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Sydney was a huge Justin Bieber fan. Then she wasn't. Now she is again, and she went to one of his concerts the other night, where she got to go backstage and meet him. Naturally, the "Beliebers" who haven’t met him are jealous. But in Sydney’s case, this jealousy has turned to hatred. Because when she wasn't a Justin Bieber fan, she took down all of her Bieber posters with the help of two friends, and ripped them up. These three girls filmed this abandonment of Bieber, and uploaded it to YouTube. Over the course of the last two days, this has become public knowledge to the Beliebers... and they’re not happy.
They're angry that Sydney Dalton got to meet Justin Bieber. Apparently, because she dared to change her mind about liking him, and upload a video signifying this change of heart, she doesn't deserve to meet Justin Bieber. So the Beliebers have been tweeting her abuse, and posting videos of their own on YouTube that mock or criticise her. I've included one of these YouTube videos at the bottom of this article; "missvideo28" sums up what a lot of Justin Bieber fans think of Sydney Dalton, and quite frankly it's a little worrying.
We all had obsessions when we were teenagers; it might have been a band, a singer, a TV show or a sports team, but chances are there was something we liked a little too much. My worst obsession came in my pre-teen years, when I had an impressive collection of Power Rangers toys and spent a lot of time day-dreaming about being the Red Ranger. But those of us at university, or in my case a university graduate, we went through these obsessions without Twitter and YouTube. We didn't follow, list and retweet people that shared our obsession, and we didn't film ourselves making threats against the people who didn't share it.
And I'm very glad about that. I'm a big fan of Twitter, but I do feel the whole social networking phenomenon is spoiled slightly by those who spam Twitter and Facebook declaring their love for Justin Bieber, or Twilight, or whatever else is all the rage. My personal opinion of both Bieber and Twilight is that they're overrated. There are worse musicians out there than Justin Bieber, and the Twilight series isn't awful, but for me they don’t live up to the hype. That's my personal opinion, and I don't expect everyone to agree with it. I'm not going to post videos of me burning Stephenie Meyer's books, or breaking Justin Bieber albums, but if I did, I'd think people telling me to wear a bulletproof vest or threatening to hit me in the face with a full wine bottle (cork and all) was a step too far. I've watched Sydney's video – I see it as three teenagers goofing around. It's hardly a crime, and I'm amazed that hundreds of thousands of Justin Bieber fans have gotten so worked up about it.
When I look at the response to Sydney's video, I worry that one of these angry Beliebers will try and do something to her because she tore up her Bieber posters. And it makes me wonder... is this what advances in technology have done for society? Sydney Dalton used the internet to tell the world she's over Justin Bieber, and now the world wants to do something about it. When a YouTube video can put someone in genuine physical danger, I get scared of the world that the children of tomorrow are entering.
The biggest problem with videos like this isn't the hate that they represent, nor is it the aggression that develops from an emotional response to something that, to her, is massivley disrespectful of one of her favourite icons... it is the fact that posting a threat online, directed at a specific person using (what may be) an RL name could technically get her arrested.
This isn't just cyber-bullying, it's putting herself at risk over a topic that isn't worth it. I've read the comments on this youtube vid and I'm not going to come out with 'get a life' or 'you are pathetic' or anything like that... but I will say this to any budding videomakers out there... be careful what you threaten. If something actually happened to Sydney Dalton that looked like, say, a heavy glass object causing damage to her face, this youtuber just put herself at massive risk of potentially being blamed.
I just enjoy the delicious irony of this sort of video, and the attitude that's behind it. The psychotic young lass, in her oddly conversational tone, reiterates again and again how little she cares about her nemesis' activities. How miniscule and insignificant this person is to her. And because of this she feels compelled to write, record and upload a video specially devoted to how she's going to waste a full bot of the old vino - clearly, she hasn't existed on a student budget yet, or she'd appreciate the real value of a whole bottle of the good stuff - in impromptu surgery on their poor visage.
And I'm not just saying this to be pedantic. What's obvious from this video - from her unnatural, obviously copied 'threatening reasonableness' demeanour to her logically nonsensical words - is that none of this is really genuine. Sure, she may be cross, but she's not expressing herself. The way she's talking quite clearly isn't natural to her. Everything in this video seems to me to be borrowed from the way people talk in films and TV, artificial things which exist just to be dramatic. And it's how a lot of people seem to act as soon as they think involved in a real-life 'drama'. And it's weird.
Then again, we're talking about someone who actually identifies themselves using the word 'Belieber' here, so maybe not everyone's quite this bad.
Who the hell is Justin Beiber? This seems like some darkly bizarre Disney Channel film.
How old is this girl? This really scares me!
Webcam + Internet Connection + YouTube = Complete and total fucktard.
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