Rebecca Black went viral with her cheesy, auto tuned song, Friday. The Internet couldn’t help but share the song with their friends. They ripped it apart calling it, ‘crap’, ‘auto tuned to hell’, and ‘the worst lyrics ever.’ Tosh.0 and TheDailyWha.t posted the video and it caught fire. Soon the video had millions and millions of hits. But Rebecca Black is viral because we love to hate her. People just can’t help grinding their teeth when the empty lyrics get stuck in their head.
Casey Heynes also went viral around the same time. But Casey is a completely different story. Casey had been bullied his whole life. Every day was torture. One day the usual bullying went down. One bully was smaller than Casey, but he still was the aggressor. Other bullies recorded the torment. Finally, something in Casey snapped, and he picked up the bully and body slammed him, WWF style. A small drop of evil in the world was finally extinguished.
The video was posted online, and even though YouTube repeatably took down the video, because of child violence, mirrors of the video kept appearing. Soon Casey became a smaller Antoine Dodson. A small hero, in real life who fought for good. We empathize with Casey. We root for him. We feel his pain and when he finally fights back, we imagine ourselves fighting every bully who tormented us.
On the other hand, Rebecca’s mom literally bought the song and the taping of her music video, Friday. It’s basically a Super Sweet Sixteen version of karaoke. The computers make her sound ‘decent’, and make up and lighting make her look like a ‘star’. But it’s all fake, and the Internet sees that. Casey Heynes is the true viral hero. Rebecca Black is a true viral zero.