We had a new girl join my class in 5th grade 30 years ago. Word got around she was in a movie with McCully Culkin. We didn't understand production schedules, we just knew we had never seen any evidence of this supposed movie, so many thought she was lying. She wasn't. She played the lead in the Nutcracker movie released a year later, opposite Culkin. She still got bullied and left after 7th grade. I still feel badly about it.
She really, really did. I remember how much shit she got tossed her way. She was just a child! Looking back at it I'm just really grossed out with how that situation unfolded, but she handled it magnificently, _and_ didn't let it stop her. She's done great for herself, and her new music is really good.
Rebecca went to my middle school a few years before I did. I remember my teachers talking about how we had a "superstar" from our school as if they didn't watch her get bullied so bad she had to leave
"I requested the geishas. I know they are Japanese but I just like their costumes." and with that an Alison has shown more awareness of Chinese culture than any of Patrice's contributions to the song
I know! It was genuinely really cute to hear that. She knew they weren’t really accurate but she just wanted that one thing in her video because she thought they looked pretty. With how little control she already had, good for her.
Rebecca Black becoming a hyperpop star is the most fitting thing I've ever seen, I love her so much. She is the embodiment of the phrase "don't kill the part of you that is cringe, kill the part of you that cringes".
I interpreted 'Friday' as being what a pre-teen imagines Teenage life will be like - lots of independence, riding in a car with friends, going to backyard parties on the weekend, etc.
You're missing the song that Patrice did HIMSELF after all of this. He got alot of work done (looks like an uncanny ken doll) and did an absolutely batshit song about the sexiness of pregnancy
For everyone looking, its called "Beautiful" and the only upload has a facetime video of a kid reacting to it in the upper corner and it makes the experience 10x better
With the reach and influence this video had, it DESERVES a half-hour video of its own. If you weren't there, I cannot describe just how everywhere this song felt.
I have a distinct memory of cringing out of my skull when Friday was used in an announcement when I was high school. the problem with this memory is that I graduated high school in 2010 and Friday didn't come out until 2011. *I DON'T KNOW HOW I HAVE THIS MEMORY*
@@Silas_MN oh, thats actually quite common and completely normal. memories arent like a video. they change, mix together with other ones from the time period or get reshaped when you revisit them years later, based on what you think of that time period now. you can even acquire a completely fake memory that feels like a real one just because someone told you a story claiming this happend to you.
@@Silas_MN same thing happened to me with memories of a major ice storm that hit the second year of university. I simultaneously have memories of this happening the last year of high school and also happening when I was dating someone I didn't really meet until 4th year of university.
For the record, Aotutune wasn't ground breaking because it corrected a singer's pitch, it was only notable because it did it in real time. Pitch correction has been in use in the music industry since the 1920's and practically every recorded song you've heard from an official label has some degree of pitch correction in it. Autotune was important cause it allowed for that to happen in live performances, though at the cost of a robotic effect. Any recorded song that has that Autotune effect is choosing to do so for artistic purposes, not to "cheat" the quality of the vocalist.
That is not what Auto-Tune is. Auto-Tune is a specific audio processor/ pitch correction software that could be use to distort vocal in a very interesting way, originally dubbed 'the Cher Effect', that was first popularized by the artist Cher. But you are correct in saying that the Auto-Tune sound has always been a digital effect, not a result of poor singers.
"The Cher Effect" was a specific use of pitch correction software, cranking the settings way up so there were no in-between pitches, causing it to snap directly between notes. It wasn't because of any specific kind of software, but the settings that were used. You could create a similar effect with any pitch correction software. It's kind of like guitar distortion, except for pop music in the late 90s-2000s: something that could always have been done, but was generally considered a bad thing that should be avoided until someone did it on purpose in a creative way, causing everyone to copy them.
I never knew Rebecca Black was so young when Friday came out. Probably because of the styling I assumed she was 16-17. She's only like, two years older than me. That's horrifying.
I also assumed she was around that age, but to know she was that young dealing with everything that comes along with internet notoriety is just awful, I hate seeing people bully children for being children and just trying to have fun.
