For this week's fearless foray into the culture of teens and tweens, we're talking fame. Young people have always had a different set of people they consider famous from their elders, but now it's more than just new faces that old people don't recognize; the nature of fame itself has changed forever.
Charli XCX, the apple dance, and internet fame
The case of Charli XCX, the apple dance, and the video bomber illustrates three levels of modern celebrity in one regrettable incident. It's going to take a little explaining, but that's what I'm here for.
On the top level of fame is Charli XCX. She's a pop singer who got famous partly in the old-school way. She puts out albums, tours, the whole nine. Her sixth studio album, Brat, is the pop album of the summer, has been nominated for two Grammys, and has gotten a shout out from the vice president. But she owes a good deal of her fame to maintaining a loyal social media fanbase of people like Kelley Heyer.
Heyer is a different kind of famous. She created "the apple dance," a series of moves set to "Apple," one of Charli XCX's songs. It went viral and countless people posted videos of themselves (and their cats) doing the dance. Heyer isn't only famous for being a fan, though; the success of popular music now depends, at least partly, on things like the apple dance going viral and boosting the song.
Charli XCX acknowledged this at a recent concert, where she trained cameras on Heyer while Heyer did the apple dance—an amazing moment of recognition and communication between artist and audience that looked like this from the crowd. From other angles, though, the scene looked very different.
Someone jumped into the shot and started doing the dance with Heyer, becoming instantly internet-famous in a bad way. People online reacted with immediately scorn and derision over the woman supposedly ruining Heyer's big moment. I won't link to comments because it's underserved hate, but people online were pissed in an angry-mob way. And that's the third way of being internet famous. Being famous for being seen as a jerk.
Heyer tamped everything down graciously, posting a video exhorting her fans to "soften the comments" and saying, "Do not fucking dox her... I don't want her experience of the Sweat tour to be stained or soured because of comments you guys are leaving."
Viral video of the week: "Scram, leave her alone"
Kel Cripe is a stand-up and sketch comedian who we wouldn't ever have heard of in the before-days, but they won social media fame this week without starting an angry mob, putting out an album, or doing a dance. Their video, "Scram, leave her alone," is only 15 seconds long, but its depiction of a completely non-threatening person in a wolf shirt sending a warning to "all the guys who want to talk to my girl" really struck a chord. The original video was viewed millions of times, but the real virality came when the video became a meme format. People are replacing the background, adding text, and making scram their own. Some are about other things that try and fail to be threatening. Like Zoloft trying to fight off mental illness or your alarm trying to wake you up. Some are expressions of when we want to just say "scram," like when someone says Diet Coke is bad for you, or when your husband won't stop texting on girl's night.
Hawk Tuah Girl aims to transcend her viral fame
Going from "famous for making a viral video" to some kind of lasting fame-based career hasn't worked out for anyone yet, but Hailey Welch, aka "The Hawk Tuah Girl," is giving it a shot. She was plucked from obscurity and a minimum wage job in a factory in the South when she gave an enthusiastic description of oral sex to a YouTube street interviewer. She parlayed that into merchandising, social media channels, throwing out the first pitch at a Mets game, and a podcast through Jake Paul's media company. Whether this is the start of a long career in broadcasting for Welch, or minute 14 and a half of Andy Warhol's famous "15 minutes of fame" concept, remains to be seen. I hope it works out for her, and I hope she saved whatever money she's earned from this, in case it doesn't.
Are celebrities deleting tweets because of Diddy?
Old-school famous people might have achieved their celebrity through means other than the internet, but, like all of us, they have to deal with it. One of the things they're dealing with this week is the online rumor that singers, actors, and others of note are deleting their social media accounts because they contain incriminating evidence linked to Sean "Diddy" Combs.
The rumor began when someone noticed that singer Usher's tweets had all been taken down and others jumped to the conclusion that it was somehow connected to Diddy. Other people noticed that both P!nk and Megan Fox had deleted their tweets, leading to more breathless speculation about their involvement. People predicted a bloodbath of celebrity internet self-immolations, indictments, and prison terms for any celebrity they didn't like.
The only problem with the theory is that Megan Fox gave up social media in 2013, P!nk deleted her tweets seven months ago, and Usher's tweets are back up; he said he'd been the victim of a hacker. We don't know who, if anyone, will catch flak from the Diddy situation, but we do know that the internet is always wrong about everything.
Who is Pesto the Penguin?
You can't talk about modern fame without talking about animal fame. While there have been famous animals in the past—Lassie, Bubbles the Chimp, Spuds Mckenzie—they were actors. Today's animal stars get famous for being freaks. Take Pesto the Penguin. This waddling little fella is going viral all over the internet just because he's a chunkster. Adult king penguins usually weigh somewhere between 31 and 37 pounds, but Pesto weighs over 50 pounds. He eats more than 25 fish a day, and he's only nine months old—he doesn't even have his tuxedo yet; he's still got his baby fluff.
Pesto's ascension to stardom began a couple weeks ago when the Sealife Melbourne Aquarium posted a video of his gender reveal party—you have to do a blood test to determine the sex of penguin—and he's been growing more famous and more fat ever since. The aquarium's ticket sales and Instagram and TikTok followers are all skyrocketing, as are the memes and fan art starring the biggest little penguin on earth.
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