The Fate of Rebecca Black

In just over a week(!), unknown teenager Rebecca Black's quasi-home-made music video Friday went from 3000 views to 22 million views. Like many viral sensations, there was a catalyst in the form of online opinion leaders (i.e. bloggers with connections to mainstream media): popular blogger Tosh.O got the ball rolling with a re-post of the video from The Daily What. Its hard for anything to "go viral" without these influential bloggers drawing the material to the attention of their audiences, which draws the attention of mainstream media, which draws the attention of your mother. But are there any characteristics of this text that set it apart from things that don't go viral that it has in common with other things that have gotten popular?

One possible precedent is the meteoric rise of YouTube pop sensation Justin Bieber. Commonalities: they happened at roughly the same time, meaning that the relationship amongst smalltime teen artists, YouTube, bloggers, the mainstream media, and the general audience was roughly the same during both phenomena. They're both producing pop music in the style that is popular at this time. Here, one might engage in subjective judgment of the merit of their music, but there is where the conversation about what goes viral ceases to interest me. Maybe Bieber's talented, maybe he isn't. If we're interested in figuring out why both Bieber and Rebecca Black got popular quickly on YouTube, we have to look at characteristics of the video texts in relation to their reception which - conveniently enough for anyone interest in understanding media, meaning, and effect - is captured on the YouTube video itself, on Twitter, and in the blogosphere.

Both Bieber and Black inspire diametrically opposed reactions: you either love them or you hate them. Though its hard to be certain of the identity of anyone online, judging by the preferences of those who leave comments (which, in another boon to media researchers, is easily available, searchable, and analyzable), loving/hating of both seems to be determined by gender, age, and some personality trait (anti-authority or anti-social, perhaps). The loving/hating of these artists seems more personal than the loving/hating of artists who rise through the traditional star-making machinery of Hollywood. Stars are either conditioned to speak and behave in a certain way or are selected based on their match to very specific popular archetypes. They feel remote and unrelatable in a way that overnight sensations do not.

But Black might actually have more in common with a certain brand of reality TV, of which Jersey Shore is the most salient example. These texts have at least two kinds of viewers: those that identify aspirationally with some element of the characters' behavior (usually their bravado in the face of haters, or their unchecked hedonism during a buzzkill economy) and those that love to hate them and/or laugh at them, feeling superior to them. Additionally, there are people who, paradoxically, occupy both ends of that spectrum, liking the characters "ironically." There's a genius to this kind of entertainment: by incorporating both lovers and haters of these people, they double their audience AND they get people talking online, which is necessary in the age of social media for marketing purposes. As one of my professors says, TV exists to give people something to talk about, so these texts are popular because they're ways for us to talk about taste, class, appearance, values, and pretty much any other element of human behavior.

There's also the question of authenticity. Black seems to be authentic in her performance (as opposed to being purposefully bad in a parody style) given her age and her earnest appearances on mainstream media outlets. But the authenticity of those millions of people who watch the video is in doubt. Judging by a lot of the comments on YouTube and the mainstream media story, most people are laughing at Black, but its conceivable that there could be some other earnest 13-year-old girls who honestly like the song and, out of empathy, are un-ironic fans of hers. If you hate her, you're saddened and alarmed that so many people can have such horrible taste in music. If you love her, you're saddened and alarmed that people can be so cruel as to laugh at a 13 year old. In any case, she seems to be making some money off it, money that, properly invested, will still be hers when we find someone else to laugh at. And she's making showbizz connections. The narrative will probably go something like this: mean internet beats up 13-year-old girl, Bieber or Usher or some famous dude jumps to her defense, voice coach tells her how to sing slightly better, young teen girls see her as empowering figure, ??? = profit!

This still leaves me with one question, one that I hope many people are asking as more cewebrities pop up: does it matter how you get famous? I can't help but think of Star Wars Kid, who ended up in therapy after so many people made fun of him on the internet. Sometimes, the social mediasphere can be an extension of junior high. There's an endless supply of 12-15 year-olds doing something embarrassingly earnest and, mistakenly, recording it. These are the next Rebbeca Blacks. And the conversation about the effects of Rebecca Black's rise and reception doesn't end with whether or not she lands on her feet. Maybe some girl, too young to understand exactly how people get famous online, will see that Rebecca Black is famous and met Justin Bieber, so she'll make a similar video, but it won't go viral. It'll just get passed around her middle school, she'll be made fun of, and develop an eating disorder. Maybe this will be the 21st century equivalent of the emotional wreckage of the would-be starlet turning tricks on Sunset Strip.

