the industry

i try not to obliquely promote this type of smeg, but this thing already has 29 million hits, so fuggit.

first , watch the video, the whole thing, no matter how painful:



then at least start to read this article (or better yet, if you've got the time and willpower, see the complete version here ):

In less than a week, Rebecca Black's debut single has been called the "worst song of all time", praised by Simon Cowell ("Anyone who can create this much controversy within a week, I want to meet"), received over 26 million hits on YouTube and lead to her name trending globally on Twitter (above Charlie Sheen, no less). Appearing on Good Morning America last Friday, Black read out a post that had appeared online in the aftermath of the song in which an anonymous commenter said, "I hope you cut yourself and I hope you get an eating disorder so you'll look pretty, and I hope you go cut and die". Oh, and Black is only 13 years old.

The reason for all the attention is Friday, an inane, illegally catchy ditty sung in an oddly detached monotone (with the help of auto-tune, natch) with lyrics about how Friday comes after Thursday and before Saturday and is, like, totally a really fun day to be hanging out with your friends and stuff. It's accompanied by an equally mind-bogglingly literal video, the highlight of which is a bit involving her (hopefully older) friends deciding which seat to take in the car to school.

The speed with which the song and video went viral is an astonishing snapshot of how things work in the Twitter era. Comedy blog Tosh.O featured the song under the headline "Songwriting Isn't For Everyone" on 11 March, before Gawker got hold of it, calling it the "worst music video ever". From there the video spread across Twitter, with commentators referring to Black as the new Justin Bieber and various news shows quick to label her the latest "pop phenomenon".....

oh and if you are feeling poisoned by all of this, here's the antidote: