Ironic Liking vs. In-Spite-of Liking

In thinking more about Rebecca Black's popularity, I start to think more about how anyone gauges whether something is popular and/or well liked, and what that means.

At the most basic level, we have the number of plays or views. The fact that Rebecca Black's video has been played over 20 million times tells us that it is, in some way, popular. Of these, some could be curiosity seekers, some could be people who like the song listening to it repeatedly, some could be people who enjoy laughing at the song listening to it repeatedly. The story surrounding Black's song indicates that most viewers do not like the song in the way that most people earnestly "like" what they like.

It takes very little effort and no money to click on a link and watch a YouTube video. The same cannot be said for downloading a song on ITunes. So, which is more likely: that tens of thousands of people earnestly like a song that many people find horrible OR that tens of thousands of people are willing to pay money to listen to something that you do not earnestly like?

What do I mean by "earnest"? People talk a lot about liking something "ironically." But I feel like this is the wrong term. "Ironic" implies that they like something for the opposite reason than one would expect them to like it. But are those who grow "ironic" mustaches really growing it for the opposite reasons than those growing it for earnest reasons? What would that mean? The term "ironic" just doesn't seem to convey anything meaningful. It doesn't help us understand why people buy or do or wear things that are inconsistent with their apparent tastes and likings. The term "parody" might be used to describe such actions, but I feel like that's inadequate, too. "Parody" implies that they are trying to get a person to laugh at that which is being parodied. Its commonly understood as a way to ridicule something. In some cases, I can understand how this might be true of a hipster growing a mustache or of someone who finds Rebecca Black's voice to be grating and her lyrics to be awful: they're growing/listening to these things to make fun of and feel superior to those that earnestly do/like them. For them to do this, there must be a receptive audience, someone to share in the joke. If they were in the exclusive company of earnest fans or mustache-growers, I can't imagine that they would keep up the parody for very long. But if they're surrounded by others who feel similarly toward people who grow earnest mustaches and earnestly like Rebecca Black's music (or that type of pop music), then parodic liking is a way of bonding, of signaling that you're part of a group.

I'd like to suggest that something else is going on: In-spite-of liking. This means that someone hates a certain aspect of a show, movie, song, clothing, famous person but likes another aspect of it. All of these things are comprised of many elements, but most of the ones that are liked in this fashion are somehow un-self-conscious, nakedly attention-getting, unapologetic and unsubtle. Perhaps people long for these characteristics and if they happen to be packaged with something that the user does not like - misogynist lyrics, nasally voice, rampant consumerism, a lifestyle that one cannot identify with - they're willing to overlook these things in favor of the characteristics they like. Maybe they also identify with the fact that these people are proud and hated by many. Unlike parody, this could take place in a vacuum. If I liked the beat of Rebecca Black's song and found it catchy, despite the fact that I thought the lyrics were inane, that it was irresponsible to mock a 13-year-old, and that her voice was grating and nasally, I might still listen to (or even download) the song without having to do this in front of anyone.

I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to articulate these feelings, but that doesn't make them any less true. People might just say "I like it, the end." So if we want to understand what predicts liking, we might have to move away from self-report and find out patterns of liking that diverge from traditional models, instances we have usually called "ironic liking." If we isolate each characteristic and ask whether one is liking something as a kind of performance for the benefit of others, we can better understand this phenomenon.

Post-script: Amazingly, 10 year olds seem to grasp the concept of ironic liking. This focus group also indicates that the song skews young: people under 10 seem to like it more than teens.

Is Kid Nation as Bad of an Idea as it Sounds?

On the face of it, Kid Nation sounds a lot like the last season of Survivor (the one in which participants were separated according their race): designed to court controversy. Its basically Lord of the Flies as a reality show - kids, left to their own devices, competing, forming alliances, and getting injured. Considering the knee-jerk, "well, I never" reaction that this show is sure to provoke, I thought I'd consider what the likely risks and rewards of such a show really are.

The NYTimes article seems to dwell on the worse-case scenarios outlined in the participant consent contract. So, why would a parent allow their child to risk life and limb for a shot at $25,000 and possible semi-fame? First off, I think that critics of the show's ethics will likely exaggerate the risk to the children involved. Though I haven't seen the show, I'd guess that the actual risk of bodily harm to the participants is very low, but is made to look much higher than it actually is. This is the case with most reality shows. The producers play up the danger element and play down the fact that their are highly trained medics just off camera. It wouldn't be to the producer/network's advantage to have a participant seriously hurt, even if they weren't at financial risk b/c of the air-tight contract. Really, they're all about trying to make situations seem far riskier than they really are, and they're quite good at that.

But why risk any chance of harm to your children? I think its less about the monetary reward and more about the changing nature of celebrity and what it means to be on national television. Setting aside the questionable motivations of the stage-parent for a moment, we can safely say that many more Americans can realistically aspire to be recognizable to people they do not know personally (my basic definition of fame/celebrity) thanks to YouTube and reality TV.

Celebrity before reality TV and YouTube was a rare commodity that was synonymous with a dramatic increase in one's monetary and social capital. There was always a downside - your public identity would be predetermined. Before you met new people, they'd already have a fixed (often inaccurate) idea of who you were. The ability to shift our perceived identities according to context is something we do unconsciously all the time in order to communicate with others. To be deprived of that ability is likely to make a celebrity feel isolated. Of course, this was a small price to pay for all the money and adoration that old-school celebs received.

After almost a decade of popular network reality TV, it seems apparent that the notoriety achieved by the contestants comes with a different set of trade-offs. Advertisers and producers still recognize the value of minor celebrities - familiarity to an audience garners attention (and perhaps affection) for their product, but its unclear how much that audience familiarity really boosts sales or viewership (I'm guessing that a cameo by Gervais from Survivor doesn't result in the ratings boost that a cameo by Bill Murray would). Also, more and more reality shows are niche marketed, so that a person's inability to function as a mutable public persona would only be limited to a segment of the public.

If nothing else, we can say that the duration and extent of fame seems to have shrunk both the upside and downside of fame, though I'd suspect that people would still recognize you long after your value as a spokesperson or promoter diminished. There are good parts about being on TV and bad parts, and its difficult for either the critic or the proponent to say which outweighs the other until we come up with some sort of unbiased longitudinal study of celebreality. Until then, you can't fall back on the old "they knew what they were getting into when they signed the contract" defense. If no one really knows the long term effects of semi-fame on one's mental health, then the "informed" in "informed consent" doesn't really mean anything.

...
10/13/07
Upon further reflection, I've decided that the new fame (reality TV, online fame) is a much worse deal than old fashioned fame for this reason: the rewards, the positive reputation and the money that comes with it do not last very long, but the inability to be anything other than what you were at the moment that fame struck is just as long as before. In other words, the perks are fewer but the downside is just as big.