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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Vine Stars and the Lowered Standards of Fame

Jacob Sartorius. While that name may not mean anything to those reading this, it will to the 744,000+ followers of this 13 year old boy's Vine Account which has amassed half-a-billion loops since 2014. That's billion with a 'b.' The fresh-faced, braces-laden teen is on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars online with countless fan pages, hashtags and photos already littering the sidewalks of the information superhighway. Entering his name on Google Image Search will offer you the subcategories of Braces, Abs (ugh), Selfies, Don't Judge Challenge and Facts, each with virtually endless results. "Okay," you sigh "I'll bite. What does this kid do?" Here ya' go:



That's it. But before we dissect what, if anything, makes Jacob special, a word on Vine. It's easy for pre-millenials, post-graduates and pessimists alike to dismiss Vine as a medium, but just as long-form bloggers were wrong to decry Twitter as the death of journalism, so too are film buffs' concerns about the six-second phenomenon*. One needs to look no further than the works of Cool 3D World to see that this platform can, at its best, serve as a beacon for unbridled creativity:

This isn't about defending Vine, however. The point is that, like it or not, it's here to stay and it's where every fame-hungry pre-teen to adult will be heading to find easy fame from here on out. Just look at Nash Grier, the obnoxious, ice-eyed 18-year old "fuccboi" who just happens to be one of the most popular entertainers in the United States with a whopping 12 million followers. To put that in perspective, the The Walking Dead averages 19 million viewers weekly. And to put that in an even sadder perspective, Parks and Recreation averaged about half of Grier's follower count for most of it's run (are you still surprised Donald Trump is a serious presidential candidate in this country?). Our bafflement aside, Nash's brand is now reportedly worth $3 million and the homophobic tool is laughing his way to Hollywood proper with a (terrible looking) movie under his belt and more projects in the works. 

What Nash, and now Jacob, offer as entertainment could be considered the 21st Century equivalent of the funny pages: quick, inoffensive humor that can be recycled as often as needed. Setup ("that feel when"), Crazy thing happens, and then Reaction set to whatever popular song is in the Vine zeitgeist at that juncture (you won't believe how much mileage teen Viners got out of making their teachers do the whip dance in 2015).  It's a proven three-beat formula that'll never age and requires less artistry than a Garfield gag. Not everyone can do it, (and some succeed at failing like my favorite weirdo Link Kelly), but with a handsome face, the bare amount of creativity and fame-hungry friends that won't mind holding your phone for you take-after-take, you've got all the tools needed for Vine stardom. And when the well runs dry don't fret! just re-vine a fan edit, play a prank on your buddies (all with their own accounts, trying to leech off your fame) or find some way to shoehorn a Drake song into a "joke":




To say that the bar for internet stardom - set by Justin Beiber becoming famous via YouTube performances - has been lowered is immaterial; in a world populated by Kardashians, Wests and their offspring, the talented and talentless are now desegregated. And while, yes, teenage girls were also obsessing over The Beatles much to the chagrin of their conservative parents, they were, you know, The Beatles after all and needed some merit to appear on Ed Sullivan lest they be stuck in the same crappy Hamburg bar, year after year. All Jacob Sartorius needs is a smartphone.

 *Vine, not the author as a lover.
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