The Smoke and Mirrors around “Things Are Getting Pretty Serious”
This blog post started as an attempt to reverse engineer a meme but ended up being an argument on the idea of post-truth in the music industry. So, enjoy a convergence of week 2 and week 3 topics.
Off the top of my head, a meme that I’d want to look up and figure out how it went viral would be one having anything to do with the music industry. So, with a simple Google search, I typed in “top music industry memes”.
The one below made so much sense to me because it touches both on our post-truth world arguing how exposure helps support what we’d like to think is a fact and just hilarious things we see on a day to day basis in the music industry.
I tried everything to find out just who this dorky character was to then deconstruct the meaning behind this meme. I turned to the wonderful #RTA902 Facebook page for the help of my brilliant Social Media classmates. Alexandra Cox enlightened me with the answer: this was Kip from the film, Napoleon Dynamite. www.knowyourmeme.com is literally the meme dictionary. So, for those who have yet to do their blogs and wish to reverse engineer a meme, check out this site!
Anyways, here’s a little background on this particular image and how it connects to post-truth:
Things Are Getting Pretty Serious
The actual clip from the scene and it’s full breakdown can be found here. The whole background on “So I guess you can say things are getting pretty serious” meme derived from a conversation Kip had with his uncle about where Kip’s relationship stood with his girlfriend and the fact that they are steady based on their ongoing online chats. What brings the humour and what KnowYourMeme shared is the fact that the statement indicated “that the level of intimacy in a relationship has been misunderstood”.
This catchphrase has now shifted across many different contexts of misunderstandings. Since the famous words were first said back in 2004, it’s interest reached its peak in 2013 after it became a meme in 2012 with the caption, “She accepted my friend request on Facebook / So I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious”.
The meme I’ve chosen above shows the misconceptions of fame in the music industry. It takes the main catchphrase out of the meme but the photo remained, which is probably why I had so much trouble trying to find it but it also argues the fact that the image of the meme is so famous that the catchphrase is not even as needed.
The caption reads, “A friend of mine with a music blog and an article in a local newspaper said my album was awesome…. I guess you can say now it’s a critically acclaimed release.” Going back to my last week’s blog post on the post-truth, the more exposure a story gets, the more it can be accepted as true or factual. The album might suck but if your friend puts in a good word and your newspaper wants to support local talent which then gains you a few followers, then hey, all power to you as an artist. Keep milking the attention.
With these “publications” talking about your album, you can begin to think you’re gaining popularity, momentum on your album, and fame with your career. But who is talking about you? If it’s Billboard, Rolling Stone, or even my personal favourite, Ellen DeGeneres, then yes — I would say, “Things are getting pretty serious” in terms of truth. But these days, especially in the music business, you’re able to create the appearance of things getting serious even if you’re really not progressing that much.
The quote, “fake it till you make it” is one that may seem funny and absurd, but it’s true. In fact, I was taught the importance of that phrase in a previous class and how to really capitalize off it. We like to “appear” that we are advancing and we take what we can get to support our belief that our music actually going somewhere. By continuously “faking it” through reinforcing the thought that we’re in demand, we’re slowly “making it” because our name is popping up more frequently and people begin to believe us because people are talking about us. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Repetitive content can manipulate an audience into belief.
Again, I might be cynical here and appear to be putting down smaller publications that actually do genuinely support local artists, but it’s so easy these days to construct this idea of truth. If your music is good, there will be listeners without you having to ask. In the case of the meme, we can see that Kip has a friend who wrote an article for him and therefore the opinion of his music is biased and subjective rather than evaluating its quality. You could ask Ellen or the writers over at Billboard to do a feature on your new album all you want, but if it isn’t good, you won’t be considered.
With all this fake news running around making it hard to differentiate compelling content from clickbait content, who cares about the source when you’re an artist trying to make it? The more you’re talked about, the more people in your network will remember you. When we don’t know the whole truth or, should I say, when we don’t feel like digging enough to find out the whole truth, we often settle for what is right in front of our eyes and often times don’t even look at the source of information.
The term “smoke and mirrors” mean something that deceives or distorts the truth. Using smoke and mirrors can often fool the best of us, making content look attractive that really is worthless. As an artist, that illusion can be used to your advantage. Use the smoke and mirrors in your strategy to fake it till you make it!
Now would you look at that? One image with a sarcastic caption can turn into a critical conversation on real-life happenings. We covered clickbait content, meme culture, and the post-truth within the music industry. After all, isn’t that the sole purpose of meme culture?
