What is Beyoncé ? She’s no mortal, we know that. She has all the trappings of a human (skin, teeth, bellybutton [?]), but her programmers have committed a crucial mistake. No flesh-and-blood earthling just tears an earring from their ear lobe without flinching. No one sweeps their fingers across the shredded skin, assesses the blood, and coolly asks the crowd how they’re doing.
The engineering flaw was revealed during the Cybeyoncé’s Saturday night Tidal X 1015 performance, in which she apparently caught her earring during a dance move and ripped it out. As someone who occasionally snags her earrings while struggling to remove a sweater, I know that the correct, human response is to drop to the ground screaming, and to roll around on the floor until a passerby or store manager assists in cutting the sweater off.
Beyoncé did none of those things. Video playback reveals no screaming and no rolling. No instances of a wild-eyed paramedic shouting for the limb restraints, nor the demand to “tranq her, damn it, she’s trying to bite me!” Beyoncé simply sweeps her hand over her bloodied ear, and serenely processes what she already knows: That her external coating has suffered a tear, and that she’ll need to spend the night in the shop to get it touched up. “I know if I’m on to you, I’m on to you,” she croons, pointing her bloodied finger at the crowd, her voice wavering not at all.
I’m on to you, Beyoncé. No one just rips out their earring without creating such a scene that they have to removed to the hospital, a morphine drip administered and a team of doctors and bewildered med students observing 24/7 through a one-way mirror. Your reaction is not normal. Trust me. I know.