As last time, we talked about memes, it’s fitting to continue talking about those whose success started with a viral hit.
A viral hit usually means you’re funny in an unconventional manner. You might have tripped and fell, you might be a baby or a cat or many animals internet devotes. But overall, you did an embarrassing thing and now you have live with the consequences.
But some were lucky enough to bring the ‘embarrassing’ viral hit to continued YouTube fame. One of the earliest was Tay Zonday after voice pitch twist of ‘Chocolate Rain’ became popular in 2008. Tay took the opportunity and ran with it, reading box of cereals and other commodities before finding friends in the YouTube world. Now, he’s a key staple to the ‘old’ LA crew with KassemG, LisaNova, Shaycarl, Hiimrawn and so forth.
But the example we’re taking today come from 2012 when creepy eyed shrew of a woman sang a Justin Bieber parody for a contest that she didn’t win. Of course, we’re talking about Laina.
The vlogging community, although having its share of the limelight more often than not, have avoided people who were meme famous. The community think of meme famous as crass or crazy and doesn’t know the ‘rules’ of vlogging or internet entertainment. This is because many meme is one-note, it’s almost defined as one-note. People will laugh when they first see it but after few more variation the joke goes quickly flat. Most people, let’s face it, are not smart enough to transition from hitting one note again and again to making music... Laina is a different story.
Her thoughts are much better than most people, her heart is better than most people. Laina gave a twist from people’s assumption of what Bieber fan with a creepy smile acts like by being honest and humble. And being humble is probably the best thing you can do in this situation.
Before Laina, I always gave ‘David after Dentist’ as the prime example of meme success. A family unexpectedly gets a lot of attention, they can do either of two things. Hide and not seen by public again, therefore having the meme be detached from you as a person or flaunt it by doing everything you can and be a obsessive brat that everybody now hate and ruining the meme overall. But the family here took a sensible approach of appearing on interviews but not wanting more and selling T-Shirt and some other stuff before quietly closing when the meme ran dry. In all, they took all that meme has to offer without spoiling because they were humble and not wanted fame to get in their way but used it as a jumping step to something more bigger in your life and not a celebrity life.
Laina’s humbleness, amplified by trying to help people with autism, gave a turnaround for the vlogging community and eventually they welcomed her in open arm as she became one of the first people in widely-successful Wonderly network and getting steady views and subscribers throughout her career.
I eventually found another person who had a similar trajectory.... of course she didn’t had that one video, but she does have a character which she expanded and improved after getting her day in the spotlight and overall coolness about her fame. Or least, she managed it all right...
Miranda Sings is one of the character vlogs that people do or something and she does bring the character very well. She’s in fact a real life, a great singer doing plays and stuff and people look up to her...
It’s an awkward segway to a new topic I want to talk about that’ll maybe continue tomorrow? I don’t know... but to me, Miranda is interesting for two reasons.
1. She became friends with Glozell before YouTube, which is interesting as Glozell is another famous meme famous YouTuber... she has a great personality, which made her memetic in the first place, and this is only time I think I saw two people who became internet famous independently and are friends before YouTube. So, it’s an interesting tidbit for people who know Glozell and/or Miranda Sings
2. Colleen is a voice coach to Ariela Grande, which to many people is Cat Valentine on Victorious and Sam and Cat. Now, I bring this point as I first saw Ariela in 2007 for her freaky friday spoof series with his brother... which means she’s deep in YouTube as any of us here.
I bring this point for questioning the argument that ‘YouTube is not a place for stars’ or ‘YouTube is being commercialized.’ As seen above, people were connected to the Hollywood system in the beginning and celebrity has posting on YouTube and not just Miley and Mandy or Selena Gomez.
What I’m trying to say is that YouTube is not a hallowed place that most YouTuber think it is. It’s not just a place where a nobody can post a video and suddenly become famous like the example above because it’s a platform for everybody. Separating celebrity from YouTuber are a hackneyed thought.
I’m not really trying to defend celebrities. I just feel that some argument for better YouTuber is just untrue and that we should feel YouTube as a prestigious institution but more mixed with the other media around here and that is not bad! Not bad at all. We’re not trivializing ourselves if our friends became famous. I guess I just want to explain the weird feeling when my favorite YouTubers hang out with celebrities... We’ll continue talking about corporatization of YouTube, tomorrow. But for now... I still feel unsettled.
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