Rebecca Black reveals the deeper political messages behind "Friday" by canttakesky

America loves a winner!

Genius.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 7:41 AM

Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon sing Friday:

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 8:13 AM

America loves a winner!

It's flat out stupid how folks have gotten so stupid over this.... song.

I got nothin' .

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 11:33 AM

This gives me an idea.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 12:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
This gives me an idea.

I'm holding my breath, so you'd better hurry up.

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 3:29 PM

A little more research (I see Friday I'm in Love is in the opening, along with Thursday's Child and a bunch of other songs we all know.)

The creators are a small vanity house, and they're putting out mixes of tween music for the Taylor Swift set, or, okay, Taylor Swift set is the human race. I mean for the Justin Bieber set.

They hit this by accident. They didn't know how dumb the lyrics were. Their mission is to "keep it clean for the teen/tween scene." Their own channel gives you the "Ark is Evil" video first. (Ark, now I get it, they're christians. Hence the name.)

This explains why they were able to capitalize so quickly: They were set up for it.

Still, one can siphon the traffic if one moves fast.

It's not quite a perfect storm, because the haters are way up and the fans, it's not quite like Boxxy, which was more of a 50/50 split. Still, I have a plan ;)

ETA: I'm feeling now like I was a little overzealous. I think you could actually attract a lot of traffic off of this, and yes, the girl has charm. She gets it. Also, she's the one with the traffic, and everyone wants it. I cannot believe the lyrics of this song. Someone is playing a practical joke on the planet.

ETA2: The media is really feeding the hate, completely unaware that there's no such thing as bad publicity. They appear to be pouring a lot of effort into convincing people that Rebecca Black is not going to make very much money off of "Friday." This is a fairly absurd claim. One site was giving her only $100,000 for the ad revenue on YouTube, not counting iTunes downloads, etc.

Does a song really need lyrics? Or a tune? Hmm. I'm getting the part where this exposes the whole industry: Anyone can do it, and it doesn't really matter what you do. The media wants to maintain a monopoly where you listen to signed singers like Lady Gaga, and not to random people on youtube.

A quick calculation shows that 9 million people liked this song. According to states, 2 million of them then downloaded it. That looks like 1.4 million at the current commission structure, plus the hundred k for the ad revenue is a million and half. Also, just on a spot check, it looks like she's still making a cool $3500/hour.

I don't know, it feels like someone's just poked a hole in the edge of the world and revealed that it's all just a fabrication and there's nothing really there. On the other side, it's possible that this is the way the world is supposed to be, and the idea that there was ever such a thing as a celebrity, and that we were meant to have wages of ten dollars an hour or whatever, while stars made millions was all an illusion, which will eventually precipitate the collapse of the economy.

Just thinking out loud here. I read Angry Birds made a cool hundred mil.

There are now 5 billion cell phone users in the world. A small percentage of those are smartphones connected to online marketplaces, but that percentage is rapidly increasing.

I think this is chaos. Clearly the production people have some promotional tricks, a lot of their singers get decent view counts, but I have no way of telling if that's just Friday spill over. Also, they're going to be pocketing some of the million and a half I figure, or whatever it turns out to be.

Okay, I watched the ABC interview (they were really trying to make her feel bad, and they made her sing without autotuning, she did fine.)

iTunes, I see she's #27 on the top 100. I don't know what that translates to in sales. ABC's poll showed on in 4 like the song, but youtube's like/dislike shows 1 in 9. Either way, when you're getting four million hits a day, you're more popular than most major corporations.

ETA3: I see she's now more popular than Justin Bieber. In sales, not hits, so that's discounting her detractors. I guess there's some simple math here. A certain percent will like you, and then the next more important question is how many will hear you in the first place.

Again, like with Boxxy, this is someone's epic fail. Some blogger mentioned hating her when she was at 4,000 hits, the next morning she jumped to 200,000.

ETA 4: The Steven Colbert link didn't appear for me, so if you have that problem, here it is on YouTube:

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 7:45 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

By chance I saw this over the weekend with my cousins, they're always on top of the latest youtube craze. Okay, so it was super lame, but it gave us a lot of entertainment, what with singing it to each other at random times and making up random words that sounded just as good and watching the spoof videos etc.

