A Good Burn

Back when I was still in high school the cool thing to do was to try and introduce new music to the people in your social circle. It was a matter of pride to be able to bring a new song to the group before anyone else and if you were the first to discover a good new band you were instantly given more street cred. Sadly, this trend appears to be dying. There are two reasons for this. The first is the rise of the insufferable music snob. Whereas you or I would want to bring new music to our friends' attention so they could enjoy it with us, the music snob wants to feel superior to those alleged 'friends' by rubbing their noses in the fact that they heard it first. But the second and main reason for this is that there hasn't been much good music in the last few years. Seriously, think about the musicians who have become superstars in the last three years: do you think any of them are going to be big stars in 10 year? Please, most of them will be one-hit wonders who have been out of the public eye within 5 years. (The only good news is that they can all go on a "remember us?" tour together and split the cost of the hotel room.) It's hard to be a music aficionado when all the music is awful. It is especially sad when you think about the fact that sharing music has gotten easier than ever. Just 10 years ago you had to burn a CD if you wanted to make a playlist of good music for a friend and that took hours compared to putting together a playlist now. It's a shame the music industry couldn't keep up with the technology.

However, just because the all the good music has apparently all been made that doesn't mean the basic human need to share things with your friends has faded. Kids still want to be the first to discover the next pop-culture sensation and share it with their friends but instead of music the void to find the next cool thing first has been filled by viral videos. The latest video making the rounds was called "Ultimate Twerking Fail" (I actually just saw it for the first time over the weekend). Now, for those of you who missed 'twerking' (and be glad that you did), it's a type of dance in which the person just shimmies their butt around a lot. I guess the appeal is that pretty much everyone can do it. Anyway, this particular video (which you can Google if you want to see it for yourself) showed a girl recording a twerking video for her boyfriend. At one point she tried to go to the extreme and twerked while doing a handstand leaning against a door. But while she was doing that her mom opened the door and caused the daughter to go crashing through a glass table that was behind her. As if that wasn't bad enough there were candles on the table, the girl's pant leg caught fire and the video ended with the two of them screaming bloody murder. Considering it had everything you want in a viral video - it was short and it featured a cute girl, a pop culture fad, a cringe-worthy accident and fire - it was only a matter of time before it had tens of millions of views on the internet. It was also fake.

Yep, it turns out that the video was the brainchild of late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. He revealed that fact on his show last night when they aired the clip, only this one continued on after the screaming and Kimmel opened the door with a fire extinguisher in hand. The girl was a stunt woman and totally fine from her fall and subsequent fire. I have to say, I really appreciated this. I admittedly don't watch any of the late night talk shows because I cast my vote for "The Daily Show" several years ago and never looked back. But, I think if I were to start watching one of them I would probably end up watching Kimmel. Not only is he the youngest of all the hosts (at least until Fallon takes over for Leno in February), he is not afraid to use technology to create the most talk-about moments on late night. You certainly wouldn't see Letterman doing this since someone on his staff would have to explain both twerking and viral videos to him. Also, the craftsmanship which had to go into this joke was admirable. When you remember that they had to hire this girl, get it up on the internet with as few people knowing as possible, let the video go viral organically and then keep their mouths shut about it as the video started to gain steam took a tremendous amount of self-control. I am also impressed that the stunt woman, who probably got tons of invitations to be on morning talk shows to tell her story (because those guys are desperate to fill that third hour each day), was able to maintain her silence. That is true commitment to getting a laugh.

Normally I am not a huge fan of pranks but in this case I am all for it. The main thing is that it is nice to know that no one really got hurt but it also showed me that this generation of teenagers is not as jaded as I had feared. Sometimes it feels like the kids just getting to high school now are too skeptical. Having a certain level of personal armor up by the time you become a teenager is both healthy and expected because you wouldn't want a kid to be that naive about the world by that age, but you also don't want kids going too far the other way and losing all their wonder, which is what I worry growing up with the internet has done to them. Every single video on the internet gets labeled as a fake by someone on YouTube but I didn't see many comments like that about this clip. It is just nice to know that even though all these kids are raised to question every single thing they see or read on the internet, they can still get sucked in as long as the joke is well-done. They may be the most tech-savvy generation the world has ever seen but they don't know everything. They got fooled like the rest of us and it was healthy for them to be taken down a peg or two. My only fear is that being tricked like this will cause them to double-down on their doubts and suddenly they won't be able to look at things which are taking place in front of them without wondering if there is a camera hidden somewhere. It would be a shame if the concept of viral videos was killed off by something like this before viral video snobs can come along and finish it off like nature intended.