Revenge is so hot right now.

2024 hadn't even ticked over to 2025 yet, and already the writing was on the wall.

"My new year resolution is to be PETTY," tweeted rapper Ja Rule, in the lead-up to New Year's Eve last year. 

"A gentle reminder," began another TikTok video, which garnered nearly 400,000 likes and several thousand comments, "that new year's resolutions don't have to be about positive changes. You can commit to seek revenge, remain petty and disrespect your enemies."

"My new year's resolution is to be on my worst behaviour," explained content creator @bran_flakezz in a video uploaded in December 2024 that quickly went viral.

"Because one thing about 2024 is that she humbled me. You can put everyone's needs before your own, and guess who it f**ks over? YOU!

"So in 2025, we're switching things up," he continued. "It's time to bring out the villain era. No more people-pleasing, no more apologising, no more low standards. It's gonna be OUR YEAR!"

@bran__flakezz villain era loading for 2025 #relatable #nye #2025 #worstbehavior ♬ original sound - bran_flakezz

We're not even done with February yet, and the world seems to have responded to this battle cry with gusto:

Self-improvement is out and revenge is in.

God bless Michelle Obama and her rallying cry to "go high when they go low", but it's a different ball game now, and the high road no longer exists. 

We're in our revenge era — and so, it seems, is Beyoncé.

We saw the singer claim her rightful place in Grammys history with an Album of the Year gong in January for Cowboy Carter, which was created in response to the racist backlash the artist experienced after her 2016 CMAs performance. Its first song, American Requiem, contains the lyrics: "Used to say I spoke too country / And the rejection came, said I wasn't country 'nough." The track goes on to question: "If that ain't country, tell me what is?"

Taylor Swift is a star well versed in vengeance. She's been in her revenge era since she dropped the album Reputation, and has essentially built an empire on diss tracks about her exes.

But it was The Tortured Poets Department — with songs directed not only at her famous exes Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy, John Mayer and Jake Gyllenhal, but also Kim Kardashian, the media and Swifties themselves — that helped turbo-charge our collective passion for payback.

And if the Super Bowl each year acts as a sort of cultural temperature check, then this year's iteration all but cemented that pettiness is here to stay.

The 2025 show was a masterclass in petty revenge culture, and we lapped it up like a keg of Coors Light.

Kendrick Lamar's halftime performance of Not Like Us — the scathing diss track aimed at Drake that not only won five Grammys but also eviscerated the Canadian artist's reputation beyond repair — spawned a thousand memes. It was revenge served with a grin directed straight down the barrel of the camera, in a wider show peppered with a stack of moments of symbolism that took aim at structures far larger than Drake and his rapidly dwindling posse.

Like the American flag formation, made up entirely of Black dancers, with Uncle Sam portrayed by Samuel L Jackson.

In no uncertain terms, Kendrick reminded the American public — and their newly re-elected president — precisely whose backs that flag was built on.

Then, with Donald Trump in the crowd, the rapper told America: "The revolution's about to be televised. You picked the right time, but the wrong guy."

Kendrick Lamar performs at the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. Image: Getty.

But back to Drake and that infamous feud.

While the feud is nuanced and layered, and goes back several years, it's important to know three key things:

1. Drake is a hip hop outlier, due in part to his being Canadian, but also thanks to his ability to dip in and out of the genre's culture — something many critics believe makes him… a bit of a sell out. 

2. Kendrick Lamar is serious about the politics of hip hop. He has consistently politicised his art, and while the back-and-forth diss tracks between the two artists may have started good-naturedly, things quickly got sinister when Drake accused Kendrick of having assaulted his partner — for which, it is crucial to note, there is no evidence. Kendrick's musical response, Not Like Us, hurls unproven allegations back at the Canadian, accusing Drake of being a paedophile.

3. Last month, Drake brought a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (the label that represents both artists) for defamation, thanks to Lamar's song.

All of this makes Kendrick's performance of the Grammy-winning hit (which he introduced by rapping "I want to play their favourite song, but you know they love to sue") all the more loaded.

Add tennis GOAT Serena Williams' crip-walking cameo (Serena was romantically linked to Drake in 2015), a moment widely thought to symbolise dancing on Drake's grave, and you've got a smorgasbord of petty that we just cannot stop dining out on.

Serena Williams during the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. Image: Getty.

"From Alondra down to Central, better not speak on Serena," rapped Kendrick — a direct response to Drake's 2022 hit Middle of the Ocean, which includes the lyrics: "Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie."

Serena is married to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, with whom she shares two children.

But the athlete wasn't just a proxy for Kendrick's petty revenge, she was claiming her own.

In 2012, Serena Williams performed the walk (a dance-move associated with LA rap culture), on the court at Wimbledon. Like so many of the star's culturally specific actions over the course of her tennis career, it was widely criticised as 'disrespectful to the sport'. What many of Serena's critics meant, but were too cowardly to admit, was that it wasn't 'white enough' for Wimbledon.

Her glorious revival of the move at another globally significant sporting event, more than a decade later, was the ultimate revenge.

Listen to the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud discuss the world's revenge era. Post continues below.

While these instances of revenge culture are cause for many of us to throw our fists skyward and celebrate, it must be noted that the captain of all things petty, US President Donald J Trump himself, has been spearheading a much darker revenge campaign, both at home in the States and abroad.

It is rumoured that Trump ran for president purely to enact revenge on Barack Obama, after the then-president roasted him at the 2011 White House Correspondents dinner.

This time around, he's supercharged his pettiness with catastrophic results, from changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, withdrawing foreign aid, dismantling diversity and inclusion policies across the country, or seeking out the names of FBI agents involved in the investigation surrounding the January 6 insurrection.

But executive orders aside, Trump's own Super Bowl revenge moment came right on time, when for some reason, fans booed Taylor Swift, but cheered for the president.

Taking to his own social media platform, Truth Social, moments after the experience, Trump was quick to double down on the Anti-Hero singer, writing: 

"The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving!"

His jibe comes after Swift publicly endorsed Kamala Harris last year, to which Trump responded at the time, "I hate Taylor Swift."

Taylor Swift has built an empire on revenge tracks. Image: Getty.

And look. It's easy to see why we're all leaning so hard into petty right now. 

Everywhere you look, it's a bit of a bin-fire. People are angry and disillusioned on both sides of politics. There's a rental crisis. A cost-of-living crisis. A climate crisis. Low-rise jeans are back in. It's scary out there.

And while we'd all like to think that, in the face of an uncertain future, we are the kind of people to band together, put aside our differences and unite for a better world, the reality is, we're more divided than ever. And sometimes, it feels good to go for the small wins.

When the big wins seem so far out of reach, it's momentarily satisfying to feel a vicarious 'f**k you' through one famous person to another. The problems we face are complex — but picking a side in a hip-hop battle feels winnable (assuming you picked Kendrick's side, that is).

We may not look back at this moment in history with the swell of pride that other eras in time illicit, but there's a season for everything — so grab the popcorn and buckle up.

Feature image: Getty.