A teenager battered by internet bullies

PROFILE: REBECCA BLACK:She's nice but hated, has limited talent but is successful, was unknown a fortnight ago but is now a YouTube sensation. Rebecca Black's your typical modern celeb, writes BRIAN BOYD

YOU KNOW the score: person uploads a video to YouTube, it becomes a viral sensation with millions of viewers, the narrative moves over to Twitter, Facebook or both, and in the time it takes to press a refresh button Rebecca Black has become the most talked-about person across all media this week. But there is a disturbing undertow to this story.

Black is a 13-year-old Californian. Like a lot of her contemporaries she is a big fan of Glee, American Idoland Justin Bieber. She is interested in singing and dancing, and last month wanted to record a song for her friends and family. When she uploaded one to YouTube nothing much happened in the first few days. Fridayis a classic tween-pop song with a bouncy beat and inane lyrics about the weekend coming, but somewhere along the line it started to be singled out as the worst song ever made and was passed on as such along the internet's conveyor belt. A few thousand views soon became 38 million, and then it emerged that Black was out-trending the Japanese earthquake on Twitter all last week.

In a scenario reminiscent of the treatment meted out to Crystal Swing last year by blog bullies, Black became not just a figure of fun but a victim of vicious personal abuse. “I hope you cut yourself and die” and “I hope you get an eating disorder” were among the comments left under the video. The snide and cowardly sniping of adult Twitter users was little better.

The Black phenomenon is coming to represent the ugly face of social networking. Far from being a modern, liberating facility, it was showing itself, in this case, to be a step downwards on the social evolutionary ladder.

Meanwhile, when the song became ubiquitous, music journalists managed to disgrace themselves by reviewing Fridayas if was the new offering from Arcade Fire. Black's privileged white upper-middle-class background was held against her, nasty comments were made about her appearance, and the lyrics and tune of the song were held up for an unprecedented amount of public ridicule.

The most remarkable aspect of all this is that something as anodyne as a song and accompanying video by a seemingly pleasant 13-year-old is attracting global attention. But the Twittersphere and the Facebook family have gone in with a two-footed tackle without even understanding, or bothering to find out, the background to Friday.

The song’s tune and lyrics are not Rebecca Black’s. The US has a well-known vanity record label called Ark Music Factory; for an average of $2,000 (€1,400) its songwriting and production team will write a customer a song and record it professionally. Black pleaded with her parents to pay the fee so she could have something to show her friends on the internet.

The melody line sold to Black is catchy enough in a mindless sort of way. The lyrics may not be Leonard Cohen-esque, but they were written for a 13-year-old: “Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday / Today is Friday, Friday (partyin’) / Tomorrow is Saturday / And Sunday comes afterwards.”

To give the song a contemporary sheen the producers used the studio device Auto-Tune, which gives the vocal a slightly robotic feel.

The song was never intended to be released commercially, and it’s clear from the way Black performs it on the video that it’s only meant as a bit of fun for friends and family. But Black was savaged on Twitter and pilloried in the mainstream media.

It took Simon Cowell, of all people, to bring some much-needed reason and proportion to the story. "Anyone who can create this much controversy within a week I want to meet," he said. "The song reminds me of Saturday Night. It's what we call a hairdryer song, a song girls sing into their hairdryers as they're getting ready to go out. And the fact that it's making people angry is so brilliant."

Lady Gaga also weighed in on Black’s side, saying this week: “I think the song is fantastic. I say Rebecca Black is a genius and anyone that’s telling her she’s cheesy is full of shit.”

The US chat-show host Jay Leno had Black on his show on Wednesday. She told Leno that Ark Music Factory had sent her two songs as part of the package she paid for but that one of them was "inappropriate" and she chose Fridaybecause "it's about being a teenager, and I thought it was different because it's not indecent and saying all the bad stuff that a lot of songs are about".

She also talked about crying when she read the remarks about her on YouTube. “Being a teenager, you care about what other people think about you,” she said. “I cried. I mean, I’m 13 years old, and it was all this feeling that the world hates me.”

Whether Black turns out to be the female Justin Bieber remains to be seen. There is already talk of a reality-TV show, an album deal and a live tour, but you get that sort of speculation with any viral overnight sensation.

She says that all the money raised from sales of Fridaywill go to Japanese tsunami relief efforts – something the bullies who delighted in hounding her might want to reflect on.

Curriculum vitae

Who is she?Rebecca Black found instant fame, and ridicule, singing Friday online, a performance that has now been watched by 38 million people.

Correct and clarifyThe business magazine Forbesran a story last week suggesting that she could already be a millionaire from iTunes sales of Friday. It later corrected the report. In fact, Friday has generated about $26,000 (€18,500) from download sales, and that has to be split with the songwriters and producers.

Book the rehab now?Not at all. Despite the mauling she's been through, she comes across as a pleasant, well-adjusted young teenager.