Audiences misread black street humor as calculated fame-seeking rather than coping culture

Evidence

Each time a new eyewitness viral star is plucked from obscurity and curated into instant celebrity, columnists opine that the commodity cycle of fame and commerce may give these viral stars a lifeline by allowing them to cash in on their fame, help them in their plight, and even improve their standing in life. This sentiment is so common that YouTube comments on the original and follow-up interviews (since deleted) ignore the fact that the humor of street talk may be an implicit communicative culture of black persons, or that humor in general can be mobilized as a coping strategy by those in prolonged distress. Instead, several commenters suspect that Dobyne’s humor is a calculated act to generate “fifteen seconds of fame” on television. They criticize her for following a trope, for copying from Sweet Brown, and for wanting to gain fandom or celebrity. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 159

Categorization

• XREF: Reflects the reader’s pattern of white-majority readings of the racialized other, echoing the misreading-of-culture theme from earlier work on the veil. — connects to: People interpret ambiguous acts as more aggressive when the actor is Black — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 272; Viral meme culture commodifies Black speech while erasing lived context — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 283; Repeated negative representations lead audiences to accept them as truths — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 498 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• People interpret ambiguous acts as more aggressive when the actor is Black #exemplifies (0.85) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 272
• Viral meme culture commodifies Black speech while erasing lived context #expands (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 283
• Repeated negative representations lead audiences to accept them as truths #corroborates (0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 498