As audiences, we seem to always be hungry for someone to serve as a topic of debate. By tearing them down and building them up, we're helping create the rise-and-fall/fall-and-rise stories that have always kept audiences rapt. As performers, we seem to be stuck between killing ourselves when someone speaks ill of us or being way too proud of our shitty music or personality, impervious to criticism (haters gonna hate!). Those wondering how our culture will get past this period would do well to follow Rebecca's story as it unfolds.

You Tube Phenoms: Susan Boyle

Ordinary-person-turned-celeb Susan Boyle presents us with yet another interesting case study in web-enhanced fame. She occupies a space at the intersection of a lot of different kinds of appeals. Its key to remember that her fame is only enhanced by the web. The real media venue that is equally (or more, or less?) responsible for her fame is Britain's Got Talent, the British version of American Idol (or is AI the American version of BGT?). Boyle's rise to fame is in keeping w/ talent shows' examination of what how cultures define talent. I used to be very dismissive of these shows, but really, when you consider what they say about how we judge people and how popular they are, they're quite interesting.

Do we defer to experts? Yes, partially, but we also love to hate them. Is talent acquired through hard work or are you born with it? Not sure, really, but we like to think that there's at least some persistence against the odds invovled in acheiving success. Do we base our judgment of people on their similarities to us? Sometimes. Do we base it on looks? Usually, but not this time, and apparently there's nothing we love more than praising someone who doesn't fit the mold of the attractive pop star. In doing so, we are praising ourselves for not being superficial (nevermind the fact that we're still judging someone based on an arbitrarily chosen valued ability. God forbid if the woman had been ugly and hadn't been able to sing).

I would argue that Boyle is also in sync with another trend, this one related to popularity on the web: freak appeal. I've heard a few comparisons of Boyle to William Hung, although all the people making those comparisons note the important difference: Hung was talentless, Boyle is incredibly talented. They're both outcasts in some sense. I think Boyle is what some of us wish the William Hungs of the world could be - someone who seems like an ugly duckling at first, but then turns out to be a swan. I also think that we feel that this makes it okay to laugh at freaks like Hung b/c we can hold out hope that Hung will eventually turn into a swan or that we'll eventually uncover the hidden talents that Hung always had (maybe he's brilliant at math, to use a stereotype about asians). There's a kind of ugly-person tokenism going on with Boyle.

When we say that "anyone can make it in America/Britain/anywhere-else," we're identifying the characteristics to which our cultures assign value. Despite being ugly or poor or black or old or blind or a recovering drug addict or gay or transgender or whatever, this person has succeeded. Whether its seeing Susan Boyle become famous in a week or seeing a black man get elected president, seeing a person succeed against the odds simultaneously convinces us that there's less true inequity in the world (if there was more, then this person wouldn't have made it), convinces us that we're not part of reinforcing that inequity, and convinces us that despite our shortcomings, we can make it, too. This can lead us to believe that inequities are a thing of the past, and this may instill false hope among many less-talented people (there's a novelty effect built into the success of the first disadvantaged person to achieve, one that wears off quickly and doesn't apply to the next few people out of the pipline). As long as cultures have hierarchies that are based on identifiable characteristics, these stories will remain resonant with audiences.

That's not to say that the success-against-the-odds stories don't have positive effects on audiences; only that there may be some negative ones as well. How could we determine whether the good outweighed the bad? Sound like another research project!

Ronald Jenkees, a Real Character

The Sports Guy has drawn my attention to the latest freak vlogger: Ronald Jenkees. Beebee890, DaxFlame, and Ronald Jenkees are not quite taking over YouTube, but they represent a decent-sized niche within the YouTube ecosphere. DaxFlame is #32 on all-time most subscribed list, and Jenkees is #50 on all-time most subscribed musicians.

Mainstream press and/or Digg picks up on these guys, and that gets them their initial boom in subscribers. The Sports Guy and Digg brought attention to Ronald, and G4 did something on DaxFlame (to which he angrily responded). All it takes is one member of the mainstream media to reference one of them, and then they become discussion topics. Their freak appeal takes it from there.