But she's 13, lets give her a break, she's a young girl and I'd rather see a 13 y/o girl singing a goofy song than singing something about rutting on the kitchen floor with her new boyfriend that she just started dating etc.

If she does well from this, either by positive or negative recognition then good for her. I do hope that people stop being so hard on her because she is just a young girl.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, April 3, 2011 8:49 PM

One little side concern I have is one that always comes up when kids make a fortune: Who actually ends up with the fortune. She's going to haul in a million plus here, I don't doubt that, but will she get it, or the parents, or the record execs?

ETA: I see the link has more rants by her
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/65103be6fc/betwixt-the-music-rebecca-
black?rel=by_user

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6c4e44a1af/which-seat-should-i-take-w
-rebecca-black?rel=by_user

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a085babc82/rebecca-black-s-greatest-h
its?rel=player&playlist=329518

ETA2: This is a pretty good use of 15 minutes, kinda scary. Traffic is king, of course. Writers, musicians, artists, programmers, anyone who creates, is in the same boat. We all know many of these people, we probably do some of it ourselves.

What's proven here is that there's no great judge who's going to determine whether or not your content is "good enough."

Earlier youtube sensations have usually been some sort of "and the people shall judge." This one has the Boxxy twist. Yes, and if the people judge you poorly, then you fail, right? Wrong. You succeed. Because the people like you by percentage. If 11% or 24% or whatever like "Friday" (Oh, you really find that so amazing? 52% or something vote to *re-elect* George W. Bush. personally, four years of hearing friday every day would be better. I got to the point where just hearing that man speak made me ill.) Anyway, it's a percentage. If it's a percentage, 11%, say, of a high number, 81 million say, then it's 9 million. That's twice as many people as watched Firefly.

Unpopular is popular. Not just in a bad way. Because anything controversial has traffic, sure, and add to that that some percent of people will like anything, suddenly she has 9 million fans.

Once you have traffic, there are other issues, like, how do you hold traffic, how to use it to your advantage. This girl is 13, and I thought her response videos were so clever its scary. Boxxy was sort of freaked, and her attempt to deal with it, well, led to more Boxxy downloads. She handled it very well, but of course she doesn't know what to do with it, who would.

Let me put it another way: That's twice as many people that watch Glenn Beck. Not her view count, her fan count. If someone with this kid of hit could take those fans, and then post to them every week, that person would have more influence than Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin combined.

Switching back to Angry Birds. Okay, a couple guys in Finland wrote this little addictive game that you all know, in the way you know Friday, and it's the sort of game that I wrote tons of as a teenager, it's pretty well thought out, and like Loderunner, it exploits endless level design inherent with the game. Like Friday, it's not particularly novel, it's the rehashing of some old ideas. The thing that strikes me about Angry Birds is not just that they got a hundred mil, it's also the total investment of time that they collected. More time spent playing angry birds than watching network news. And a larger audience.

People who want to see more Firefly shouldn't be appealing to the Gods of Broadcast to bequeath unto them Firefly. They should make it happen. Ditto for those who have political ideas, or entertainment creations of their own.

So, the $64 million question is "Is this just some sort of lottery, or is there a trick to it?"

ETA3: "Jay Leno gave me a Wurther's original" is double product placement.

ETA4: Friday manipulation. Poll for "best weekend song" Run the poll, and always make sure that you stack the results so that Friday is just a hair ahead of whatever people are really voting for. Vary that lead from a few votes to a few percent. This way, the haters will come and vote on your site, and get their friends to, so they can displace it. Let them do so, almost but then have it go back up. They will keep coming to vote, and you'll be hauling massive traffic, like that Serenity best movie poll. You then should keep the running results posted on sites that you're pulling from.

ETA 5: The song is still stuck in my head. I'm going to have to go with "Like" on this one. I didn't think I would, but I guess I do. It's so clearly missing musical elements, but so are many pop songs. (Axis of Awesome anyone?) Hell, we endured Lionel Richie. I think we can endure this. I'm not sure that I'd want it on my mp3 shuffle, but I can see it cued up at a dance club. It's probably better than half the stuff that is. When you're dancing, music just sounds different. Different songs seem appropriate, and no one listens to the words anyway.