Honestly, I don't really think they did anything to make her look any older than she was. (In this particular video, with Rebecca Black specifically-- they definitely did it with other girls) I'm about the same age as you, and I always thought the same thing, but think about how much older the Juniors looked back when you were a Freshman.
Listening to Friday then the song she did with Dorian Electra is like getting whiplash but the funniest thing is that it weirdly makes sense for her to evolve into the artist that she is now
Rebecca Black is a queer icon and i saw her perform at LA pride last year. She released a 10 year anniversary song to Friday and her most recent EP Rebecca Black was Here is so good. It hits my little queer emotions of heartbreak 🏳️🌈
Things like Friday and The Eye of Argon exhibit some of the worst habits of internet culture, where people dunk en masse on teenagers who do dumb but harmless things. Also, there's a company somewhere in there making money off of those teenagers' works and functionally throwing them under the bus.
@@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks dominic noble has one i think, its genuinly tragic, and yes it was never meant to be published by the author. I mean he goes through the history too , on youtube something dominic noble eye of argon, i think. should come up as an apology.
Eye of Aargon was basically pre-internet, by the time it hit the internet he was no longer a teen. Also no one was really making money of it at the time. It got printed in like a small fanzine once and was mostly circulated in incomplete photocopies. It's a shame the mockery meant he never wrote again, there are parts of the Eye I like or show potential; The atmosphere it sometimes conjures and I appreciate the writing style it was going for, even if the author was not experienced enough to pull it off.
@@Painocus That’s the thing that gets me about it: it’s only hilarious because it misses the mark in a way that leaves you knowing what it was going for, and in a way that isn’t boring and obvious but distinct and unexpected. It also has a cadence to it that makes it weirdly readable; it’s somehow well written enough that each bad choice can stand out and shine. If the writer hadn’t had *any* talent, it wouldn’t be entertaining. It’s sad that someone who was obviously earnest, maybe even had some real potential, wound up suffering that much public humiliation.
I remember being confused by how much people disliked the song. Like, I was an adult when it came out and wouldn’t seek it out on my own but there are waaay worse songs
It probably wasn't a widespread thing and I don't even know if they exist anymore, but we actually had a "teen club" where I live. Basically an event center at a hotel got turned into a dance club for kids every weekend. It was like going to the roller rink, but dancing instead. I think they may have had pizza and pop too but I can't remember. Maybe that's the sort of club Rebecca was heading to on Friday night? Or we'll just pretend it is to save our sanity.
Oh, we had those in my city (in Brazil) as well! We called them matinés and they started at like 5pm, ended by 8pm at most. It was just a badly pulled together dance floor, pop music blasting at deafening volumes, smoke machines and lots of soda lol
My tiny county seat (can't even call it my hometown--I was out in the sticks) briefly had "Club Teen". It was in a strip mall. I went to a birthday party there in... seventh grade? I think it stayed in business less than a year. Weird vibes.
I believe my town had specific raves where only 18 or younger were permitted. I'm sure there was an age you needed to be to get in, too,,, not sure what, though.
We had those in ireland we called discos (no connection to actual disco). Though because ireland sometimes does fulfil its cultural stereotypes there was a LOT of drinking going on and apparently some shady stuff with the guy who ran the most famous one having a "list" of girls who could get in free or something. Basically, they where just nightclubs for people who didn't look old enough to get into real ones.
Wasn’t it also Patrice Wilson who made super creepy threats and serial killer found footage style videos towards Ethan from H3 when he called out Patrice for his gross videos on Allison Gold? It was years ago now but I remember Ethan saying he was legitimately scared for his family because of Patrice Wilson being a complete psycho
For the longest time I was under the impression that Friday was just something that Rebecca made independently, but looking back on the music video, it makes total sense that it was done by a production company. So much about the song makes more sense now that I know the full story
God I remember one of my friends in High School was really into Ark music videos but in a morbid curiosity way. She was the person that first brought to my attention how weirdly sexual a lot of these videos got, especially the Shush Up song (she sang it a lot so the chorus kept getting stuck in my head). I'm glad Strange didn't pull any punches with saying how creepy Patrice was for making these vids and exploiting all these kids just to try and make money off the music industry since he already failed at being a star himself.
