If you're of the right age, then you'll remember when you saw Justin Bieber's "Baby" music video for the first time, or heard the song for the first time, and remember his entire rise to the place that he's at right now. You'll probably also remember when One Direction's members all auditioned separately for The X-Factor, were put together in a group by the show and then finished third and promptly exploded all over the world within the year.
For my generation (I'm 20), these occurrences coincided with the beginning of Internet culture - in 2010/2011. That was when places like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram started to gain popularity, and throughout the years, more platforms have become more popular and we have recognized their importance in building a career for a celebrity, especially as the years have gone along. There are even full-blown celebrities that exist purely on the Internet at this point (think Zoella, PewDiePie or Philip DeFranco). Justin Bieber and One Direction came to be when we were all becoming teenagers and started having crushes on boys (or girls, or whatever, but boys for this scenario) and they were the first real heartthrobs for us. They were created with the rise of the Internet, and so the Internet became a more and more vital part of their careers that they used to promote their latest works and events, as well as to connect with fans and make them feel loved and special.
If you're anything like me, you grew up on the Internet. I think that mine was one of the last, if not the last, generation that actually grew up playing outside and with physical toys and remembers the steady integration of Internet into their lives until it was just there all the time and no one can remember when it wasn't. My sister is 14, and she's basically always had some kind of device, whether it was an iPod Touch or an iPad or an iPhone (she has just the tablet and the phone now - and I say just). I remember discovering YouTube and spending hours watching videos of my favourite creators (which I still do) and scrolling through my Twitter and Instagram feeds when I was 14, and then later, my Snapchat, Facebook, and Tumblr feeds (pretty sure I had Twitter before Facebook, tbh).
I've always had an obsessive personality, in that it is very easy for me to find something I like and think about only that thing for a very long period of time. Some of my obsessions have stuck; like Ariana Grande, Fifth Harmony and the general concept of YouTube, and some of them have come and gone, like Jack & Jack, R5, The Vamps and many other bands/humans that I no longer want to know everything about all the time. The Internet is where I discovered fan culture for the first time and it gave me the ability for me to connect with other fans that liked the same things that I did, because for some reason my friends and I (at the time, but still now) had totally different interests and I was also too shy to actually show them this thing that I loved in case they thought it was lame and made me feel bad for liking it, whether they meant to or not. So, instead, I found my community on the Internet and bonded with strangers over something that we all loved a lot. Being on the Internet in fan culture during the last 5 years meant that I got to watch Justin Bieber and One Direction blow up all around the world and watch the number of followers they had on their social media platforms rise everyday. With that, I also got to watch the two fandoms fight each other, as well as many other fandoms fight each other, or watch them tweet endlessly to get awards for their favourite people, and even sometimes defend them against the media when bad stories were written and published about them. The one commonality between all fandoms, no matter who they're created for, is that they are the reason that you are at the top, and that they have the power to drag you right back down to the bottom. Not that they would, because there's always a big enough sect that loves them and holds them up there no matter what they do, even if it's ridiculous to do so.
Since the rise of Justin Bieber and One Direction, there have been many, many more bands come onto the teen music scene (a term I'm using to refer to the kinds of pop-music-sounding bands that get covered in J-14, M and Twist magazines); people like Fifth Harmony, Bea Miller and Madison Beer, as well as more boy bands (the actual topic of this that I'll get to in a second) like The Tide, Forever In Your Mind and PRETTYMUCH. In each of their careers, social media played an increasingly important role in their rise to the top. Some groups will probably never blow up and be able to play MSG or The Staples Centre or anything like that, because that's just how the industry works sometimes. Not to say that they won't have any success at all, just that they won't have that much and won't become as famous as Justin Bieber or One Direction in that literally everyone in the world with access to the Internet knows who they are.
