On April 28th, a theatrical 6th Grader posted a video of himself performing a Lady Gaga song for a Church talent show. The video was a sterotypical proud mom production-- a shaky handy-cam, a lot of inadvertent attention paid to the giggling tweens behind the performing Greyson Michael Chance. Despite the poor videography, the performance was stunning. This twelve year old phenom had never studied singing and was belting out "Paparazzi" on par vocally with Miss Gaga. Two days after the piece went viral, the precocious Greyson was on the Ellen Show. After charming Ellen and chatting with Gaga via phone, he performed an abbreviated version of his 15-million-plus-viewers video.
Viral stars a la Youtube are nothing new. Examples include OK GO using YouTube to create a new music video fan base in 2006, Obama Girl proving the viral ignition of the Obama campaign in 2007 (followed by Will.I.Am and Sarah Silverman in 2008), the revitalization of Saturday Night Live via digital shorts, and the list goes on and on. But what made this Gaga to Greyson to Ellen chronology so interesting is that our jaws dropped and we cheered for this 12-year old kid... but we weren't really THAT surprised when he appeared on national TV.
Ellen is savvy to the ways of viral marketing. She knows the number of eyeballs on of these types of videos and isnt ashamed to ride the bandwagon. For the performance segment of Greyson's visit, Ellen perched behind the young star, making sure that video frames reminded the viewer that they were watching the Ellen Show. This type of viral capitalization makes your show, by proxy, a bit of a maven. You are in the know. But viral videos aren't gems from the cool-kids, they simply represent a new form of shared culture; our new Michael Jackson or the Seinfeld show. There has been a cultural disintegration of common ground due to sheer availability of information, but these ubiquitous nuggets of content are something that we can all can relate to. We weren't surprised that Greyson was on Ellen, because we were all talking about it already; it was only time till the larger outlets would.
No comments:
Post a Comment