A few years ago, I stumbled across a video from another Arc alumni named Jenna Rose. She did two videos with them, "My Jeans" and "OMG", and in the latter she and her dancers, who were all 12-13 at the time, were all wearing skimpy outfits and doing some inappropriate dancing. Jenna made a reaction video where she condemns Ark/Patrice for manipulating and sexualizing her, and it's pretty hard to watch because she was clearly very distraught and traumatized by the whole experience. I actually saw that video when it first came out, and even then as a dumb teenager I was like "I don't know if I'm okay with this.
Wow i expected you to mention Rebecca Black's Saturday that she made years after that both is actually decent and has Patrick being arrested in the music video
On your point towards the end, Nickelodeon and Disney definitely did do creepy and revealing things with their child stars :/ especially anything with Dan Schneider and his web content where things got VERY weird
honestly i know theres probably a lot of ndas and legal threats but im desperate for a full expose on how these child stars were treated, like the time someone on victorious said that he didnt remember filming it bc of how much he drank and how (alleged) dan scheider apparently knew about this??? its fucking wild
I am not sure why, but I started crying when you said you did your school presentation on Rebecca's 2012 song, In Your Own Words. It really sheds light on a child's desire to make the world around them better than it was when they got there.
I remember when the Chinese Food video started going viral and people my age were laughing at the whole “Friday again but even creepier” vibe. I remember being annoyed that we learned nothing from what happened to Black and so when the other two came out I didn’t engage; I knew from friends that they were deeply uncomfortable but wow I wasn’t expecting that.
The Friday anger confused the hell out of me. There were a lot of ways that you could legitimately react to that video and I don't get why anger would be any of them. Almost everyone seemed to agree that it was funny, so why not just laugh? Misogyny really seems like the best explanation for it. Also that song is just catchy as hell. Say what you like about its overall quality, but the hook is strong.
Here's how my awareness of Rebecca Black went: Friday is released -> Nothing for over 10 years -> I watch a collab video made by a bunch of lesbian youtubers, some of whom shared a house, and there's Rebecca Black because she's one of the housemates. That took me several minutes to accept as reality and that I wasn't dreaming.
My music theory professor uses this song as an example for pop music/its chord progression and he said that he enjoys watching everyone’s reactions lol
"we as a culture irrationally hate media and modes of expression common to young girls" And that attitude really did a number on me, an uncracked transwoman teenager during that same era. Apparently everything girly around me was evil.
I feel like the people who cyberbullied Rebecca Black and girls who liked One Direction went on to become the exact same people who cyberbully girls for liking mcyts. Like they have not changed at all.
This song came out when I was in HS and I unironically liked it. What Rebecca went through was horrific and I'm glad she's doing ok now. ALSO, she actually can sing and has some nice songs, I personally love "Girlfriend".
I honestly respect the fact that she chose to leave it up despite the losers who tried to bully her off the internet. That couldn't have been easy, especially for a teenager.
About 2 years ago Rebecca Black released a 10 year anniversary remix of Friday featuring Dorian Electra, Big Freedia, and 3OH!3 (unfortunately released on a Wednesday, which weirdly enough the original was released on a Thursday so...) that kinda slaps in a hyper-pop kinda way.
My gay ass feels obligated to tell all the people who might not know that rebecca black is actually an amazing singer who really deserves a lot of love after all the shit she's gotten over the years. Stream crumbs , it's amazing
The girl who did the "my jeans" song from 2010 (not by ark but similar vibes) was in the same year as me in college. I didn't know her, but my friends told me she was nice, albeit embarrassed by some of the songs lol. I guess she's a tv producer now, which is cool.
Jenna Rose, still sings Idk why but I have been subbed to her for a lot of years lmao... I saw her go to college and shit and I live in Europe 😂 (followed on insta I think a while)
i remembered from a now unlisted yms highlights video, apparently patrice was making weird student-quality films that just didn't go anywhere. also alison gold is still out there, just under a different name. don't blame her honestly, those creepy vids probably aren't very good memories. hope she and rebecca are doing ok. either way, fantastic video!
