Death threats against 'worst song ever' YouTube teen Police in Anaheim, California, are "keeping an extra eye out" for net sensation Rebecca Black, following death threats against the teen singer. Black, 13, was catapulted to instant fame as the YouTube video of her song Friday went global, despite music lovers' description of the ditty as "the worst song ever". Following …
I've heard much worse "music" from rap "artists," however, it's certainly not good. Still, I know ignorance is bliss and all, but I can't remember a time where the most important issue in my life was the day of the week. I think she--and anyone who actually likes this song--really needs to find something to do with her life. Find a hobby or something. There's lots of fun stuff that can be done any day of the week.
Like commenting on El Reg...
that a little bit of me wonders if there really have been death threats, or is it a cynical ploy to get some sympathy for the autotuned bratling?
Let's be honest - it's all been done in a standard 'cookie cutter teen star' way already, much the same as all the usual talent shows. The 'starlet' autotunes her way through a song that's been pulled off the shelf by a music company that, in this case, specialises in vanity projects like this. As her star begins to fade, 'the rules' decree that it's important for her to do *something* to keep her name in the public eye. At 13, the usual routes (stumbling out a a nightclub with another z-lister, hitting a photographer and so on) are closed to her, so (gasp!) let's have a death threat. Actually, let's go for two of them. That'll work.
So, the lesson of this tale is don't threaten to kill Rebecca Black. As with all annoying children, just don't give her any attention and she might go away.
Oh freddled gruntbuggly
thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee,
my foonting turlingdromes.
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts
with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"
Odd line to take but can we bring it to its logical conclusion?
Can I assume that any song by someone outside my preferred demographic and that I dont particularly like is grounds for abuse and torture?
I freely admit I cant stand this song and the fact her parents felt the need to spend money on her doing it is amazing.
But it is no more annoying than lots and lots of other songs I cant stand and its no more a waste of her parents money than any of the other things rich kids get to do.
Until someone forces the crazies to sit and listen to her song, what justification do they have for this action? Even if this is a PR-orchestrated death threat, how can people be actually agreeing with it?
The fact is there are many, many more songs out there that I would rather pour acid down my ear canal than listen to, just as there are books I will never read and TV programs (in fact entire channels) I will never ever watch.
I dont waste time campaigning about how they are so crap no one else should endure them. Nor do I advocate the torture and murder of those involved....
Yay, go for the *really* low-hanging fruit why don't you?
They signed my brother. His impressive qualifications for a meteoric rise to obscurity were "being in the room when they needed someone for a band". Turns out to be all you need to end up playing keyboards[1] to a hundred and some odd thousand people in Manila as part of a world tour supporting Yet Another Artificial Band With A Bigger Advertising Budget Than Them.
[1] Ok, miming to a backing tape of someone else playing keyboards to be strictly accurate.
How f*cked is the world when people think it OK to send death threats to a 13year old girl.
Yes the song was shit, but don't listen to it. It not like another musician lost out because her song was produced, her parents paid for it.
It's not that much worse that the sh*t Simon Cowell produces and that does affect decent musicians.
Just another shit song in the universe of shit songs, there have been many, and many more still to come. TBH, it's not the shittiest IMO.
Death threats are just another demonstration of how intolerant some people are, how hateful they are of others; practitioners of different religions, supporters of a different political party, different sexuality, different skin colour, or 13 year old with a rubbish song, it doesn't matter to them.
America embraces and legitimises 'freedom to hate' within First Amendment rights, so this behaviour can be said to be a natural consequence of that and "with us or against us" pack mentality. Rebecca should think herself lucky she's not a liberal, black, Muslim, lesbian with a shit song.
Of course, it's not only Americans who hate, and the number that do seems to be spreading, and happy to present that hatred in public. It's a creeping cancer.
The Anaheim Police Department does not seem to be aware of this legitimization you speak of. If on the other hand you mean that the First Amendment offers very broad protection for speech that can be considered political, that much is true. It is not impossible that a bit of consideration of Sullivan v. NY Times could lead you to see why this is so.
Or perhaps you expand on your thesis. One rhyme that quite a few Americans and perhaps many others know is "Casey at the Bat", includes the stanza
'From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And its likely they'd a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand.
A proper punter ought to be able to spin out a direct line from Thayer's imaginary baseball fans (and quite a few real ones since) to today's internet bozos. Get to work, lad! D.H. Lawrence on the American as "cold, stoic, isolate, a killer" is the standard you should aim to match.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/hate_crimes/overview
<quote>A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.</quote>
In Brazil hate is a crime without bail option and it is categorized at the same level as rape and murder. Each country has a different approach. This girl would be better in Brazil I guess becasue in US the threats need to be taken seriously since many wackos have guns.
I'm going to have to remember the phrase "autotuned bratling". People are going to wonder why I'm laughing like that...
- - - - -
As far as the "freedom to hate goes", the old argument is that with great freedom also comes great responsibility...or, as it's commonly phrased, "don't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire". So...while I'm quite free to say that I might not like this young woman's singing and think she should stop or even less polite things than that, actually *threatening* her is definitely crossing the line. There's no point in doing that, but there are all kinds out there.
As it is, I haven't heard the young woman sing, don't really care one way or another and think it's truly unfortunate that there are some people who feel it is right to threaten a person over their beliefs/orientation/religion/opinions/abilities/whatever.
