Susan Boyle Conspiracy Theory
I want so badly to believe that Susan Boyle is a real phenomenon. I want to have faith that someone can appear out of nowhere, show off some talent, and have their life changed as a result. I want to believe that wasn’t possible before the internet existed, and everyone had their own channel and way of promoting something they view as important. But something doesn’t seem quite right. The whole thing seems manufactured. I feel like every tweet or blog post about Susan Boyle is all part of someone’s big marketing strategy and we are all just pawns in the effort.
Susan Boyle, of course, is the frumpy, never-been-kissed, middle-aged British woman, whose video singing on Britain’s Got Talent has become a YouTube sensation. And because millions of people watched her online, and tweeted/blogged/status-updated and everyting else about her, she has now become a mainstream media celebrity as well. The world, it seems, is obsessed with Susan Boyle.
But, Susan Boyle wouldn’t have become known around the world if she hadn’t appeared on a major network television show in the UK. She wouldn’t have appeared on the show if she hadn’t auditioned, or been found by a producer who was looking to generate great ratings. And she wouldn’t have become an international celebrity if the media hadn’t amplified what people online started to buzz about.
How many Susan Boyle’s are out there that haven’t been discovered — people with real talent who can’t make it to a television studio to audition, or whose story isn’t sad/inspiring enough to generate ratings?
How many people, who have real talent, or big ideas for how to solve complex problems in our society, put videos up on YouTube ever day — only nobody sees it?
How many other, better, ways could the energy and attention that is being paid Susan Boyle (who is singing cover songs, let’s be honest) have been applied – to help people in real need, or solve serious issues facing our society?
There is no doubt that the story of Susan Boyle makes us all feel good – and in tough economic times, and with everything else going on, that is probably needed. Additionally, there are probably some important lessons in how her story traveled that can teach us about how people get and share information and the potential for the internet to transform someone, or some issue, into a very big deal. Still, I don’t believe that just appeared, or that her story is that much more amazing than someone else’s. Her explosion into the public consiousness follows the same pattern as Paul Potts, and Captain Sully, and all the other incredible stories that capture our attention for a short while. It speaks volumes about our society, and what we choose to spend our time and energy on. It speaks volumes as well about the state of our news media, and why it should come as no surprise that nobody wants to pay for the content that newspapers and others are producing.
Buying in to the whole Susan Boyle movement, no matter how interesting or heroic or inspiring her story is, just seems naive. I feel as if I am being taken advantage of by the marketing geniuses of the world. What do you think?
Something about the whole Susan Boyle thing just doesn’t sit right with me. http://tinyurl.com/d3kscn
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Susan Boyle Conspiracy Theory http://ff.im/-2gB0D
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Something about the whole Susan Boyle thing just doesn’t sit right [to @BrianReich] http://tinyurl.com/d3kscn [interesting points]
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But entertainment is a big industry from which we all partake, and people watch Britain's Got Talent to be entertained — not such an awful thing at a time when real life is filled with sickness, unemployment, war and a host of other not very happy things. Maybe there's a marketing genius behind Susan Boyle, as is so often the case with these phenoms, but in this case, the marketing message says that anyone can be a jewel in the rough, which is a message sorely needed by a popular culture dominated by physical perfection and youth, sending driving everyday people to plastic surgery and eating disorders. In this case, I would applaud that marketing genius.
#wemedia Susan Boyle Conspiracy Theory http://ow.ly/3tkS
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Reading: Susan Boyle Conspiracy Theory (via @wemedia) Maybe there’s a marketing genius behind Susan Boyle?? Ridiculous!
http://ow.ly/3tkS
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I hear you, but I think those w/ talent can now create their own distribution, become "stars" and be outside the system, still earning a good living because of the new technologies and modes of communication.
Why, Ze Frank — We Media Game Changer award winner — comes to mind as a prototypical example. Here's a guy who was doing dog portraits for extra cash. learned some web skills and accidentally created a performance art industry for himself when a video he made became viral.
So take hear, ye Brian!