I remember one of the earler videos (post-Rebecca but pre-Mr. Wilson's peep-show) starring a fairly young girl singing about how she's "got that boom-boom" and dancing around in what I can only describe as an outfit suited for a Victoria's Secret runway. Angel wings included. Shockingly, I can't find it now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One can't fully dissect the Patrice-Wilson-Alison-Gold-era without exploring h3h3 Production's coverage of it and Wilson's _very_ weird response to the call-out. After h3 pointed out the suspicious undertones of the music videos, which arguably reached a bigger audience than anything concerning Wilson had for a good while, Wilson started a cryptically, button-smash-like titled livestream, which had a bunch of "h3h3" sequences in it's description and Name, which was showing only a closed, sometimes minimally moving curtain. It at some point cut to first person footage of someone exploring what appeared to be backyards or abandoned areas. Really odd and creepy.
@@transsexual_computer_faery I believe the stream started to loop at some point, so it became apparant that Wilson was not actually wandering around these areas in real time. While this was unfolding, h3h3 were recording a live episode of the H3 Podcast, which is still up. As far as I can remember, there has never been a clear statement about what the intention behind this, in all honesty pretty threatening, livestream was.
I actually loved this song. My fourth grade teacher would always let us have a dance party for the last 15 minutes of class on fridays and this would be the first song played every time. I was always too shy to dance, but it’s one of my few fond memories of public school
My grand kids showed me this! I think it is nice that they show me things so I can feel like I am part of their life. Cathy says it's just so I will stop asking what they are watching and who that is. I don't think they would do that. I love them and they love me!
i can't believe you didn't mention how she rerecorded Friday with Dorian Electra, 3OH!3 and Big Freedia for the 10 year anniversary and released it as a hyperpop BANGER
I would argue that Disney and Nick absolutely did the things you said they didn’t, in terms of exploiting child actors in potentially inappropriate ways. See the Dan Schneider ordeal for example.
I fondly remembered the H3H3 videos on “Chinese Food” and “ABCDEFG.” When you mentioned that Allison Gold had done three songs with Patrice, I was thinking, “Huh, one, two…” and then it hit me like a ton of bricks when I remembered “Shush Up.” I think I blocked that one out of my memory because it was too disturbing
I remember "Friday" coming out and despite being a bit older than Rebecca, I was still bewildered by the cruelty of the internet. Glad she came through it strong! Also, excited for you to hit 1 mil subs!
I feel empathy for her, having all that harassment at a young age. Ark "music" is more to blame than her for how the song turned out. He took thousands of dollars from her family and gave her a lazily-made pile of crap.
I came across Friday in the weirdest possible way. I was sent it by someone who often sent me viral videos while I was waiting to be evacuated from Japan during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. It SOMEHOW still stands out in my memory despite...you know...all that
As the generation of college kids who was busy making fun of her, this is a good and important video for us to take a look at ourselves and reevaluate how we look at this things. This is the first time I thought about Friday since my kid was born. I hope to better be prepared to identity this stuff in advance.
I remember in college we did a bit of a deep dive into the label's other stuff and realized how really fucking creepy and exploitative Ark and Patrice Wilson are.
I appreciate your effort documenting this shit Patrice Wilson has done, it really colors the whole 'bad singer' YT phenomenon in a hugely different way. Great journalism tbh
Honestly, thanks for the trigger warning. I kept watching but it made the utter shock of the horrible thing he portrayed using a child slightly less gut wrenching.
I very much support the practice of youtubers putting a huge QR code on the screen during their ad reads. It gives an easy way for those interested to link to the product being sold, and it lets me know when to stop skipping forward to get back to the actual video
When this video came out, as a kid, I didn't think it was that bad and actually kind of liked it. But at the time it was "cool" to hate on her so of course I joined in... it must have been so hard for her but glad she made it through.