So, is he socially awkward, mentally challenged, or neither? What do we mean by mentally challenged (or retarded, disabled, etc)? Perhaps we've been able to get away with two vastly different views of these different people. There's the PC "noble savage" view, which says that anyone who appears to be "different" is worthy of praise (regardless of whether the behavior can be attributed to social awkwardness or a physiological condition), and the grade-school playground view, which says that anyone different must be ridiculed. These knee-jerk reactions have been able to coexist because the two groups don't have to come into contact with one another because those freaks that spark the debate between the two camps aren't in the public eye that much. Until now.

But Ronald Jenkees is more than just another William Hung. His keyboard and beat-making skilz rival that of any shitty post-krunk hiphop producer. There's talk of him being some sort of savant. He claims that he is not, but how would he know if he were a savant? Who is the authority on this - the individual in question? A doctor? Movies about savants (e.g. Rainman)? Us? I'm also reminded of the unhappy story of another "different" musical genius: Daniel Johnston. Once fans recognize an artist as a savant or a genius, the bar gets set unrealistically high. An unstable person gets introduced to the wrong people, and disaster ensues.

Before we assume that Ronald is acting, its worth considering the possibility that "different" people like Ronald have been waiting in the wings, not good-looking or "normal" enough to be in the public eye before YouTube. They could've had a blog and/or a MySpace page, but that just wouldn't have conveyed how different they were - only video could do that.

To the debates over whether or not he is acting like a dork/mentally challenged person, we should add the question as to whether or not he wrote the damn good songs he performs. Maybe they're pre-recorded loops he got from someone else, though the visuals seem to provide the needed proof that he can play the keyboard.

Somehow, their freakishness works to their advantage, drawing attention to them and making them impervious to criticism (provided you don't get busted for acting). How can anyone rag on you if you can always hide behind being different? You could try to be cool, you could try to be your normal semi-cool self, or you could exaggerate your inner dork to the point where you're clearly different (not retarded, just different). If you do this, any social misstep you might make can be attributed to your different-ness, which is considered a positive attribute (kind of like the self-effacing jujitsu Eminem uses on his first couple of albums).

There may be people as talented as Ronald Jenkees out there, but who would notice them if they're just another Steve Vai wannabe from Berklee School of Music, some quiet man-of-mystery (which reads as holier-than-thou) with a ponytail, no fashion sense, and zero charisma? If that were you, then wouldn't you have an easier time getting attention and sympathy if you exaggerated your dorky characteristics (in effect "passing" as a dork)? Just like people who pass as black, gay, etc, there is enough of an element of truth to the claim that the passer could not be outed as a total fraud.

So, what happens next? What does stardom (or the new semi-stardom that online fame creates) do to a person? What makes it seem as though DaxFlame is an act is that he seems utterly oblivious towards his newfound semi-fame. There's something about the kind of fame that's achieved by vloggers on YouTube that feels hermetically sealed, cut off for the most part from real life like all social acts online. For this reason, vlogging and YouTube in general still feels like a proving ground for would-be stars (albeit a different breed of would-be stars). Ever since Brookers got signed by Carson Daly, that's the way that most people think about it. Ronald Jenkees is interesting only if he's going to put out an album or work with established rap stars.

Thanks a Lot

The first ep of Fox's new reality series On The Lot started off virtually indistinguishable from pilots of other competition reality shows - "confessional" interviews, meltdowns, triumphs, and tragedies. Things got a bit more interesting in the second episode. The format is true to the American/Pop Idol template, but its clear that there will be more controversial debates than the ones over song choice and pitchiness.

The first controversy: is this guy's film exploiting the mentally challenged? Hopefully the judges' comments (and the obvious discrepency between their perception and the will of the audience) will ignite the honest conversation we need to have about laughing at freaks (explored in depth in this earlier post). Its too simplistic to say that the Hollywood judges are too politically correct for the masses, but I can't help but wonder what the discrepancy between the judges' and the audience's opinions (not to mention that the judges harp on the fact that there aren't enough female directors in Hollywood, and the voting audience doesn't seem to care) says about who is really offended by anything on television.

