I don’t care for his music or his antics, but Bieber legitimately built his own fanbase on YouTube before he got noticed and signed to a label. He’s not a manufactured star; it seems to me he “deserves” his fame as much as anyone else who worked hard for it.
Unless by “undeserved” you mean “he’s popular but I don’t like him so he must be stupid and lazy,” which seems to be what you’re doing.
Now, it’s important to remember that Sinatra was a fat, unwashed sociopath who didn’t shave his neck and frequented MRA forums. You can tell, because he had a fedora.
[quote=“PhasmaFelis, post:41, topic:40183”]
I don’t care for his music or his antics, but Bieber legitimately built his own fanbase on YouTube before he got noticed and signed to a label. He’s not a manufactured star; it seems to me he “deserves” his fame as much as anyone else who worked hard for it.[/quote]
Plenty of musicians build fanbases on YouTube, yet somehow they aren’t all wealthy and famous. I rather doubt that Beiber was somehow more deserving of success than the countless others who didn’t get signed.
You don’t need “Brains + street smarts + ability to be a people person” to be profitable to a corporate interest. You just need to be suitably popular.
Don’t believe me? Look at “reality television” and internet memes. Look at the most viewed YouTube videos. The stupidest, most vapid and banal stuff can become wildly popular. Popularity is not an indicator of quality in any reasonable way.
But it is an indicator of potential profit for the record companies willing to scout out popular individuals and then groom them to suit their needs.
Beiber was one such individual - he had an extant fanbase to build off of, and he was tractable enough to mold to fit the marketing machines’ needs. Or do you think he and his music just spontaneously changed of their own accord after he signed his contract?
If you think Beiber deserves his celebrity and wealth, I’m not out to change your mind. But I will point out that his being popular, and his managing to land a record deal, is in no way indicative of his being deserving or not.
Do I think Beiber has “Brains + street smarts + ability to be a people person”? Perhaps the latter two, to some extent.
He made himself likeable to his target audience, so that’s being a “people person”. And he managed to get signed and has yet to destroy his career with hookers and blow (not that that always spells disaster for people in his business anyways, but nevermind), so I’ll grant him the “street smarts” bit.
But brains? No, I’m sorry - I’ve seen far too much evidence against his being terribly bright to entertain the thought with any seriousness.
That’s not to say I think he’s an imbecile (although some of his “antics” as you put it suggest that line of thinking rather strongly), but he certainly isn’t a particularly sharp tack of any sort. At best he’s no smarter or dumber than the Average Joe - but that’s hardly what the equation calls for, is it?
Really? It seems that way? Methinks you’re reading a bit too much between the lines looking to see what you want to see. Let’s look at what I actually said.
All I said was I think the two individuals I named are undeserving of their celebrity. Nowhere did I say a single thing about anyone being stupid or lazy. I didn’t even suggest it.
The closest I’ve come to anything like what you accuse me of is in this very post - where I in fact state I do NOT think Beiber is stupid: I just don’t think he’s particularly bright either.
So the only place you could have possibly gotten the ideas of stupidity and laziness from are in your own head. Methinks you are projecting.
Methinks me’s done with me’s contribution here.
That makes sense. It was nearly 30 years between this interview (ghost-written or otherwise) and that incident.
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