ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
If you could choose viral fame, would you? If you're lucky, your viral video could land you enough money for a down payment or a college fund. But if you're not so lucky, 15 seconds of fame could open you up to being mocked on a global scale. Brittany Luse is the host of NPR's It's Been A Minute, and once a month, she joins us to unpack surprising trends in culture. Today she is here to tell us how one man's viral infamy taught her a pivotal lesson. Hi, Brittany.
BRITTANY LUSE, BYLINE: Hi, Ari. OK, so our story begins with a guy named Brendan Abernathy. Earlier this year, he was just an unknown singer-songwriter, trying to break into the music industry. And there was one song he was pushing pretty hard on TikTok. It's called "Married In A Year."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MARRIED IN A YEAR")
BRENDAN ABERNATHY: (Singing) You'll be married in a year in the suburbs with a kid on the way in three, convincing yourself you're living...
LUSE: So Abernathy posted multiple videos of himself singing it for small audiences of what looked like a few dozen people. And if you haven't seen them - in these videos, Brendan didn't just sing and strum his guitar, OK? He was belting, on his tippy toes in socks but no shoes, making intense eye contact with the audience and just belting this song out. You could tell he meant every word.
SHAPIRO: Somehow, despite the virality of this, I missed it, but you're painting a very vivid picture.
(LAUGHTER)
LUSE: OK, OK.
SHAPIRO: What was the reaction?
LUSE: While some people on social media found his performance, you know, sweet, if a little corny, a lot of other people thought Brendan Abernathy was committing the worst possible internet sin - being cringe.
SHAPIRO: Oh, God forbid you should be cringe on the internet.
LUSE: (Laughter) Exactly. So for those who aren't familiar, cringe describes any behavior that's a little too sappy, on the nose or earnest in a way that makes you, well, cringe.
SHAPIRO: OK, so what did his comment section look like?
LUSE: Oh, God, it wasn't pretty.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
LUSE: And the hate wasn't just contained to only his social media page. Even videos parodying Abernathy went viral. It was an overwhelming amount of negative attention for someone who, up to that point, was a complete unknown. Our colleague Ramtin Arablouei, cohost of Throughline, spoke to Abernathy about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
ABERNATHY: People were treating me like I'm selling out stadiums. Like...
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: What do you mean by that?
ABERNATHY: ...I'm struggling to sell 100 tickets, and people are picking - are acting like I'm, like, some massive industry plant who they can just, like, tear down. Like, I lived out of my car for four years. You can't really tear me down any more than I'm already down. You hope for a long time that you're going to get a breakthrough into just more ears. And then when it happens and you're getting mocked, laughed at, told to take your own life, you know, whatever, it's just really confusing.
SHAPIRO: Brittany, that's really heartbreaking to hear.
LUSE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SHAPIRO: And it also feels like a way outside's (ph) reaction to a video of a guy singing an earnest love song. Why was the blowback so huge?
LUSE: So Ramtin had some thoughts about this. He's a musician too. He says, our current anti-cringe moment is part of, like, a long-running generational back and forth America does between hating cringe and loving sincerity, like the '80s bubblegum pop, the '90s all about grunge and irony. And in the same way, the cringe of today is a reaction to, you know, hope and change earnestness of the Obama era in the 2000s and 2010s. And now the pendulum has swung back in the other direction.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
ARABLOUEI: In a way, his music - Brendan's music also calls back to that time, right? It sounds like a lot of music from that time. There was nothing worse than being called a poser when we were young, and I think there's nothing worse than being called cringe today for young people.
LUSE: But also, Ramtin says the urge to hate cringe is born from one of the basest of human impulses.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
ARABLOUEI: Like, when I felt like I had some creativity inside me that was not being put out in the world, I wanted to immediately tear down somebody who I saw doing it. And today, because of social media and the anonymity it provides, the distance it provides, it's just much easier to go hard. Like, oh, this sucks. This is trash. You suck.
SHAPIRO: But, like, this much poison cannot be good for us, right? So what's the answer?
LUSE: Well, I think maybe it's time for us to embrace cringe, like, post the photo, send that text, you know? Anything worth having in life - love, joy, community...
SHAPIRO: Hashtag - live, laugh, love.
LUSE: Hashtag - live, laugh, love. Yes, exactly.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
LUSE: I mean, all of these things, they require, like, a kind of sincerity and vulnerability that are elemental to being cringe. And a society without those qualities is a society where people don't care for or about each other. And I don't want to live in a world like that.
SHAPIRO: Well, before we go, how's Brendan doing these days?
LUSE: Oh, he is much better. He's actually got, like, a genuine fan base. He's got an album and a tour coming this fall. But most importantly, he feels good about staying true to both his art and himself.
SHAPIRO: I love a happy ending, even if that is a little bit of a cringe way to wrap some stories up.
LUSE: (Laughter).
SHAPIRO: Brittany, it is great to talk to you. Thank you.
LUSE: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: That's Brittany Luse. She's host of NPR's It's Been A Minute, a show about what's going on in culture.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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