writer—which is 100% your strongest skill. You'll rework your brand identity and portfolio to reflect that. You'll win an award based on a copy-driven animation you did (four and a half years in design paid off on that), and you'll land an internship as a writer where you'll get live work put out into the world. On the day of your graduation ceremony (which won't technically be your actual graduation), you'll get a job offer as an intern at Epsilon—an agency down the street from the advertising building...as a writer. They'll hire you after the internship. And then you'll write some stupid blog to yourself before you've been out of college for a year.

7) You're going to be 100% less certain about what you want to do after getting your first job in the industry you so lusted after during your whole tenure at art school.

After learning so much, accumulating so much gear, having so many different types of clients for so many different types of projects, you're going to have absolutely no fucking idea where you want to be in ten years. At the beginning of your college career, you'd have told anyone who'd listen that you were going to become an art director at an ad agency (as if you even understood what the fuck an art director was when you were in school). But now that you're a writer at an ad agency with a fucking stupidly nonsensical portfolio full of design and video and writing...you have no fucking clue what you want to do anymore. But that's only because everything you've done has culminated into this intensely creative, jack-of-many-trades, master-of-most of them that the entire spectrum of creativity will be an option for you. 

And you'll be as impatient as you were to figure it out as you were when you were in college.

But trust me, I'll figure it out. It hasn't even been a year since I graduated. It only takes a moment to make six months feel like it breezed by. Don't be so excited to grow up, kid. Things will happen, and you'll happen with them. Just be patient.

The Sensitive Subject of Body Manipulation

Man, isn't this a tough one? Of course, in photography, everyone wants to put their best foot forward, so to speak. But with the incredibly powerful tool that is Photoshop, "best foot forward" now includes a Stiletto, a pedicure, a gold anklet, and maybe some lens flare. 

If you live in this century, you've certainly heard everything there is to hear about why body manipulation is great, terrible, and all things few and far between. I won't bore you with that conversation, because you can find so many more articulate discussions about it than I can probably provide on any other photography blog. 

Personally, I am often quite hesitant to photoshop people in "flattering" ways, because it ends up a slippery slope of a spiral into self-esteem issues. Moreover, it simply perpetuates those self-esteem issues (shit, I said I wasn't going to get into this conversation...) Anyway. Instead, I'd like to show you how I feel body manipulation should be used in a less socially-damaging way. 

Okay, so it's technically more of a composite than it is a body manipulation, but I'm still manipulating different parts of her body to construct an image that didn't previously exist. Sue me.

FUCK YOU. PAY ME.

I know that right now, I'm a student. I know that right now, I've got shit to show for what I can do. I know that right now, most of my work is student work. But would you prospect an electrician? Would you prospect a doctor? A lawyer? This will become more relevant to me one day. But for now, this is good to keep in mind.

Maybe people think that if you went to art school, you don't understand money?

Our speaker at the March 2011 San Francisco, CreativeMornings (www.creativemornings.com) was Mike Monteiro, Design Director, and co-founder of Mule Design Studio (www.muledesign.com). This event took place on March 25, 2011 and was sponsored by Happy Cog and Typekit (who also hosted the event at their office in the Mission). Mike's book "Design is a Job" is available from A Book Apart (www.abookapart.com/products/design-is-a-job) A big giant thank you to Chris Whitmore (www.whitmoreprod.com) for offering to shoot and edit the video. Photos were graciously provided by Rawle Anders (twitter.com/rawle42). The San Francisco chapter of Creative Mornings is run by Greg Storey (twitter.com/​brilliantcrank). Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/​SanFrancisco_CM

Why [The American public Education System] is Fucked...

[Quick preface: this is a blanket statement that addresses the system as a whole. I have had plenty of individual teachers who went above and beyond to educate me in the most spectacular and inspiring way possible. It is because of them that I am the curious and ever-learning individual that I am, and I am forever grateful to have been graced by their instruction].

Solve: x^2 + 3x – 4 = 0
Some of us look at this and say, "give me a pen," while some of us look at it and say, "oh yeah, that thing." But there's another group of people. It's a group that I'll bet most people fall into.
They're the group that says, "what the fuck is this?" Or something like that. The point is, there are herds of people who don't know, or can't remember a single thing about how to solve this equation (the answer for which is x= -4, 1, by the way). Here's the kicker: it's not hard. 

Yeah, that's right. Math isn't hard. If you can solve for 10 + 12 = x, then you can solve for x up above. The reason why math seems so hard for people is because math is a subject that requires diligent and consistent learning. This is something that just doesn't click for many people. Would you like to know why? It's because math is easy. 

