Who is Rebecca Black?
In weeks where world events have been grabbing headlines, an unlikely target/social media sensation has also been born in the form of Rebecca Black.
While many of us were blissfully unaware of this unknown tween’s “music video” it appears to have gone viral, attracting all kinds of attention and receiving nearly 70,000,000 views on YouTube. I, myself, wondered what on earth Rebecca Black was as I checked the trending topics du jour and found it every day. Ordinarily something like this would be a good thing, especially if you remember overnight tween sensation Justin Bieber. But poor old Rebecca appears to have become a victim of some serious cyber bullying (though I must add that there is something good that came of it in the end).
So how did a $2,000 parentally funded video made by using a boutique studio come to be such a “hit”? Apparently it was considered so bad that people forwarded it to their friends for a laugh and the video has gone viral, culminating in a TV appearance and earning $1m (donated to Japan). Some may think that it was some cynical marketing ploy, but the saddest thing about Rebecca Black’s video and Twitter trending is that it attracted an incredible volume of excessively negative comments.
In a day and age when people are entitled to widely share their thinking that something is rubbish and also post comments directly to the individual in cyberspace, is it really necessary to threaten their lives? Does some sort of filter need to be put in place to prevent such comments or is it just part of normal life? As creatively ‘interesting’ as the single is, catchy through its limited vocabulary and interesting style of rapping, why the need to be so incredibly barbaric and hateful? It’s a thirteen year old girl at the end of the day. Rebecca Black’s case has managed to highlight a vicious tendency that is quite worrying in young and old alike. Lots of people seem to be commenting on it, but perhaps it will take a brand or a NGO to campaign the issue before ‘normal’ people realize that in this case they are the bullies…
Video below, for those who are yet to see it. *Warning* May not be to everyone’s taste and is very catchy.