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SancheztheWhaler wrote:Oh, and by the way, thanks very fucking much for siccing Justin Beaver on us. Way to go Canada... way to fucking go...

SancheztheWhaler wrote:Oh, and by the way, thanks very fucking much for siccing Justin Beaver on us.

SancheztheWhaler wrote: Oh, and by the way, thanks very fucking much for siccing Justin Beaver on us. Way to go Canada... way to fucking go...

RedImperator wrote:Anyway, I don't think this is a way to really cut the music industry out of the loop. Video sharing already provided that, and most independent musicians presumably already have their own instruments. I have no idea what it costs to rent a studio, but it has to be cheaper than what Ark is charging. I suppose what Ark does offer is a way to become an independent pre-packaged Autotune pop star, but frankly, one bolt from the blue like Rebecca Black doesn't suddenly mean 13 year olds from Orange County generally stand a chance against the big labels' disposable pop star manufacturing operations.

Not so long ago, if you wanted to issue a 13-year-old girl with a blood-curdling death threat, you had to scrawl it on a sheet of paper, wrap it round a brick, hurl it through her bedroom window, and scarper before her dad ran out of the front door to beat you insensible with a dustbuster. Now, thanks to Twitter, hundreds of thousands of people can simultaneously surround her online screaming abuse until she bursts into tears. Hooray for civilisation.

That's in effect what happened the other week in the Rebecca Black "Friday" affair. In case you're not aware of it, the trail of events runs as follows: 1) Parents of 13-year-old Rebecca pay $2,000 for her to record a song (and video) called Friday with a company called ARK Music Factory, a kind of vanity-publishing record label specialising in creepy tweenie pop songs. 2) The song turns out to be excruciatingly vapid, albeit weirdly catchy. 3) It quickly racks up 40m views on YouTube, mainly from people marvelling at its compelling awfulness. 4) Rebecca is targeted on Twitter by thousands of abusive idiots calling her a "bitch" and a "whore" and urging her to commit suicide. 5) She gets very, very upset. 6) Thanks to all the attention, the single becomes a hit. 7) Rebecca becomes an overnight celebrity, goes on The Tonight Show, and donates the proceeds from Friday to the Japan relief effort. So the story had a happy ending, at least for now. But it marks a watershed moment in the history of online discourse: the point where the wave of bile and snark finally broke and rolled back.

God knows I enjoy a helping of bile. But only when it's crafted with flair. One of the most disappointing things about the slew of online Rebecca Black abuse is the sheer poverty of language involved. If you are complaining about a banal pop song but can't muster a more inventive way to express yourself than typing "OMFG BITCH YOU SUCK", then you really ought to consider folding your laptop shut and sitting quietly in the corner until that fallow lifespan of yours eventually reaches its conclusion.

The other crucial component of an artful slagging is not a "sense" of perspective but an "awareness" of it. It can be amusing to knowingly punch out 10,000 words feverishly declaring Justin Bieber to be some kind of squawking terrorist weapon – but it only works when the author's comic desperation is at least 50% of the joke. The (brilliant) comedian Jerry Sadowitz's entire act consists of him shouting indefensibly hideous things about everybody on Earth, and yet he never feels like a bully, more a frenzied marionette jerked around by uncontrollable despair: a sort of self-hating dirty bomb.

Just as Sadowitz's palpable vulnerability makes him funny, so it's a soulless lack of self-reproach that makes the predominant Perez Hilton/3am Girl/Holy Moly/TMZ gloaty online sneer-culture so unbearably dull and depressing. You people lick the inner base of dustbins for a living. Stop looking so fucking pleased with yourselves.

And this culture dominates Twitter. Twitter is great for disseminating news, trivia and practical instructions on when and where to meet up in order to overthrow the government, but it also doubles as a hothouse in which viral outbreaks of witless bullying can be incubated and unleashed before anyone knows what's happening. Partly because it forces users to communicate in terse sentences, but mainly because it's public. Many tweeters end up performing their opinions, theatrically overstating their viewpoint to impress their friends. Just like newspaper columnists – but somehow even worse because there's no editor to keep their excesses in check or demand a basic level of wit or ability.

And unlike columnists, they often aim their comments at an individual by addressing their username directly: the equivalent of texting hate mail straight to their phone. I've never understood the mentality behind this, but then I write to entertain crowds, not harass individuals. I've never donned a mask and poked dogshit through someone's letterbox either. Maybe it's their sole source of happiness. Who knows?

Certainly, the more insecure the tweeter, the more unhinged their behaviour seems to be. Some of the most virulent Rebecca Black abuse came from teenage girls showing off to their mates by tweeting the singer directly to gloatingly wish death upon her.

Hilariously, many of them attacked the wrong Rebecca Black, and were actually beaming their hatred at an etiquette coach of the same name, a woman who regularly appears on US TV to discuss the merits of civil discourse. The worse their abuse, the more gracefully she responded, which somehow made them look infinitely more small-minded than they already were.

Who, out of everyone, was the slimiest turd in the "Friday" souffle? Impossible to say, thanks to the sheer number of participants. Which is the final thing online hateswarms fail to take into account: their collective mass, which causes a nasty imbalance of power and often results in a self-righteous lack of restraint that can reach far beyond the verbal. When Jan Moir wrote her Stephen Gately article, I penned a vicious response as an individual. When I saw people angrily posting her home address online, I felt like part of a mob. Those idiots spoiled it for everybody.

In summary: bitch all you like. Just don't be a dick about it. Poise, people. Poise.

Lord Pounder wrote:As usual Charlie Brooker summed up my feelings on the matter eloquently.

