The web can be a funny thing. When something goes viral, it spreads to almost every corner of the web and finds a way to infect you. Rebecca Black’s music video for her (terrible) song Friday has amassed over 40 million views and close to 700,000 dislikes. As parodies funnier and better than the song crop up and criticism towards Black is openly mocked with the statement “It sticks in their heads and that’s what counts” the question really is: when is too much of something a bad thing? When you’re viral in a bad way.
What kind of life can I live where the toughest decision of my day is to choose whether or not I should sit in the front or back seat of a car? Evidently not the one I’m living now.
The song came under fire for its simple lyrics, horrible auto-tune, cheesy production and numerous flaws. The song was first uploaded to YouTube in early February to show friends and family and perhaps highlight Rebecca’s possible music career. Her mom did spend $2,000 on a music and media package, the end result being the Friday video. Over 40 Million views later and it’s the target of mockery and laughter. This the worst case scenario of viral content – when it works against you.
Every content creator dreams of driving massive amounts of traffic to something they created. It’s natural, heck I get a buzz when I see the RTs stack up on a post I write but as I’ve said before, Social Media is an amplification of what you do whether it’s good or bad. In this case Rebecca Black took up a microphone and screamed loud enough for large masses of the web to pass judgment which sadly was not in her favor. Her future career (if any) in music may have been annihilated before it could even start.
The backlash over Black’s video is the power of Social Media. Anything you do is amplified and even more so when it catches someone’s attention. However, you are held to a much higher standard and in Rebecca’s case, her lack of experience worked against her. Long story short, she wasn’t ready for primetime and faced the chopping block.
