Most successful eyewitness viral stars are poor black people commodified for middle-class entertainment

Evidence

Eyewitness viral stars are packaged and posited, manufactured, and milked for a combination of three key ingredients that are needed to make a feel-good viral news story: Their plight that solicits a “pity factor,” verbal parlance that offers a “comedic factor,” and a persona of charisma curated by news networks that massages a “likeability factor.” But curiously, a clear majority of “successful” eyewitness viral stars are black persons of low socioeconomic status, whose pity-comedic-likeability dimensions are premised on an intended middle-class audience’s sense of distance from and exoticism toward the everyday lives of the poor and people of color. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the earlier Islamophobia/race scholarship and the ‘commodification of otherness’ idea, echoing how marginalized groups get consumed as spectacle. — connects to: Eyewitness viral stars are accidental celebrities manufactured by television news networks — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 150; Third parties capture most economic value from eyewitness viral stars — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 161; Eyewitness viral fame rarely translates into sustained financial return — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 160 (+1 more)
• SHARE: The ‘pity-comedic-likeability factor’ triple is a genuinely useful analytic for a media-studies friend analyzing viral interview clips.

Broader Connections

• Third parties capture most economic value from eyewitness viral stars #expands (0.85) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 161
• Many actors profit from viral stars’ images without returning value to them #expands (0.85) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 161
• Eyewitness viral stars are accidental celebrities manufactured by television news networks #qualifies (0.75) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 150
• Eyewitness viral fame rarely translates into sustained financial return #corroborates (0.70) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 160