Charlie Brooker's Guardian atricle

Not so long ago, if you wanted to issue a 13-year-old girl with a blood-curdling death threat, you had to scrawl it on a sheet of paper, wrap it round a brick, hurl it through her bedroom window, and scarper before her dad ran out of the front door to beat you insensible with a dustbuster. Now, thanks to Twitter, hundreds of thousands of people can simultaneously surround her online screaming abuse until she bursts into tears. Hooray for civilisation.

That's in effect what happened the other week in the Rebecca Black "Friday" affair. In case you're not aware of it, the trail of events runs as follows: 1) Parents of 13-year-old Rebecca pay $2,000 for her to record a song (and video) called Friday with a company called ARK Music Factory, a kind of vanity-publishing record label specialising in creepy tweenie pop songs. 2) The song turns out to be excruciatingly vapid, albeit weirdly catchy. 3) It quickly racks up 40m views on YouTube, mainly from people marvelling at its compelling awfulness. 4) Rebecca is targeted on Twitter by thousands of abusive idiots calling her a "bitch" and a "whore" and urging her to commit suicide. 5) She gets very, very upset. 6) Thanks to all the attention, the single becomes a hit. 7) Rebecca becomes an overnight celebrity, goes on The Tonight Show, and donates the proceeds from Friday to the Japan relief effort. So the story had a happy ending, at least for now. But it marks a watershed moment in the history of online discourse: the point where the wave of bile and snark finally broke and rolled back.

God knows I enjoy a helping of bile. But only when it's crafted with flair. One of the most disappointing things about the slew of online Rebecca Black abuse is the sheer poverty of language involved. If you are complaining about a banal pop song but can't muster a more inventive way to express yourself than typing "OMFG BITCH YOU SUCK", then you really ought to consider folding your laptop shut and sitting quietly in the corner until that fallow lifespan of yours eventually reaches its conclusion.

The other crucial component of an artful slagging is not a "sense" of perspective but an "awareness" of it. It can be amusing to knowingly punch out 10,000 words feverishly declaring Justin Bieber to be some kind of squawking terrorist weapon – but it only works when the author's comic desperation is at least 50% of the joke. The (brilliant) comedian Jerry Sadowitz's entire act consists of him shouting indefensibly hideous things about everybody on Earth, and yet he never feels like a bully, more a frenzied marionette jerked around by uncontrollable despair: a sort of self-hating dirty bomb.

Just as Sadowitz's palpable vulnerability makes him funny, so it's a soulless lack of self-reproach that makes the predominant Perez Hilton/3am Girl/Holy Moly/TMZ gloaty online sneer-culture so unbearably dull and depressing. You people lick the inner base of dustbins for a living. Stop looking so fucking pleased with yourselves.

And this culture dominates Twitter. Twitter is great for disseminating news, trivia and practical instructions on when and where to meet up in order to overthrow the government, but it also doubles as a hothouse in which viral outbreaks of witless bullying can be incubated and unleashed before anyone knows what's happening. Partly because it forces users to communicate in terse sentences, but mainly because it's public. Many tweeters end up performing their opinions, theatrically overstating their viewpoint to impress their friends. Just like newspaper columnists – but somehow even worse because there's no editor to keep their excesses in check or demand a basic level of wit or ability.

And unlike columnists, they often aim their comments at an individual by addressing their username directly: the equivalent of texting hate mail straight to their phone. I've never understood the mentality behind this, but then I write to entertain crowds, not harass individuals. I've never donned a mask and poked dogshit through someone's letterbox either. Maybe it's their sole source of happiness. Who knows?

Certainly, the more insecure the tweeter, the more unhinged their behaviour seems to be. Some of the most virulent Rebecca Black abuse came from teenage girls showing off to their mates by tweeting the singer directly to gloatingly wish death upon her.

Hilariously, many of them attacked the wrong Rebecca Black, and were actually beaming their hatred at an etiquette coach of the same name, a woman who regularly appears on US TV to discuss the merits of civil discourse. The worse their abuse, the more gracefully she responded, which somehow made them look infinitely more small-minded than they already were.

Who, out of everyone, was the slimiest turd in the "Friday" souffle? Impossible to say, thanks to the sheer number of participants. Which is the final thing online hateswarms fail to take into account: their collective mass, which causes a nasty imbalance of power and often results in a self-righteous lack of restraint that can reach far beyond the verbal. When Jan Moir wrote her Stephen Gately article, I penned a vicious response as an individual. When I saw people angrily posting her home address online, I felt like part of a mob. Those idiots spoiled it for everybody.

In summary: bitch all you like. Just don't be a dick about it. Poise, people. Poise.

"It might as first seem like a trivial choice: whether to sit in the front seat or the back seat. But the point is not the choice set; the point is the opportunity to exercise some degree of human volition, to use one's own brain to control one's own body ("gotta make my mind up") and live with the consequences of that choice. It is a similar situation to anyone who has found himself let out of prison. These people will report the sense of elation that they feel in even the smallest opportunity to make a choice on their own."

Captain Spiro wrote:Ah, already it feels like it came out years ago Incredibly, mankind survived the dark period of The Friday Reign.
Pleasedon'tdoafollowuppleasedon'tdoafollowuppleasedon'tdoafollowup...

SancheztheWhaler wrote: But this song is no more idiotic than anything produced/performed by Britney Spears, Ke$ha, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, or Jessica Simpson..

Guardsman Bass wrote:I like Ke$ha music. It's just awesome in how overtly over-the-top sexual it is, and several of her songs have fantastic beats to them.

Guardsman Bass wrote:I like Ke$ha music. It's just awesome in how overtly over-the-top sexual it is, and several of her songs have fantastic beats to them.