I'm curious for Happy to weigh in here, I'm surprised he hasn't.

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Monday, April 4, 2011 5:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The song is still stuck in my head.

Haha. What hooks me is the "partyin', partyin' yeah!!!" LOL. Makes even lonely people feel like they are at a party, participating in a group chant. It's a good feeling of belonging.

The lyrics are indisputably inane, the tune is somewhat pedestrian, but there is a innocent, group hug flavor to the song that is appealing.

I say good for her.

I'm going to write a song about December and take my shot at fame.

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Monday, April 4, 2011 6:05 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

As the days pass, three so far, I like it more and more actually, because it was something that my favorite cousins and I watched together, incidentally we watched it on Friday, but I think it will always be one of our jokes together, partyin partyin yeah! So ... yeah .... I have to say I do like it because of the fond memories that are growing around it in my mind, those also include watching some of the parodies with them and making up words about shooting kids that come on the lawn, like in Grand Tarino, good movie. Anyways I like it.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, April 4, 2011 6:34 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Quote:
I'm curious for Happy to weigh in here, I'm surprised he hasn't.

Busy lately, which is good. My private teaching job with the Autistic children is in full swing, very challenging and rewarding work. As a matter of fact I should be sleeping right now, gotta wake up and drive an hour to work in the morning. Not a fan of that, but at least I can write the gas and auto maintenance off on taxes next April.

I'll look into this more later but there was one remark I had to address.

Quote:
Does a song really need lyrics? Or a tune? Hmm. I'm getting the part where this exposes the whole industry: Anyone can do it, and it doesn't really matter what you do. The media wants to maintain a monopoly where you listen to signed singers like Lady Gaga, and not to random people on youtube.

Love her or hate her, Lady Gaga is a talented performer. Like an updated version of Madonna or something. Katie Perry though, I would believe is media induced psuedo-musician. Everything about 'Friday' and Katie Perry IMO is redundant, bland and mediocre. At least Lady Gaga stands out from the general suck.

ETA: In defense of my masculinity, the only reason I am more than casually familiar with those artist is because of my girlfriend. That and I heard some of their music on last season's Dancing With The Stars.

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Monday, April 4, 2011 6:51 PM

I care for the way she says "We so excited"

I'm surprised no one posted this yet. I thought of doing it first off, but I wanted to discuss memes and traffic, and I knew this would just push us into video posting.

Check out the comments. Also, the like/dislike. While the ratio is in his favor, he only has 10% of the number of likes that she has, which is illogical given that he's 98.5% positive, and has about 10% of her hits (which is just wrong, btw, I mean, that's the internet, right?)

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Monday, April 4, 2011 7:06 PM

Oh, and how could I forget:

Also, not to dash your dreams of capturing December...

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 2:12 AM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The song is still stuck in my head.
Haha. What hooks me is the "partyin', partyin' yeah!!!" LOL. Makes even lonely people feel like they are at a party, participating in a group chant. It's a good feeling of belonging.

The lyrics are indisputably inane, the tune is somewhat pedestrian, but there is a innocent, group hug flavor to the song that is appealing.

I say good for her.

I'm going to write a song about December and take my shot at fame.

Yup. I'm not crazy about the song, but it IS a bit infectious, and earworms its way into your head. It's silly, but have you ever listened to XTC's "Sunflower"?

Quote:
We'd laugh because each drop would make me grow up
Really high, really high like a really high thing
Say, a sunflower

Always makes me think of "Throw Momma From the Train", where Billy Crystal is teaching the writing class, and one woman has written a submarine story, complete with lines like, "'Dive! Dive!' hollered the captain down the thing."

On the December front, I humbly offer this:

Heck, there's even a band named after the month...

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 10:42 AM

Happy,

Lady Gaga is an attention whore who makes porn videos that are unoriginal, and pale compared to Britney, even when you're dancing to it.

