(Inspired by reading this related post on a friend's blog...)
You don't know me, and I certainly don't know you. Having watched your first music video and made fun of it does not count as knowing you. But that's the thing about celebrity - it creates a false sense of familiarity. We all know your face and your voice, and we know what time you wake up in the morning. Many people even feel they know you well enough to make comments on your video that discount you as a human being, not just as a singer or songwriter. And that's certainly something they had no right to say, and no basis for saying it.
We could say that you asked for it, by choosing to put your music out there for the world to see. We could say that aiming at celebrity brings with it the chance that as many people will hate you as love you. And yet that seems to be a little like saying that those who visit war-zones deserve to be killed. The truth is that the comments people have written on your video have been truly ugly, so ugly that the video keeps being removed and then re-uploaded as a semi-effective means of controlling the hatred. At least the record of hate gets occasionally deleted, only to be replaced by more, and the occasional plea for goodwill, and sometimes, just sometimes, a comment that says, "I actually like this song..."
But it isn't just those who have hated it - and you - openly that have shown an ugliness in humanity. It's also those of us who have delighted in mocking it. The number of parodies now far outweighs the original versions available on YouTube - it now takes a concerted effort to find the real thing amidst all the mocking imitations and ironic cover versions. I watched a few and laughed. I participated in the mockery as much as most respectable Gen-Yers did. I can't apologise on their behalf, but I can say that I am sorry. You don't deserve this. If your courting of fame has left much to be desired, that doesn't excuse us for our ridicule. We were always taught in school that bullies make fun of others to feel better about themselves. We were always taught this was low. It isn't any lower when you bully someone you can't see. It isn't lower when the person you bully is also an overnight celebrity.
The truth is, I don't know if you are old enough to reflect on this whole situation in a way that will edify and not destroy you. Your latest video seems to suggest that you are fighting those who hate you by trying to prove them wrong. Perhaps you shouldn't fight them; perhaps you should just take away their fuel, by ignoring them and getting on with being a teenage girl. But then almost no girl your age is content to just be herself, and we have not helped, by telling you how worthless that self is. We have never been in any position to judge.
What is saddest, perhaps, is that a song with so much youthful innocence about it - a song where the hardest choice of the week is whether to sit in the front seat or the back - should have inspired death threats and online vendettas. I guess you can't go back to that world now, can you? But hopefully, with time, you can be wiser, and hopefully humanity, by the grace of the God I believe in, will see for itself the evil that it does, again and again, every time it picks on the weakest to make itself feel stronger.
Yours sincerely,
Ideas From the North.
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