Mar 6th, 2005
Chris Crocker and the Heart of Social Media
I have to admit that the pathetic thumbnail of Chris Crocker’s contorted kabuki face with the caption, ‘Leave Britney Alone,’ was enough to pique my sometimes sordid sense of curiosity to the point of clicking through and watching his painful (for me not him) diatribe on why people need to stop hassling Britney Spears.
I suppose I should preface this by admitting that several days prior, I had actually dug up an online version of Britney Spears’ bumbling performance at the VMAs after hearing it discussed on sports radio on the drive to work in the morning. Clearly, there was a precedence set in my mind as I thumbed through YouTube several days later and let my eyes linger over the thumbnail for the video before deciding it was clearly a waste of my time and moving on.
At any rate, it was several days later that I was perusing MySpace and saw that a friend of mine had actually posted the clip to another friend’s profile (in the comments section) and I suddenly realized I was going to have to watch this video, which I did. Now you can watch it as well before proceeding (at your own peril):
At the time I am writing this article, 9:45 PM (ET) on September 18, 2007, I see that nearly 7.5 million people have watched Chris Crocker’s pathetic appeal to the masses. I see that the video has elicited enough of a response from over 100,000 people that they went so far as to leave a comment. I can also see that a rather substantial volume of people have already satirized the YouTube video with spin-offs (most of them making a mockery of Chris Crocker). I also see that in addition to the response in the social media space a quick query of Google News reveals that there are over 150 results for the search term ‘Chris Crocker,’ meaning he had about that many pick-ups in the mainstream media.
David Duchovny’s claim in Californication that “people are getting dumber and dumber” springs immediately to mind but then I suddenly feel ashamed because I realize I am using a quote from a show on Showtime as a frame of reference to look condescendingly down upon pop culture.
How disgustingly hypocritical and sad - especially only 30 minutes after I sat down with the intention to start writing a piece of narrative fiction only to find myself feeling more comfortable writing about Chris Crocker and YouTube.
Or is it?
When I step back and really think about it, I don’t think people are getting dumber and dumber - I think people have always been dumb.
I think instead, what is happening is that through social media people have the ability to broadcast their idiocy to the world. It is almost as if there has been a veil surrounding how dumb people can be (and I am including myself in this categorization) and social media has lifted that veil for all the world to see.
Are we really so short-sighted and arrogant to believe that we were actually somehow more sophisticated when we were younger?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like when I was eighteen I was sitting at home leafing through LL Bean catalogs and looking for the next flannel shirt I wanted to purchase (hey - I was going to high school in Cleveland, Ohio so give me a fuc#%ing break). Thank God I didn’t have a Webcam and YouTube because I probably would be making Chris Crocker shaking his head in embarrassment with the crazy s%*t I would have come up with back then (I write ‘back then’ with a nervously optimistic tone).
If we really put things in perspective, what we have is a young self-absorbed kid who wants to be an acotr, who has managed to independently create something that over 7.5 million people have viewed and received coverage in most major news outlets in the US. So is he really that much of an idiot?
Or are we idiots for looking down upon him?
