Rebecca Black

It’s Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. We. We. We. So Excited (and a 10 step guide to a YouTube hit)

By / Culture / 2 minutes of reading / 3 Comments

It’s not really Thanksgiving. Is it? I hope Patrice Wilson, the man who produced both this video, and Rebecca Black’s Friday (and appeared in both), is happy.

It seems he is. He made this “official sequel” to Friday.

It seems he’s as equally happy to inflict bad song writing on himself as he is on his clients. That’s something.

But here’s how to write one of his hits in 10 steps…

  1. Start with a visual or spoken queue that this particular day is important and has started. A calendar, or an alarm clock.
  2. Say something about what you’re doing, or will do on this day. The more descriptive and mundane the better.
  3. Talk about other days that are like this day, that aren’t this day, that have come before it.
  4. Talk more about what you’re doing on this day.
  5. Chorus about how excited you are about this day because it means something important. Put the words “we we we” and for bonus marks, spell something out.
  6. Have an African American, preferably your producer, do a little rap. For street cred.
  7. You do a little rap. For street cred. But don’t worry about rhyming. Or find two words that rhyme and use them over and over again.
  8. Chorus again.
  9. More about this day and how you wish it wouldn’t end.
  10. Reflection on the fact that it did indeed end. But reflect that you feel changed by the day.

It’s not Friday

By / Culture / 1 minute of reading

R-B. Rebecca Black. Chances are this won’t get over 160,000,000 hits on Youtube. There’s a law of diminishing returns operating here. But I’m happy to extend R-B’s fame to 16 minutes.

Black’s Friday and the future of the Internet

By / Communication, Culture / 1 minute of reading / 6 Comments

This song is awful. Just awful. Many people are calling it the worst song in the world (Dave Miers isn’t). I wish Autotune technology would become sentient and eat all the awful autotuners out there. And Justin Bieber. That’s a singularity I could get behind.

But the story behind this story (the music video has had more than 27 million hits and the single is roaring up the charts on iTunes), is that this 13 year old girl’s parents paid a company (Ark Music Factory – here’s Rebecca Black’s Profile on their website) $2,000 to make a viral video. That’s $2,000 well spent. Except for all the hate. TechCrunch’s wrap up of the viral side of the story is worth a read. Gawker’s coverage is also pretty good (here’s another, and a story about the company behind the video), and here’s a C-Net wrap up.

Her story has gone mainstream media – where she responds to all the hate and reaches out to Justin Bieber…

Here’s a parody…

Now, if only the Old Spice man would weigh in on a Bieber/Black duet we’d have some sort of viral perfection.

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