Kyle Anderson of Entertainment Weekly thought that the message in the music video was confusing, writing "is she really equating a professional critic questioning her ability to sing at an awards show to getting bullied because you're different?" Donna Kaufman of iVillage also felt the mixed messages in the video, stating "the video doesn't show Swift being bullied... Instead, she's a kind of savior to the outsider kids, who are all shallow stereotypes." Kyle Buchanan of New York magazine described the video as clichéd, didactic, self-impressed and studiously unrevealing. Drew Grant of Salon.com felt that the video tried to disseminate an anti-bullying message from "a person who has never been bullied by equating it with an evil vision of a fairytale." Sophie Schillaci of Zap2it noticed that the flaw in the video was the assumption that "mean ole' bullies just rot in their hometown," whereas in reality, plenty of successful people are simply mean.
