The decline of Western civilization
How Soulja Boy is threatening our society
Jesse Beach, Volunteer Staff
Last night was an all-too-common period of devout procrastination. Heavily weighed down with no less than four upcoming essay deadlines, combined with the unfair stress of a Friday mid-term, I found myself performing an all-too-familiar task: avoiding my work for as long as possible. As soon as I realized I had begun to procrastinate, I decided to accept the fact that I was no longer going to do any work. Not really having anything to do anymore, I decided to call a friend up. So my night wasted away, watching my buddy’s favourite TV show that he uploads on YouTube.com.
We have all done it; that is, prolonged our procrastination time while simultaneously shortening our lives uploading and watching the always inane but often hilarious clips from the video-sharing website. However, this time, as I sat in my friend’s basement, I came to realize that YouTube has provided an all-too-convenient medium for not only the short, hilarious clips that we all love but also the proliferation of a kind of dribble that is slowly rotting the minds of society’s youth. I am speaking, of course, about Soulja Boy.
Being a white conservative male, I can safely say that I have never seen much use in any of the rap, pop, hip-hop, and “hop-hip,” titles that seem to have become so popular recently. To me, this kind of “music” should be confined to the clubs where drunken and drugged teens need music with a beat to grope each other to. Living the confined, sheltered life that I do, I have maintained the illusion that this scenario was successfully playing out, only encountering the catchy beats while drunk and groping at various nightspots. However, YouTube, occasionally aided by its gigantic ally Facebook.com, has robbed me of my comforting (albeit somewhat delusional) illusions.
But the cultural phenomenon that is YouTube has gone even further than allowing rappers like Soulja Boy to push themselves onto my wall: it has come to create these people in the first place.
Sheltered though I may be, even I can’t escape the linguistic mangling of Soulja Boy’s songs when they are posted on my Facebook wall. It seems innocent enough, one of your 200 or 300 acquaintances, delightfully dubbed your “friends,” sees a video he or she enjoy and would like to share it with you, therefore, he or she post it on your wall. Casual, innocent, not intended to harm in any way, but it is, in effect, a catalyst to mass destruction. But the cultural phenomenon that is YouTube has gone even further than allowing rappers like Soulja Boy to push themselves onto my wall: it has come to create these people in the first place. It was only after the immense popularity that Soulja Boy garnered on YouTube that he released his first independent album. Caught up in an Internet craze, the “Soulja Boy dance” accompanying his first single “Crank That” became the number one hit in the United States for seven non-consecutive weeks. It gets worse. After its Internet success, “Crank That” was nominated for best rap song at the 2008 Grammy Awards, and the kid almost won!
Soulja Boy’s first single, “Crank That,” was one thing. It was a single, a catchy, rhythmic title that was clearly a one-hit-wonder, designed as a quick cash grab and would soon only be remembered as an annoying ring tone that will disrupt my reading in the library sometime six months from now. What bothers me is the existence of his second album, and the fact that it has already crept its way into Facebook.
YouTube has been good to me. It really has. It has provided countless of hours of entertainment that has successfully allowed me to avoid any and all school work all year long. But it cannot be allowed to have this much power. The acceptance and popularity given by YouTube users, only online to avoid doing anything else, does not give fledgling “musicians” the basis for a record deal in the real world. By allowing musicians to become popular based on the reviews of the most bored and disinterested segment of the population, we are undercutting and devaluing the work of real musicians in the real world who are attempting to make it. Through the use of YouTube, people like Soulja Boy are not creating a virtual world: they are sabotaging the real world through a fictional popularity base.
To be honest, I don’t really care about the music industry. I rarely listen to music and, when I feel the rare urge to hear something, I illegally download it. I could clearly not care less about the survival of the music industry. My worries about the creation of a virtual world of simulated social contacts are, if possible, even less profound. Finally, to be perfectly honest, I have even, while drunk and bemused, shouted out “Youuuuu!” at the clubs when “Crank That” first hit the scene. But I cannot soberly stand by while people like Soulja Boy don’t limit themselves to the one-hit-wonder, ring-tone-inspiring people that they are destined to be. I cannot, in good conscience, allow a second Soulja Boy title to be posted on my wall. And, if there is truly going to be a virtual world, I will not allow the theme song to contain the lyrics “Superman that hoe!”
Jesse Beach is a fourth-year English student.
