Millions of teens around the world have been sleep deprived as Ariana Grande changed her profile picture on a banned social network for a few seconds and immediately returned it! The press is hysterical, the envious whining, historians are stunned.
By the way, it doesn’t matter who Ariana Grande is. It’s important to have distraught fans watching their accounts 24 hours a day. Of course, teenagers: growing up, separation, hormones, father and mother are enemies, aunt from the cover is the best … Why is it the best? Because young people are more sensitive to the imperfection of the world than anyone else. And the aunt is perfection itself! Also Photoshopped talks about serious stuff in a logical way. not like the old days…
Teenagers don’t need the latest smartphones and expensive clothes. They need an ideal imitator who they think will be better than their disgusted parents, crazy teachers, and “moron” peers.
And if an idol appears in public with a new smartphone or wears clothes of certain brands, it means that a teenager will somehow acquire these qualities in full. Is it possible to approach the ideal without them?
The idol factory is a very profitable, fun and politically important business. A music producer at Almost Famous wrote to Led Zeppelin prototypes, “Your listeners are 14 years old now. They’re going to college in two years and they won’t need you.”
This is true. With the last money, only a teenager can buy the products of his favorite artist. It is the target audience of all show business between the ages of 11-14. By the age of 16, teens should be fully immersed in the informational and emotional cocoon that the makers will weave for them. Most will be out of there by the age of 20. As a rule, they will not be the personalities that their parents intended to raise them, but they will be ideal consumers. Some will stay in this cocoon for the rest of their lives.
Hippies, punks, metalheads, rappers, goths, hipsters – every subculture consists of a series of manipulations that should affect youth in a certain way. A specific genre of music, installation genres, and film plots are used for each adolescent psychotype.
The easiest way to follow the work of producers is to see it later. For example, the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Bands were chosen that said the same thing but with a different presentation: The Beatles – for romantically inclined boys and girls, Pink Floyd – for introverts, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath – for the physically active, The Rolling Stones – for carving, Queen – their melodic yet emotional compositions for those who don’t like it etc. The coverage turned out to be maximum – the psychiatrists did a great job.
Each psychotype was offered a main idol and a dozen “idols” with a hundred “micro-idols” as a bonus – after all, marketers got involved. More precisely, intelligence officers who began to use political manipulation mechanisms in show business. After that they invited the “creative” component to the case. I mean PR people. Psychiatrists and marketers did a good job, and PR people were traditionally given shovels and tasked with throwing their creative exhaust at the fan.
And is it surprising that the biographies of the stars are so similar? Every second comes from a difficult childhood. As a rule, fatherlessness with a crazy mother (Lennon, Bowie, etc.). In the Russian version, orphanage children are the children of alcoholics. Or parents are simply hard-working workers who see their children not as pop stars (Elvis Presley, Sting, etc.) but as successors to the family business. Future stars, as a rule, gain fame after a scandalous performance, antics with a “fan” (or with a “fan”), a hit with a “secret” (understandable only for 12-year-old schoolchildren). And popularity is supported by stuffing information about novels, divorces, drugs, fights, and even changing avatars in accounts on a banned social network.
With creativity among PR people, as you can see, everything has always been zashib. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter how well they earn their bread – the point is that these techniques work flawlessly both 70 years ago and now. Young people believe everything written about their idols, get surprised, fall in love, imitate them and unite in communities. Dramas are played in these ensembles, and there is a contest for the right to a place closer to the “star”.
Once, at the age of 13, at the concert “Tender May”, my friends and I witnessed a fierce quarrel of several girls at once, who found out among themselves which Yura Shatunov had to marry. And three years later, the “forbidden lyrics” of Dovlaty, who had undeniable authority for “drinking with Tsoi” and reciting his poems, in the mind of Sergei Dovlatov.
Fan communities are a separate world with hierarchy and serious competition.
Otherwise, no one would be on duty around Ariana Grande’s account around the clock to be the first to like, comment, and ideally be the first to view the avatar replacement. The desire for spiritual perfection can inspire even less sacrifice.
The show business has become the most suitable tool to control the irrepressible youth energy. In ancient times, youth idols were heroes and humanoid gods. In the Middle Ages, people lived without idols, no matter what atheists, enemies of Christianity and Islam said. In the XVIII-XIX centuries, the gods of the Enlightenment appeared – “Voltaire of Diderot” of all kinds. And in the 20th century there was a glitch – the “Voltaires with Diderot” gave rise to very dangerous idols – Lenin and Hitler.
No one wanted a repeat of the Russian revolution and WWII in their own country, but reversing the influence of the Church as the most stable system in human history was not beneficial for the politicians of the new time either. They are from a different camp. Thus, scarabs (there in the rotting West) and clowns (us) were played on. Talented hysteroids and egoists (not all, of course, but an overwhelming minority) seemed made for the big stage. For the sake of fame and money, they are ready to act like half-witted vagrants, change their course, and even stage their own deaths by going to a tropical island.
But idols go but fans stay. This law works both in show business and in politics. It applies to adults as well as teenagers. Suffice it to recall the queue at the Lenin Mausoleum for seventy years. Scientists and “enlightened ones” of all kinds, communists and idlers, participants in “happiness marathons” – all these audiences without exception are members of fan groups. They are not yet 15 years old, but they defend the “ideals” imposed by “teachers” and leaders with adolescent rage and enthusiasm. These types, who went on the Crusades to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims, plundered four Christian countries along the way: Catholic Hungary and Orthodox Bulgaria, Cilician Armenia and the Roman Empire.
There were always enough fanatics, so today the main task is to drive them into cozy subculture stalls.
The benefits of ruling people with the help of subcultures were understood by pagan kings in ancient times. To maintain power over the country, it was often enough for them to appoint their own god to each city and let their followers fight each other over whose god was cooler. The king remained the supreme arbitrator.
The modern criteria for “coolness” are conditional freedom, spiritual “perfection”, the creation of heaven on earth and the transformation of a person into an “ideal person”. From here came acid, heroin – vagrants, hippies “transformed” with stimulants. They are all so confident in the existence of freedom of choice that they push away any new idea that would make their lives a little more meaningful.
Every year, the hype about harassment, divorce, changing avatars and going out gives rise to new subcultures. The gods have been replaced by “stars” at the planet, district, state, and district level. Of course, this affects the quality of the product. As for Western mass culture, we can already say with certainty that it has come a long way from Babylon to the Greeks, from the Greeks to Rome, from Rome to hell. With the Russian one – Babylon-Moscow and – to hell, everything is easier. But it doesn’t matter anymore. He will be an idol and fans will be stigmatized.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.