As someone who already knows a bit about Patrice's weirdness, I hope this video gets into the bizarre and grotesque "menstruation" music video that Patrice did a while back
I could've sworn this guy was also behind the jenna rose videos (which were equally disturbing as the alison videos) And nickelodeon has definitely had its fair share of creepy moments. In an early episode of Icarly there was a push from the creator for the girls to specifically wear bikinis in a scene, not just any swimmers. So gross...
when i was in 6th grade (so 2012) i was apart of a video production class that made the daily school news. every friday episode, without fail, started and ended with the entire production crew having to dance & sing friday on camera
I was 10 when Friday came out. I always thought she was an older teen, not a middle schooler. But I didn't actually watch the video very much if at all, nor did I care much about it. It was definitely in the perifory of pop culture knowledge, I saw memes and clips and heard people talk about it, plus the radio possibly, and that's it. Never would have questioned the concept of "getting down on Friday" for a teen so much older and cooler than me.
One of the earliest podcasts of theirs that I've watched is Ethan and Post Malone watching a live stream that he was doing. It is the most wild things to watch and I'm surprised this didn't come up in this video. But then again, I wouldn't know how to tie that info into this video. It's just so bizarre to watch. Clipped: th-cam.com/video/lTyhFYVHUBA/w-d-xo.html Full ep: th-cam.com/video/tr1Loa7r7sY/w-d-xo.html
Apparently Rebecca Black is releasing her debut album this year, which its crazy that she went 12 years without releasing an album but i guess being a child star and whatnot got in the way
The way that people treated her was crazy and goes to show that even if the internet is terrible now, at least there is more nuance now, and people can look at something like Friday, and see the strings too
FINALLY someone talking about AMF. They were a horror show and I have a Facebook Notes rant posted around the time of Friday to PROVE it! Someone posted a video about Friday recently, shaming everyone for being nasty to a kid and I was like "...... but you're not going to talk about the creepy, seedy producers who tried this with numerous rich kids who were variously exploited for fame potential and didn't take any of the heat, despite writing AND producing that garbage?" Yay for doing your research instead of white knighting and moralising about something that some of us got and were bemoaning the music, not the artist, at the time and ever since. Some people can tell that children have no agency in the music industry - shock, horror, who would have EVER thought?
Friday was so universally reviled that some of my highschool teachers would use it as psychological warfare. Listening to it while trapped in a classroom is like auditory waterboarding.
oh my GOD the anti bullying tour that guy devon fox was tallking about, MY MIDDLE SCHOOL WAS ONE OF THE SCHOOLS. the band's name was after romeo and they brought this girl up and sang to her. oh my godddd bringing up so many memories
The fact that Alison was too young to even understand why people were comparing her to Rebecca is so fucking disturbing to me. She genuinely had no idea what was happening
I remember shortly after the Alison gold era, Patrice made one song starring himself to "address the haters" and I stg he seemed like such a man-child it was so weird
No it was so weird that Rebecca and the rest of the Ark/Patomuzic kids were the ones getting more hate (and a great big chunk was from grown adults if I’m not mistaken) than the company itself?
Oh my god that bit about it being the most disliked video brought me back to when there was a BATTLE to keep baby at most disliked. I remember actively checking the dislikes to make sure Baby stayed on top.
So glad that we as a society have started calling out the exploitation behind the scenes rather than dunking on the children who did literally nothing wrong lol 22:44 Also, just to add to this mess, I think the kimonos are worn wrong. They must be worn left over right, not right over left. Right over left is only worn by dead people...
Me: *waiting for the mention of 'Chinese Food' to feel validated for the ick I always felt with that video* 'The Thanksgiving song' THE WHAT NOW?!! for real tho,a full grown man in a panda suit is rolling around and tickling a middle school girl in 'Chinese Food' and its SO FECKING CREEPY!!!
*"IT'S WEDNESDAY MY DUDES"*
*"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH"*
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH
*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAÆAHAAAAAAAAGH*
honestly rebecca handled the situation better than a lot of people would, what an icon
Oh god yeah, Rebecca Black has been an absolute boss for over a decade. I would absolutely not have handled it that well.
Certainly better than Beiber did.
We had a new girl join my class in 5th grade 30 years ago. Word got around she was in a movie with McCully Culkin. We didn't understand production schedules, we just knew we had never seen any evidence of this supposed movie, so many thought she was lying. She wasn't. She played the lead in the Nutcracker movie released a year later, opposite Culkin. She still got bullied and left after 7th grade. I still feel badly about it.