While the poor girl is vocally challenged - even Jeremy Paxman isn't that nasal - death threats are a tad excessive.
To give her some* credit, at least she's doing something and following her dream. How many of us get that far?
* very little, mind you. After all, Hitler followed his dream and inflicted pain and suffering too, though on a larger scale.
Release a song which might or might not be acceptable, and you are NEARLY LIKE HITLER?
Holy cow! Whatever next??
"Hitler's entry to the Eurovision song contest, singing about increasing Lebensraum, upping the Bruttosozialprodukt, übering the EURO and his love towards his dog. After this message..."
"at least she's doing something and following her dream. How many of us get that far?"
Erm, mummy threw $4K at a record company to write and produce it as a gift for her little darling. While the hatred thrown her way is obscenely unjustified, let's not credit her for chasing her dream. If my parents had spoilt me that way, I'm sure I could have been auto-tuned into producing something similar.
"Erm, she's 13. Bit mean-spirited, arencha?"
Maybe, but I'm not being mean to her, more along the lines I don't think her parent is particularly responsible to splurge that sort of money on blatantly autotuning their 13 year old daughter and allowing a record company to put it up on youtube.
She may well be a great singer, it's impossible to tell from that vid.
...but I do have to point out an error at the end of the first sentence:
Police in Anaheim, California, are "keeping an extra eye out" for net sensation Rebecca Black, following death threats against the teen singer.
It should be:
Police in Anaheim, California, are "keeping an extra eye out" for net sensation Rebecca Black, following death threats against the teen "singer".
I mean, you can kinda understand crap lyrics from a 13 year old. They aren't all Leann Rimes...
...however I understand that it was he that wrote this atrocity. Have some sympathy for the girl, her way to fame was bought in a tidy little package, now she has to deal with the fact that people who get "instant fame" usually don't want it. It is better to work up to it, for whatever she might do in the future, she'll always be the girl that made the most awful pop song in the history of our entire species...
I've heard it's cack and hippy-happy pop music is not my bag at all so I avoid it. Fair play to her, she's trying to do something useful with herself, if enough dingbats can be found to pay her to do it, fair enough.
How sick and twisted do you have to be to send death threats to a teenager who's not actually done anything that offensive to anyone? Some fucked-in-the-head nutcase thinks it would be a right good laugh to scare the shit out of some kid who's probably not handling all the attention that well.
Oh and the PR firm, I don't believe she's that talented and quite a few people agree with me, so let her have her 15 mins, then she can go off to college and get on with her life without you fucking up her life for good!
The song may be pants, but it is amusingly so... as internet fads/sensations go there have been less entertaining and/or more annoying ones...
The real thing here is though this is a 13 yr old girl, with feelings and emotions... threatening and abusing her off all over the internet is just unnecessary and pathetic, she isn't Charlie Sheen or some tough billionaire who can take a bit of grief - SHE'S A KID!
FFS be nice to each other and if you don't like something just ignore it.
Anonymous, because I know how pathetic people are I don't want death threats thanks!
This post has been deleted by its author
[Yank Rozzers] added: "We're going to investigate and determine, number one, the source of the comments and then based on the investigation determine what intent was and where we go from here. If we believe they were actually intended as threats we will work toward prosecution."
...Which is more than can be said for all those involved in the Twitter Joke Trial who made no effort to establish intent and differentiate between a pisspoor joke and an actual desire to kill.
OK, OK, I'll get back in my box.
As one of a large number of people in the world who own musical instruments and PA systems, I'm following my dream insofar as my band gets out gigging fairly regularly, and people in the pub/club come up to us afterwards and say how much they enjoyed it. It took 10 years of playing guitar to get to that point. I didn't expect to throw $4K at a company and have it done (badly!) for me.
when they've turned their business into cashing in on the latest fad. If they don't get their sales in 15 minutes then it is too late.
there is not really much worth buying out there Much of the music sounds great the first 100 times you're forced to hear it and after that you want to take an icepick to your ears.
Good lord she's just a kid. Who knows (or cares) if this was a serious effort on her part to get recognized by some label. But that being said, being a ripe old 13 or 14 years old and isn't taking the overwhelming and world wide loathing of her "work" very well. That being said, it certainly doesn't warrant death threats.
If the threats were real, I sincerely hope they nail the people responsible to the wall. if it's just a publicity stunt, then both her parents and management need to be jailed and she be placed in a convent (a silent one at that), until she's of legal age.
I was going to add a quip about possible sterilization; to spare future generations of any offspring she may produce, however, knowing that someone would obviously take that seriously, I will refrain from suggesting it
Yes it's shite, but it's not any worse than the other auto-tuned shite that prevails over the current popular music charts and our wireless's.
Thank god for Stuart Maconie's Freak & Freakier Zones on Radio 6.
Right I'm off to listen to some bloke breaking cups to white noise and train noises whilst screaming obscenities at his cat :)
ps: what is up with the line breaks?
Surely any prankster on the Internet these days knows of mixminion (or throwaway webmail, through over9000 proxies), and PC-to-phone services (again, properly proxied).
For the average 14-yo /b/ addict, the chances of being caught after such a tasteless "joke" are probably pretty slim.
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