You Already *Really* Dislike Rebecca Black’s New Single When a 14-year-old girl receives threatening messages and hateful missives, we usually call her the victim of cyberbullying. When people tell a 14-year-old girl to kill herself and question her self-worth, we usually call her the victim of cyberbullying. But when it’s Rebecca Black, the most disliked girl in these United States (literally!), we just call it “leaving a comment.” Scroll down for hate. Just think about it this way for a moment: All that animosity, all of those three million dislikes of “Friday” on YouTube, all of the death threats and hate mail, all of that is being steered towards a girl who is still one-third of her life away from legally having a beer. She’s 14! And she’s just despised. Rebecca Black doesn’t need defenders. She doesn’t necessarily deserve defenders. The viral star put herself out there, and funny things can happen on the way to fame and fortune. In the end, there’s a reason PR people subscribe to the adage “just spell the name right” and “all press is good press.” Bring on the hate, bring on the parodies, her handlers must be thinking: All it does is help drive up her sales. “Friday” climbed up to #58 on the Billboard Hot 100, and her iTunes sales of nearly 40,000 in her first week of digital sales netted her and her Ark Music Factory producers about 70 cents per song. Then there’s her YouTube earnings — the site makes about $1 per thousand views, according to Forbes’ Chris Barth, and content creators are said to earn about 68% of that. Her first video was viewed more than 160 MILLION times before being shut down in June, meaning Black and Ark likely took home more than $100,000 before they yanked it. Throw in ringtones and appearance fees and signings, and while you’re laughing at Rebecca Black, she’s laughing on the way to the bank. So now it’s Round 2. Black dropped “My Moment” on Monday, and in 24 hours was “disliked” on YouTube more than 188,000 times. That number will continue to rise dramatically, no doubt. And it had been viewed more than 2.8 million times — that number will also continue to rise dramatically. More hate, more views. More dislikes, more controversy. It doesn’t matter whether she “addresses her critics” in this new video, whether the song’s any good, whether the video’s any good. Haters gonna come and hate, but they’re also putting money in her pocket. </noscript> Black isn’t the first singer to make money through hate, and she won’t be the last. Hell, Vince McMahon has been making money off this concept for more than three decades: It’s called a “heel.” People love to hate much more than they love to love. Hate is active. Hate is visceral. Hate moves people. It brings people into wrestling arenas, just as Black brings people onto YouTube and iTunes. If you *really* hate her, you’d ignore her. Otherwise, you might be shining her shoes one day.
moonshifter 21.07.11 @ 8:14 am LOL, very true. But the haters just don’t get that what they are doing is trying to make themselves feel good by making what they think are clever comments. The thing is that most of them have no music background, understanding of recording or singing or much of anything other than they want to get in that snarky comment and leave. Some even admit to not watching My Moment and just leaving a bad comment. They have no clue how stupid that makes them look. But then, most of them are KIDS under 16 anyway. You could have one of the best singers record it and fool people into thinking Rebecca sang it. When you looked down at comments, they’d all be saying the same stupid things because she’s simply the “Friday” girl, Rebecca. And you will get your loads of insecure, flat chested, 14 year old girls who need to take a piece out of Rebecca to feel good. Then you get your “experts” than insist she is the worst singer the world has ever known, and they begin to exaggerate LOL. I mean it goes on, and on and on. None of it makes sense. True friday had rough spots, and true they buried her in effects. But even when they made My Moment tons better, only a few people noticed that. No, she’s not Mariah Carey, but she did do a very good job on My Moment. At least as good as many other popular acts out there today. Again, the main reason was to leave a hate comment, not talk about her singing better. I mean, where is the fun in that, right? In fact that spoils all their fun. They just want a “loser” to make fun of. They need that to help boost their own egos, but will never admit that is the primary reason for posting. That said, at least some notice My Moment sounds a lot better. Because with about 36% likes, that’s three times the 12% of likes on Friday. And those likes are more likes percentage wise than bieber is currently getting on some of his videos. That said, she’s not doing too awfully bad. Also with nearly 10 million views now, statistically, she has about 3.6 million people that like “My Moment” OVER THREE MILLION PEOPLE liking it! That’s not some small number of people. She got this in just over 2 days. Basically it’s like 14 people LIKE that video every single second. That’s looking at the positive. I too like that song.
Simon Beltmon 02.08.11 @ 7:32 pm What you are saying is that she is nothing more than an opportunist. I thought the same then I saw friday hate was moving up as well as the money in her pocket. It was smart from her to try to do a come back, knowing that everybody hates you would make happy your pocket because you know that you are selling more. It is sad because she tried to be a good singer and a musician and now she is just taking advantage of the hate we feel towards her. It is sad, but smart though, a nice move from a girl who can’t sing