It's incredibly catchy. Very comparable to Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and other young artists, this is a young star that you grow to dislike, but their music remains catchy so you continue to listen to them. But how exactly did I hear about this girl? Friday was not playing on the radio, on iTunes or anything like that, but I saw her name trending on Twitter the other day.
All around campus and in my classes, I heard everyone talking and tweeting about this "ridiculous song." Curious to see what it was, I youtube-d it (bad habit to nix: making random nouns verbs..) and today, realized it has 27,763,099 plays. In the past few weeks. Twenty-six million. On-the-rise bands can't even do this with their music, so how was a 13-year-old girl named Rebecca from Anaheim, Calif. supposed to spread her song?
This Mashable article explains one possible method- Michael J. Nelson's Twitter, a man with 19,000 followers and a snarky comment about the song. Wikipedia states the following:
The music video for the song became a viral hit, starting on Friday, March 11, 2011, when the video's view count on YouTubejumped from around 3,000 views to 18 million a week later. The sudden surge was attributed to a Tosh.0 blog post titled "Songwriting Isn't for Everyone", posted on March 11. Since the growth in popularity of the song and video, there have been numerous parody videos and remixes. Forbes stated that the notoriety of the song is another sign of the power of social media – specifically Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, in this instance – in the ability to create "overnight sensations".
This shocks me. It is excellent that news can spread so quickly through the internet, but consequences arise, especially dealing with the younger generation. The older generation is in a state of awe that such things that can happen, and young people do not think ahead of the consequences and potential issues that could arise from their spontaneous decisions. This article from the New York Daily News is Rebecca Black's response, and how she claims to have been emotionally bullied by some of the hurtful comments received?
Guess what hun? Not everyone is going to like you. In your grade at school, in your extended family, nonetheless- on the entire internet. Therefore, I think the spreading of this catchy yet obnoxious song teaches us....
1. How video and news can spread so quickly and virally on the internet
2. How anyone can become a "superstar" in today's world
3. To be careful what you post and with the reactions you receive
4. The sensitivity of teenage and pre-teen girls.
Other shocking news of the week
- AP Style has officially changed the expression of the word e-mail to email to be the most correct. As a journalism student, this is very exciting. Ironically enough, AP was not the source to report this story, hooray to journalism biases and ethics! This rule will be published in the next edition of the AP Stylebook.
- Diet Coke is now the second most consumed soda next to Coke, rising ahead of Pepsi. Although they are all in the same category of soda, this expresses how two types of soda from the same brand have entirely surpassed another brand, therefore questioning accuracy, numbers and more. Congratulations to Coca-Cola for marketing Diet Coke so well that it surpassed something that was not its core competitor (Coke-Pepsi, Diet Coke-Diet Pepsi).
- Mizzou's tuition will increase, but the university as a whole and member of the UM System will experience a shortfall in the budget.
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