Supposed grassroots virality was often orchestrated celebrity marketing

Evidence

This tactic persisted into the next decade. While in Canada, Bieber and his then-girlfriend Selena Gomez heard a catchy pop song, “Call Me Maybe,” on the radio by the relatively unknown Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen. Recognizing its potential, Bieber asked Braun to sign Jepsen, and together they orchestrated a viral marketing campaign. Bieber and Gomez filmed a lip-synch video in the homemade YouTube aesthetic, sparking a wave of fan engagement that propelled the song into one of the year’s biggest hits. The song’s meteoric rise had less to do with democratic mechanisms than with carefully managed celebrity endorsement. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 293

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s task: this is evidence for the ‘death of the sellout’ mechanism Marx proposes — authenticity itself became a manufactured aesthetic. — connects to: Becoming a viable internet celebrity from a viral meme is rare and luck-driven — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 162; Traditional media recruit viral everyday users into celebrity roles — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 184