Isn't there something vaguely paternalistic about the news media determining what is offensive and what isn't offensive? How many careers would've bit the dust over the past year if it had been put to a vote? The new visibility of the lives of the famous makes every little slip up a career-ender, but there are two things that might counter that: the ever-shrinking duration of the news cycle, and the democratizing effect on what is deemed offensive. There's an entire generation growing up thinking that they can get away with broadcasting racist rants online. We can keep them off TV, but when you can reach billions of people online, who needs TV? Is it any wonder that one of the most enduring TV comedies of the internet era is one of its most uniformly offensive? To quote Mr. Politically Correct himself (Kramer): "People, they want to watch freaks!"

Between the fact that the key demographic is an audience weened on YouTube video shorts that tend to be more sensational and offensive than anything on TV, and the fact that a vicious "vote for the worst" campaign could do serious damage in light of the low ratings, we might see films that give new meaning to the term "lowest common denominator." Would Spielberg have to give the Fred Durst of filmmaking a development deal at Dreamworks? Considering the fact that the real Fred Durst already has such a deal, it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Somethings - television and music - seem ideally suited to the pseudo-democratic system that American Idol employs. Other endeavors - fashion and interior design - are not, and so we defer to a panel of experts. Where does film fit into this? On The Lot is taking place at a time where film, once a populist medium, is becoming a more and more elite medium, with internet taking the bottom rung on the ladder and TV moving up a notch. Filmmakers, like fashion designers, are the tastemakers. Its an expensive, top-down medium.

Speaking of beloved mentally challenged characters, this guy always seemed a little slow to me. And he's a professor!

Freakish Behavior

This is an expansion of some musings from an earlier post on freaks and YouTube. I stumbled across the videos of DaxFlame. Like many other video bloggers, he exhibits what could be called unusual behavior in his videos. This unusual behavior is humorous to many, and, at the very least, intriguing to the rest of us. His unusual behavior seems reminiscent of a mental/emotional disturbance, perhaps Tourette or Asperger's syndrome. So, is he faking it, completely, or partially?

If he is bluffing, then we shouldn't even watch his videos, because that will just make him more visible. He could potentially profit by acting as though he has a mental problem when he, in fact does not, and he tacitly encourages others to do this by being so popular. If he is not acting, then many would say that disturbed individuals shouldn't be hid from public view, but should be out there in the public sphere, making videos, chatting with others, so more power to him.

There are certain cues or qualities we can look for in order to determine whether or not (or to what degree) his performance is a put-on. His apparent age would make us believe that it is less likely that he's acting (unless we have another Andy Milonakis on our hands). He's got about 44 videos, so that makes him less believable than someone like Beebee, who has hundreds. Interestingly, interaction with other people seems to reveal bad acting to a far greater degree than the direct mode of address that most vlogs employ.

It becomes clear that we may never know whether or not many of these video bloggers are imitating freakish behavior in order to mock it and draw attention to themselves, or whether they are just being themselves. The freakish behavior becomes unmoored from the individual. At that point, we have to judge ourselves, the audience, and not the person who created the video. Do we find any of this behavior to be amusing? Do we find it intriguing enough to watch? I suspect that many people who want to watch freaks (and the people who exploit this desire by imitating them in order to get attention and the $ that will come from getting attention once vlogging becomes commodified) don't feel any genuine contempt for them, but just find it worthy of their attention, like anything that is unusual in the world.

Ultimately, isn't it better to acknowledge the fact that we find unusual behavior and appearances (whether a person is responsible for it or not) to be worthy of our attention instead of pretending that we don't feel that way? Many of these videos seem to evoke sympathy, derision, and laughter. This combination of reactions, and the visibility of those reactions, seems like a step in the right direction, away from the total lack of visibility of freakish behavior and appearances and/or the politically correct "noble freak" images pushed by traditional, paternalistic media. Once we get past our initial shock and interest, maybe we'll begin to think about how people become freaks, why its important to maintain behavioral diversity, and the relationship between neural health and "normal" behavior.

One also wonders whether people who guest star in video blogs like this one know whether or not the star of the show is affecting a personality. The more I think about it, Borat may be the most resonant film in this age of video blogging.