Now's the time for the little aside that is the reason for this entire piece of writing in the first place. I follow this YouTuber called NerdyandQuirky (her name is Sabrina, she's great, go watch her), and last week, she went on a paid #spon #ad trip to Los Angeles and while she was there (this was the #spon #ad part of the trip) she went to a concert for this band named PRETTYMUCH. She posted a lot of it on her Instagram story and on her Snapchat story, and I watched them and didn't really care because I had never heard of them before. Later that night, I got bored so I decided to Google them because Sabrina seemed to be having a really good time and I trust her judgement, so I looked them up. Turns out they're Simon Cowell's new group and are being advertised as "the new One Direction", considering that he was the mastermind behind them as well. I found and have been listening to their one song (they've only been around for about 6 months) for about 3 days on loop as of right now, and I'm pretty sure everyone I live with is ready to kill me because I've been blaring it throughout the house for that entire 3 days.
As these boys are my new obsession (and mostly fascination), I've been teaching myself everything there is to know about them and watching a bunch of their YouTube videos and such. I was thinking about them this morning (which is basically all I've been doing all weekend, but in a more critical manner this time) and was thinking about the comparison between them and One Direction. I realized that every group that's mega-famous right now (Ariana Grande, Fifth Harmony, etc) took about 5 years to get to this point. I remember when they were small little artists on X-Factor or Nickelodeon and now are mega-superstar singers that tour the world for their millions of fans. It took One Direction a little less time than that because they just had that little thing about them that everyone loved, but roughly it's been about 5 years for everyone else.
For One Direction, social media was a growing part of their career because it grew in prevalence at the same time they did, and so progressively, it became more and more important for them to utilize in order to promote themselves and their music and merch, etc. For PRETTYMUCH, who have only been around for about 6 months, social media is something that will probably become absolutely essential to their rise to fame, and is already something that they're utilizing. YouTube videos, Instagrams, Snapchats, the whole deal. I'm pretty sure that Simon Cowell dug all of these kids out of the Internet and found them because they already used it to expose themselves (he put them all together like he did with One Direction) and so it obviously is and will continue to be vital to them for exposure. In an age when a lot of artists are being discovered because they have millions of YouTube subscribers and followers on Twitter, I think it's important that artists that haven't started like that to utilize it as well, whether it's to gain new fans, keep their current ones engaged, or both.
I was also thinking about the fact that everyone keeps comparing the two groups together. They are similar, in that it's 5 boys that Simon Cowell found and made a group with that can all sing (I will admit PRETTYMUCH has to work on it a little, but it's still the beginning so I'm cutting some slack here). PRETTYMUCH dances, One Direction didn't (and doesn't, if we're going with the "hiatus" thing), and that's pretty much (lol) the only difference. I mean, PRETTYMUCH isn't British, but that's kind of irrelevant. I don't know how much of a comparison you can really make between them, because I think the fact that One Direction was on X-Factor means that they had a lot of exposure worldwide before they actually did anything outside of the show, whereas PRETTYMUCH is definitely starting from the ground up. They have Simon Cowell behind them, so realistically, they'll probably be okay as long as he believes that they can go somewhere and they show him that they can go somewhere. They performed at the Teen Choice Awards' Teen Fest on the day that I'm writing this, so clearly they're okay already. Give them a year, an album and a small tour across the US and they should be ready to set themselves up as the next big thing for 14-16 year old girls everywhere to obsess over (I say as a 20 year old female who also loves them - your inner boyband fangirl never truly leaves you).
PRETTYMUCH is only one small example of what this whole post was supposed to be about. They are the whole reason that it even exists, because they got me thinking about it in the first place. I think my final summary thought on this is that celebrity culture is just weird. The only common denominator between all of these people that we love and celebrate and follow everyday is that they're talented at something and worked hard to be recognized for it and be able to do it everyday of their lives. Other than that, they're all completely different. They all do the thing they do differently from each other, and are from totally different places and backgrounds and family dynamics. Yet we all, as a society, picked these people and say to them, all the time, "You are good at [talent] and we love you for it, so here's all my money and support so you can keep doing it". Imagine how different the world would be if we didn't pick a certain celebrity to elevate to the top, or if an A-lister was at the bottom of the proverbial fame pyramid. That would be weird.