She really, really did. I remember how much shit she got tossed her way. She was just a child! Looking back at it I'm just really grossed out with how that situation unfolded, but she handled it magnificently, _and_ didn't let it stop her. She's done great for herself, and her new music is really good.
oh, absolutely! coming out of that but also looking at everything she does now, she IS a fucking icon! 💘
Rebecca went to my middle school a few years before I did. I remember my teachers talking about how we had a "superstar" from our school as if they didn't watch her get bullied so bad she had to leave
that’s so middle school teacher of them
@@WishGender excruciatingly on-brand
"I requested the geishas. I know they are Japanese but I just like their costumes."
and with that an Alison has shown more awareness of Chinese culture than any of Patrice's contributions to the song
I know! It was genuinely really cute to hear that. She knew they weren’t really accurate but she just wanted that one thing in her video because she thought they looked pretty. With how little control she already had, good for her.
No hate to Allison but the Chinese food interview made me laugh so hard, you cannot beat "my favorite Chinese food is broccoli" that is adorable
Funny you mention that--the Armenian subtitle in the clip from that song above is talking about the broccoli on the menu...
I love fried rice, I love noodles, I love chow mein chow ma-ma-ma-mein
Broccoli 💅🏻
It sounds like that TikTok guy who interviews children about their favorite things, honestly so cute
Vice interviewing an 11-year-old to call them a poser is the most Vice thing ever.
Same publication that wrote a completely unironic and ridiculously verbose essay piece on Viper’s “You’ll cowards don’t even smoke crack”.
@@impulse_xsreally?? That’s crazy!
I googled “Vice Viper youll cowards dont even smoke crack” and I *FOUND* the article it’s *REAL!!*
@@Really_Big_Moth lol
God I love vice
Rebecca Black becoming a hyperpop star is the most fitting thing I've ever seen, I love her so much. She is the embodiment of the phrase "don't kill the part of you that is cringe, kill the part of you that cringes".
Damn, that's a fantastic phrase!
ehhh wtf kinda phrase is that
@@alveolate quiet
@@alveolate YOU'LL LEARN. YOU'LL LEARN.
Ah, I see this thread policed itself…okay then, carry on.
k but 13 year old you doing a presentation on "we need to stop cyber bullying Rebecca Black" is the most wholesome thing 😭✨
Where
LEAVE BRITTANY ALONE vibes
@@transsexual_computer_faery what do you mean where? She said she did in the video
The song was still bad
@@AVSFAITHFUL25 That's not really the point of the video
I interpreted 'Friday' as being what a pre-teen imagines Teenage life will be like - lots of independence, riding in a car with friends, going to backyard parties on the weekend, etc.
i was 15 still waiting and it never came lol
Strange not uploading this on Friday is a crime against humanity, God and My Immortal
You're missing the song that Patrice did HIMSELF after all of this. He got alot of work done (looks like an uncanny ken doll) and did an absolutely batshit song about the sexiness of pregnancy
lmao what is this song called?
What!?
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who remembers this
How dare you send me down this rabbit hole
For everyone looking, its called "Beautiful" and the only upload has a facetime video of a kid reacting to it in the upper corner and it makes the experience 10x better
To be fair, the broccoli from the Chinese restaurant hit differently Aeons
With the reach and influence this video had, it DESERVES a half-hour video of its own. If you weren't there, I cannot describe just how everywhere this song felt.
I was super young when it happened and even I remember. It was insane
I have a distinct memory of cringing out of my skull when Friday was used in an announcement when I was high school. the problem with this memory is that I graduated high school in 2010 and Friday didn't come out until 2011. *I DON'T KNOW HOW I HAVE THIS MEMORY*
@@Silas_MN oh, thats actually quite common and completely normal. memories arent like a video. they change, mix together with other ones from the time period or get reshaped when you revisit them years later, based on what you think of that time period now. you can even acquire a completely fake memory that feels like a real one just because someone told you a story claiming this happend to you.
@@Silas_MN same thing happened to me with memories of a major ice storm that hit the second year of university. I simultaneously have memories of this happening the last year of high school and also happening when I was dating someone I didn't really meet until 4th year of university.