Let's start from square one: elementary mathematics. 1 + 1 = x. Check. Most of us probably don't even have to think about that one. 
Okay, 10 + 10 = x. Check. It's a step up from the previous problem, but it's still pretty rudimentary and intuitive to understand.
Fine. 153 + 64 = x. Wow, alright. So maybe some of us that aren't half-calculator need to think about this one for a few seconds...
seven... carry the one... okay, x = 217. 
Good! That was a bit of a challenge. You understand addition. You must understand subtraction, right?
1 - 1.
10 - 10.
153 - 64.
Okay, great. Remember, there's a such thing as "negative numbers," too.

Let's graduate.
5 x 5 = x. 
10 x 3 = x.
43 x 18 = x. 
Well. Some of those took us a little while, but that's okay. Multiples aren't easy to just intuit. 
Now divide:
10 / 2 = x. 
40 / 5 = x. 
83 / 26 = x.
Remainders? Okay, so that's a new concept, right? It's fine; that's like dealing with money: 1 dollar divided by 7 quarters is 1 with a remainder of .75. Manageable. 

Let's graduate again. Allow me to introduce the Order of Operations: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.
Do these things in this order at each point in each equation. Ready? Go.
(5 - 10) + 6(20 - 2) - (18 / 2) = x.

Did you get 94? Did you even bother to do the equation? 
If you answered "yes" to the former question: good job! It probably didn't come as quick as "1 + 1," did it? But I'll bet you used the concept of "x + x" at some point in time. 
If you answered "no" to the latter question: you have found the root of the problem with America's education system. 
For those of us who looked at the question, thought: yeah, I can do that, so why would I bother to actually do it? Welcome to what I like to call "academic complacency." Sure. We have the basic skills to solve for x there. Do we want to put in the effort to solve something we know we can solve? Probably not. So we won't do it. Maybe in grade school, you looked in the back of your book to get the answers for the homework (they were always there in math books) and just decided to copy them onto your worksheet, instead of actually solving the problem and doing the work (by the way, this is the reason math teachers ask kids to show their work in math assignments). 

This is where the fuck up begins to rear its ugly head. 

Let's graduate again. Solve for x:
x2 - 16 = 0. 

Fuck. For some of us, this is probably easy to just understand that x = 8. For others, we get it now that it's mentioned. But how about:
(x2 - 8) + 2(5^2) - 1x = 50. Solve for x.

The answer is 8. Did you follow? At this point, most of us who can solve it will probably need a calculator, or at least a scratch paper to keep track of all the variables. For those of us who can't, it's because you stopped doing the work at (5 - 10) + 6(20 - 2) - (18 / 2) = x. 
You got complacent at just knowing how to do the problem in the last step that the next step was pretty much a foreign language to you. "When the hell did the alphabet find its way into mathematical equations?" you might ask.

So, the American school system pushes us along again—maybe passing us with a C or D+, just to get us into the next grade so the school can still get its funding from the government. Whatever. We're kids. We don't care about learning. I mean, ACTUALLY learning. We just care about getting that grade so it can push us along to the next class, where we can stay with all of our friends. 

From here on, it's a spiral of continued confusion and unanswered problems. Pre-algebra. Geometry. Algebra. Algebra 2. All of the sudden, we're getting words like "hypotenuse," and "cosine," and "Pythagorus." And we're left in the dust. But the funny thing is: math still isn't hard. 
The beautiful thing about math is that it's like a puzzle: there's ALWAYS a solution. It might be convoluted and make you jump through a hundred hoops to get to the solution, but the solution is there. Always. But if you don't remember how to jump in the first place (or never even bothered to learn from the start), how can you be expected to be coordinated enough to jump through a hoop?

That's math. That's most subjects in Academia—but it's especially apparent in math. Think of never learning how to form a sentence, and then being asked to write a 20-page essay about the entire works of William Shakespeare, cited in MLA format, with a cover page, and a works cited page at the end. 
That's insane.

But that's effectively what happens. Without the desire to actively learn, kids will just go through the motions and get the mark to pass the class until they eventually don't. American public education stops being about the desire to learn when we exit kindergarten. True learning is being taught the virtue of curiosity. It's about exploring. A lot of times, it's about being creative—and we all know that the public school system is structurally designed so that it discourages creativity. You can't wear this. You can't do this. You can't play with that. Stop doodling in class. This is how your notes should look. This is how you answer this; no you can't answer it that way—it has to be written like this.
It's mechanical. It's automated. It's boring. And at the end of its mass-production come out shiny machinated drones who have little to no desire to learn anything new. That's why kids fail. Because education is more concerned with GPA than it is about being fascinated with the subjects you're being taught. When did "what did you learn at school today, Johnny?" become "why do you have a B- in math this semester?!"

Well, it's because Johnny lost interest in learning. It's because Johnny never learned how to use a semi-colon. It's because Johnny forgot PEMDAS.

So how can Johnny possibly understand WHY x = -4, 1.

Perspectives.