Jimmy Smash, American Idol: Self Image, Vlogging, and the YouTube Freak Show

First off, there’s an archiving issue here. YouTube might go down someday, and researchers really need to be archiving a sample (not all, as that would be impossible) of the videos on YouTube, including some of the unpopular videos.

And that’s why I find Beebee’s videos interesting – b/c they’re unpopular. I think what’s revolutionary about YouTube is what’s going on under the surface. It also is an illustration of how online motion pictures cannot be thought of as mere extensions of the entertainment motion picture industry as it stands. People are using motion pictures for other things, namely to connect with other people, to socialize, to work out issues of self-image, to make friends, to understand the culture or sub-culture that they are a part of. Should we be regulating, censoring, and advertising in the middle of people’s social interactions?

For the sake of argument, I’m going to refer to beebee as a “freak.” He is an unusual fellow. I mean no offense by this. I’m only pointing out that his behavior and appearance are unlike those of the majority of others many of us encounter in our lives and through the mainstream media. People are not inherently freakish, but are considered freaks b/c they happen to be different than the group of people they are surrounded by, which radically changes the minute you upload a video of yourself. Even though you may only want to be part of a community of a select, sympathetic few, the nature of the Internet (blogs, ebaum) dictate that your video/blog/whatever will be linked to by a group of people who are quite different than you, so different that they find you funny and worthy of derision. For the age group that is especially concerned with forming a self-image - early teens (coincidentally, this seems to be the group that using vlogs and blogs the most) - the jump from the playground to the vlogosphere is significant.

Is it exploitative to watch or link to beebee’s videos? Is it unethical to comment on the videos, to tell him to stop posting videos, to make fun of him, or just to laugh and forward it to friends? This dilemma of freak appeal is nothing new (see Howard Stern’s Wack Pack and/or your average elementary school playground). I recently saw the episode of The Sopranos in which Tony is trying to join his neighbor’s exclusive country club, but feels as though he’s just being kept around for the WASPs’ amusement. Tony’s story about Jimmy Smash – the boy with the cleft palate they all used to make fun of in school, who would sing for the amusement of others but go home and cry himself to sleep - was a perfect articulation of the ambivalence many people feel towards freaks. They can't help but laugh at them, yet they feel guilty for doing so. Its not a question of whether or not you sympathize with them. Many people sympathize with them AND find them hilarious. Freak appeal drives the ratings of the most popular show in the US, American Idol.

The standard answer to these questions is: yes, it is exploitative to look at these videos, to talk about these videos, and certainly to laugh at them. Any other viewpoint is a justification for our sick, unethical desire to laugh at freaks. No matter which side of the argument you’re on, it comes down to a question of normalization through censorship. Either you normalize the freaks by laughing at their behavior/appearance and by forwarding them on to others an encouraging them to do the same OR you normalize people who are laughing at a certain mode of behavior or appearance by discouraging them from doing so on ethical grounds.

But the comments on beebee’s videos and many others suggest that the audience is split in two – the people who laugh at it, and the people who want to encourage him to be more visible, to ignore the haters and come out of his shell. The Internet has been a way for freaks to shed their abnormal physical characteristics and their social hang-ups and make friends in a new way. Vlogging seems to be the next step in this process – people are returning to their skins, accepting the facts that they stutter, they look unattractive, they have boring things to say, and are willing to be judged by these characteristics. But instead of rejecting them outright (as would happen in RL), the online community is embracing them to some degree. Is this genuine? Is it a genuine attempt to compensate for the meanness of others that may or may not work out? Not sure, but will find out.

There’s also the issue of whether or not Beebee890 is acting, which cannot help but be an issue post-lonelygirl. Now, we look for physical characteristics – the moles on his face – as some sort of marker of authenticity. He could be affecting the voice and the character of beebee. Again, this raises ethical issues. Is it immoral to even suggest that a disabled vlogger is “faking it?” Is there any way a person could fake such a thing and parlay it into ill-gotten financial or social capital? Could you build up a fanbase under these false pretenses, sell ad time, insert a product in the video, and make a profit? Granted, this is lower than low behavior, but it’s worth considering the possibility of it. In the end, the lesson of lonelygirl was to be critical of all video (in particular vloggers) purporting to be “real.” It is easier to be a fraud online than in person. Its not a reason to doubt everything (which plenty of people do on YouTube, insisting that all videos are faked), but merely to consider that possibility.