My point being that this is pretty par for popular music. The idea that Lady Gaga should be famous is more than a little absurd.

That doesn't mean it's not music, just that what makes it popular is a huge corporate machine, the same one which wrote it, edited it, and hired the hookers.

If a random person posting a youtube can achieve the same effect, this shatters the media hall of mirrors, and we're no longer beholden to their power of selection and promotion.

They fear this. They fear it a lot. A team of probably a dozen people created Lady Gaga, and maybe a hundred on her video. I suspect a highschool class with a little extra time on its hands could do the same thing. And will. So, you teach a music class. Go to it. Create something, put it up on youtube. Displace Lady Gaga.

It's like my issue with govt. The media represents a propaganda arm of people who were born into privileged and intend to keep us slaves. I wouldn't mind taking them down a notch or 300.

Quote:
#
oh well its better than justin bieber
KillerKTM222 8 seconds ago
#

Mike, could you post the sunflower video? I couldn't find it.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:33 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Also, not to dash your dreams of capturing December...

My ambitions are way more modest. I was thinking something along the lines of...

December, December
Christmas is in December
Presents, yeah! Presents, yeah!
Can't wait for all my presents, yeah!

This month is December.
Last month was November.
Next month is January.
The month after is February.

Last month we had turkey
This month, we'll have ham.
Next month's for beef jerky
And the month after is for Spam.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 12:20 PM

BYTEMITE

Hmm. This explains Twilight.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 12:42 PM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Hmm. This explains Twilight.

My sole experience with 'Twilight'

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 12:59 PM

Buffy v Edward. I had forgotten about that. That is some damn impressive editing right there.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:07 PM

DT: My bad - it's not actually called "Sunflower", it seems (or it doesn't show up that way on uTube, but DOES show up that way in a lyrics search!) - YouTube lists it as "I'd Like That".

Quite trite. Again, it sticks in your head, though.

As to Lady Gaga, I don't hater her. I thought the meat suit was a minor piece of performance-art genius. She is, after all, being marketed just like fresh meat, for all her fans to devour.

As to smashing the corporate hall of mirrors (if it's the music industry, shouldn't it be a mirrored ball, or BALL of mirrors, though?

), look into FanTrail™, a new "app" launched at SXSW that offers fans a one-on-one point of contact with their favorite bands, and which offers artists a one-to-one point of communication with their fans. No fan clubs, no record labels, just you and your bands. And iTunes, if you really want. ;)

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:19 PM

America loves a winner!

Must be Kwickie's personal theme song...

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:25 PM

Here's Rappy's theme song:

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 1:43 PM

America loves a winner!

I lead, you follow.

And the Kwickie copy cat streak continues....

Not 1 original thought... per usual.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 2:13 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I would agree that Lady Gaga doesn't impress me anymore than any of those other pop artists, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick? Pa-lease. But her lyrics do make me laugh, just like Friday's lyrics make me laugh, I mean, a disco stick? That's funny because ... where did that even come from? But ... partyin partyin yeah! I do think though that Lady Gaga's lyrics are at least more original, she's the only one who'd call it a disco stick, and she sings decently, where as Rebecca Black sounds rather like some sort of automaton, very nazel, but hey, good singing isn't necessary for a hit, is it.

Good for her though, I do like the idea that anyone, anyone, can get famous if they put out something that gets attention.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 2:29 PM

Not attacking Lady Gaga, just the machine that created her, and Madonna. It feels threatened by random people on youtube.

Pop music itself is inane. Remember the Axis of Awesome?

ETA: Creation stars don't write their own lyrics. Probably Avril Lavigne came up with it on an off day ;)

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 2:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
I lead, you follow.

And the Kwickie copy cat streak continues....

Not 1 original thought... per usual.

Yes, I post an XTC video.

And you?

You post...

AN XTC VIDEO!

How very original of you. You're my original follower! :D

If you ever said "Support the Troops!", you are a socialist. You've taken money from me, by force and at gunpoint, and you've given it to people who are on a mission I don't support, and are murdering others in my name, and I am given no choice in the matter.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011 3:11 PM