Wikipedia - Jeffrey Dahmer

Sierra DeMulder - Dahmer

Many times, I believe that we are looking for the wrong side of the coin.

I've talked about this before, because I think it needs to be talked about. 

We need to stop deifying and putting bad people on a pedestal. 

As a society, we have a terrible knack for focusing too greatly on the bastards and sick fucks of the world. A perfect example that happened recently comes from the Boston Marathon tragedy. 

When you read that sentence, did you think of the sick fuck responsible for the tragedy? Probably. I won't mention him/her because I refuse to out of contempt for his/her motives and subsequent actions. I won't say if he/she is a male/female, because I don't think he/she even deserves to be acknowledged in another form of media -- not even in reference to his/her gender. In fact, around the time of the tragedy, I made it my best effort to never learn the name of that individual (of course, sensationalist news media permeates every facet of our culture, so it was just a matter of time before I unwillingly learned it). But let me ask you something: can you name the people who were killed or injured during the attack? How about just one person? Unless you were directly affected by it, I'm banking on the fact that most of you will say "no."

The above links are two stories that are easy to find online. The first one is a Wikipedia article. The second is a slam poem. I know what you're thinking; "Jeffrey Dahmer? Didn't you JUST posit that no one should even bother to learn the names of bad people?" Yes, I did. But this point needs to be made. I chose Jeffrey Dahmer because his reputation is already (disgustingly) far-reaching and infamous; his presence is engrained in our culture permanently, so it is only out of necessity and the inconvenient convenience of his infamy that I will permit myself to talk about him.

As I said, the two links are stories. Wikipedia is statistical, factual, and non-sensationalist, which is why I am using it to illustrate this point. Wikipedia is essentially the least of all the inadvertent evils when it comes to contributing to the notoriety of terrible people. While it still gives you a name, and puts a face to that name, it doesn't sensationalize the person or give him celebrity attention and acknowledgement. News media today has that problem. Once a tragedy occurs, the first question media asks is "who?" And not "who are the victims?" but rather, "who is in charge of the tragedy?"

Why is that? Why is it that Wikipedia will not sensationalize something, but news media will? I'll tell you why: news media has become entertainment news media. In order for a news network to be successful, it needs to have viewers, because those viewers become subject to commercials aired on that channel, and that's how the news network makes its money. Essentially, they need to make the news as interesting as possible to the common viewer so that they will stick with that specific network. What is most interesting to the common viewer? Drama. You see it in our entertainment industry's success -- what are the most successful shows on TV? Breaking Bad. The Walking Dead. "Reality" TV.

Drama.

News networks have caught onto that. Consequently, they now take a formulaic approach to reporting tragedy: find out what happened. Add drama. Screw the consequences.

Time and time again, when a mass tragedy occurs -- such as Columbine or Virginia Tech -- there is always a sensationalist report on the party/parties responsible. And time and time again, you know what happens? There are follow-up copycats who see the deification of the terrorists, and seek the same verification and attention for their own sick manifestos: someone, somewhere commits the same atrocity in a different location because they want to be seen, too. 

What don't we see? Victims. At least not in focus. Victims are mentioned in passing, usually chocked up to a statistic: "72 people were injured today, and four are in critical condition."
Does that sound familiar? Wikipedia at least gives you cold, unbiased statistics on both ends. Rarely, if ever, will Wikipedia use sensational, connotative words. They will not identify Jeffrey Dahmer as "evil, malicious, monstrous," or any permutation of the word "bad." Wikipedia will give you the facts. It's interesting in its uninterestingness. If news media were more like that, maybe we'd have less copycats in the world, ipso facto less people dying. 

So now I bring you to Sierra DeMulder's slam poem "Dahmer."
What makes her different? She is still talking about Jeffrey Dahmer, right? So that makes her bad? No. Because the point of her story is to make you think about one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims: his mother. 

"Did you put your own heart in the freezer next to the thought of me?"

Sierra DeMulder uses a story that focuses on Jeffrey Dahmer to remind us as a society that we focus on Jeffrey Dahmer. Not on his victims. You see, massive tragedy not only affects people directly involved with the tragedy, but fallout comes from all parts of a society. And we so easily forget that as we get caught up in the infamy of the guilty. What makes Sierra DeMulder's poem so interesting is that it uses a sensationalist platform (poetry) to illustrate the other side of the sensationalism that news media presents. And if there is ever a thing to make sensational, it's the uttermost sadness of those affected by tragedy, because it is they, not the bad guys, who need our support. 

I'll leave you all with one last story. We've seen Wikipedia's data-centric approach to reporting a tragedy, and we've seen a poet's empathetic approach to making us feel for the victims.
Let's take a look at a news station reporting a tragedy in the only appropriate fashion. If the news media of our society was more like this, the world would be a much less scary place.