Did you know that New York magazine published a profile of Rebecca Black in its new issue? By golly, they actually did for some reason, and judging by the comments on the online version of the article, readers of the magazine just want Rebecca Black to go away forever and never come back, just like everyone else.
And who could blame them, especially after reading the article, which is sad because a) they actually assigned a good writer to waste her time on someone who’s most notable achievement is being an awful meme, and b) also because it doesn’t teach us much more about Black than we already knew: that she’s a teenage girl whose parents are trying to buy her superfame while others try desperately to profit from it.
Here’s an excerpt from the profile that I think gets right to the heart of the whole thing:
I ask Black if she’s tried songwriting. “It’s so hard … It’s like … ” There’s a long pause, and then Black says, “You’re vibrating.”
She’s referring to her manager’s cell phone, which is now jittering across the table. Black, fully distracted again, resumes twiddling with her phone, ending the line of questioning.
Baum eventually pokes Black in the ribs to get her to face my way and takes the opportunity to snatch the phone away from her. I ask Black what she has done to invest in herself as an artist, now that the world is watching. More singing lessons? Dance training? She tells me that she’s been watching a lot of celebrity interviews. “I grew up being the girl who would always tune in to watch famous people talk about their careers, how they handled scandals and megafame. I’m trying to pick up tips,” she says without a trace of irony.
Yep, that pretty much sums up the whole piece right there. Rebecca Black is like the cockroach of the internet — we might as well give up hoping she goes away and just accept that we have to live with her. Not even Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th can stop her.
