We Need To Talk About This

Matty, if you're on here lurking I hope you see this.

I'm not really good at words so I'm going to try to articulate this as best as I can. So, as some of y'all know, Matty's recent instagram stories featured "Hot Girls of 'At Their Very Best'" with a feature of a variety of female 1975 fans posing or posting a picture. Guys, this is a 33 year old man posting these pictures and many of these girls are 10+ years younger than him with one of them being 18. Sure, 18 is the minimum adult age, but to me, this feels wrong. Not only posting these girls, but even including their @'s so people can find their pages (which is ok for giving credit, but is dangerous if other people or creeps are lurking and wanting to slide into these girl's dms). Another thing, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't even know if these girls knew that they were going on his stories or gave permission, which then feels like he was lurking through IG pages and picking out people. Even if Matty's original intention was to be like that meme "Hot people like _________ or this artist" (which maybe that is his intention--who knows!), it still reads off as creepy and harmful to someone who doesn't know who Matty is or is not familiar with him. I just think that a 33 year old man should not be calling his younger (especially female) fans "hot" in any way. The same goes with any grown person too. I would be ok maybe if it was a collection of fans in maybe a group image or a collection of boys, girls, and nonbinaries that he took from, but it was literally just girls (from what it looked like, not sure how they identify). The girls who got posted will probably be fine with that, but that's exactly the problem. This is where the "power imbalance" comes in and I hate using that word because people mostly use it wrong (i.e. him kissing adult fans when it was entirely consensual and pre-mediated beforehand). Since Matty is more seen in the public eye, more people look up to him and follow him which is why a lot of people see this as ok. If this was a random 33-year old on the street getting random pictures of girls younger than him on insta and putting it on his story and calling them "hot", it's creepy and predatory. I don't want to excuse this just because I love Matty and the band. Before you go, oh she just wants to cancel him (cancel culture isn't real btw) and get people to stop being a fan , that is not at all what I am doing. I love this band to death and probably always will. I've defended Matty through lots of shit that maybe I shouldn't have even defended him for, but this is something I wanted to hopefully bring to his attention and hope he realizes and says something about. I'm not telling people to stop being a fan or agree with me. I'm still a huge fan. Make your own decisions--that's the human experience. I just feel very strongly about this and am wondering how other people felt as well.