I agree with you about the conspiracy thing. While there’s no denying that she has a beautiful voice, it seemed to me that everyone was overreacting. When Leona Lewis was on The X Factor about 2 years ago, this sort of overwhelming approval was nowhere to be seen, despite her equally beautiful voice. An old psychology teacher told me of some study wherein motorists were more likely to help a stranger with a disabled vehicle if they thought the stranger was attractive. Thus, part of the reasoning behind the phenomenon becomes clear. People, myself included, weren’t reacting so emotionally because she was *that* good, but because their prejudice initially encouraged them to think negatively of her. She isn’t “attractive” so we didn’t expect her to be talented (I could go on a Seven Sisters-inspired rant about this not being the case for men, but I’ll spare you).
More important than our prejudice was the way the producers of the show cut her segment, further priming us to reject her. The segment starts with the kind of background music you’d expect during an animated character’s wacky hijinx and then we hear laughter from the audience. The message: don’t take this woman seriously, she’s Britain’s answer to William Hung. Then, she introduces herself to bewildered looks from Ant and Dec and rolled eyes/disgust from the judges. Once she starts singing, everyone is dumbfounded and Ant even says, “You didn’t expect that, did you?” to the camera.
Realistically, she did have to go through some sort of audition to even get in front of the camera. I read somewhere that Simon Cowell’s record company is already in talks to cut a deal with her. With Leona Lewis, such rumors didn’t start until closer to the show’s finale. Cowell got to where he is by knowing what the people want, and what we want right now is to feel good. I somewhat cynically consider a marketing campaign to be "good" when it acknowledges the ugly truths about humanity, and capitalizes on those truths by presenting us with the people we pretend/want to be. The average person likes to think they don’t judge others based on their appearance, especially in a talent competition. But when all is said and done, there’s no objective reason why people initially reacted so negatively toward Susan Boyle. We saw a frumpy, goofy, middle-aged woman, who has never been kissed and lives alone with her cat, and, when that combined with the masterful editing of the segment, we thought, “Surely, she isn’t a winner”. When she turned out to be talented, we were ashamed of ourselves. So, some marketing geniuses at Britain’s Got Talent took our shame and turned it into a feel-good story (despite it still being derisive of Susan) during a time when everything around us was depressing (I also wonder how many times our military has completed a mission, like that with the Somali pirates, without receiving media coverage…). Now everyone is sharing Susan Boyle videos as if to say, “Look at me, world. I can accept this ordinary-looking woman for the talented singer she really is.” And we can sleep easier thinking that we really are the people we imagine ourselves to be.
Sorry for the long-winded response but this has been bothering me.
When I read the first paragraph of your post, Brian, I thought you were overreacting just a bit–but giving it some thought., you might not be.
Horatio Alger stories–and our media abounds with them–have always bothered me. They often do not tell the whole story. Susan Boyle's an Horatio Alger story. We want to believe these stories so bad, esp. during hard times (and we're still pretty much in economic hard times.)
And, yes, there are a lot of–for lack of a better term–"savvy" marketers who are poised to make the Horatio Alger story happen just the way that will tweak our emotions and make us believe that something can come out of just a whole lot of spunk and "talent."
Interestingly, though, with Susan Boyle, there have been a bunch of social media types who are acting a bit like leeches on her Alger-esque rise. Check out the number of Twitter accounts that are Susan Boyle Fan accounts. I'd hazard a bet that these are set up by enterprising marketing types trying to bolster their own reputations by starting a fan site. Think about the latest bit of cheering that came out of the marketing sphere over the woman who (supposedly) did the Mad Men Twitter stuff all on her own (supposedly.) If not an outright conspiracy, there are more funhouse smoke and mirror "savvy" marketing effects than there were even a few months ago. We'll see more of it until it becomes ineffective.
When I saw the posting Susan Boyle Conspiracy Theory, I thought, oh boy the lunatic fringe finally weighs in. But, I was wrong. It was only a gathering of the jaded pessimists club. I especially thought the bit about the tweeting and blogging thing to be hypocritical, as that is exactly the venue you have used to express your thoughts. Are you truly that pessimistic or is this just your own smoke and mirror psuedo-intellectual marketing strategy?
Reading: Susan Boyle Conspiracy Theory http://ad.vu/bfrk
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I couldn’t agree more with you.
For obvious reasons Susan Boyle makes ‘regular’ people feel better about themselves, inspite of the way she sings. We allow her her talent by virtue of her looks. We are more critical of people who are less like us: who are better looking, more talented, richer, slimmer etc, but not because we wish we were more like them, but because we wish they were more like us. Susan Boyle’s looks were in no uncertain terms an asset to her success.