For the record, Aotutune wasn't ground breaking because it corrected a singer's pitch, it was only notable because it did it in real time. Pitch correction has been in use in the music industry since the 1920's and practically every recorded song you've heard from an official label has some degree of pitch correction in it. Autotune was important cause it allowed for that to happen in live performances, though at the cost of a robotic effect. Any recorded song that has that Autotune effect is choosing to do so for artistic purposes, not to "cheat" the quality of the vocalist.
It also sounds really cool. One of the reasons I love 2000s-2010s pop so much is because I just like the way autotuned music sounds.
@@TheGoldfishArmy lol i remember growing up everyone told me to hate autotune and i just didnt get it because it sounded too cool to hate
That is not what Auto-Tune is. Auto-Tune is a specific audio processor/ pitch correction software that could be use to distort vocal in a very interesting way, originally dubbed 'the Cher Effect', that was first popularized by the artist Cher. But you are correct in saying that the Auto-Tune sound has always been a digital effect, not a result of poor singers.
@@TheGoldfishArmy hyperpop takes it to the extreme and its great
"The Cher Effect" was a specific use of pitch correction software, cranking the settings way up so there were no in-between pitches, causing it to snap directly between notes. It wasn't because of any specific kind of software, but the settings that were used. You could create a similar effect with any pitch correction software. It's kind of like guitar distortion, except for pop music in the late 90s-2000s: something that could always have been done, but was generally considered a bad thing that should be avoided until someone did it on purpose in a creative way, causing everyone to copy them.
I never knew Rebecca Black was so young when Friday came out. Probably because of the styling I assumed she was 16-17. She's only like, two years older than me. That's horrifying.
I also assumed she was around that age, but to know she was that young dealing with everything that comes along with internet notoriety is just awful, I hate seeing people bully children for being children and just trying to have fun.
Its wild because I thought she was older than me and she's actually 6 months younger than me!
She's only four years older than me 💀
Honestly, I don't really think they did anything to make her look any older than she was. (In this particular video, with Rebecca Black specifically-- they definitely did it with other girls) I'm about the same age as you, and I always thought the same thing, but think about how much older the Juniors looked back when you were a Freshman.
Listening to Friday then the song she did with Dorian Electra is like getting whiplash but the funniest thing is that it weirdly makes sense for her to evolve into the artist that she is now
She's actually quite talented and I love that she's thriving in the hyperpop scene
10 gecs
It was like being thrown into a wall
But a wall I dont mind?
my worldview was fundamentally shifted when i first saw that song on spotify
Thank you for letting us all know that exists
Rebecca Black is a queer icon and i saw her perform at LA pride last year. She released a 10 year anniversary song to Friday and her most recent EP Rebecca Black was Here is so good. It hits my little queer emotions of heartbreak 🏳️🌈
So true!!! I love her
I was listening to worth it for the feeling only a few minutes before watching the video by coincidence. It’s hard to get that one out of my head.
@@jakubmakalowski6428 that's a good song! My fav is NGL
@@jakubmakalowski6428 such a great song
It’s the good ending 🖤
Things like Friday and The Eye of Argon exhibit some of the worst habits of internet culture, where people dunk en masse on teenagers who do dumb but harmless things. Also, there's a company somewhere in there making money off of those teenagers' works and functionally throwing them under the bus.
i would watch a video about the history of the Eye of Argon though
@@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks dominic noble has one i think, its genuinly tragic, and yes it was never meant to be published by the author. I mean he goes through the history too , on youtube something dominic noble eye of argon, i think. should come up as an apology.
Eye of Argon goes back to the 70's. It's been a staple of con culture since cons existed
Eye of Aargon was basically pre-internet, by the time it hit the internet he was no longer a teen. Also no one was really making money of it at the time. It got printed in like a small fanzine once and was mostly circulated in incomplete photocopies.
It's a shame the mockery meant he never wrote again, there are parts of the Eye I like or show potential; The atmosphere it sometimes conjures and I appreciate the writing style it was going for, even if the author was not experienced enough to pull it off.
@@Painocus That’s the thing that gets me about it: it’s only hilarious because it misses the mark in a way that leaves you knowing what it was going for, and in a way that isn’t boring and obvious but distinct and unexpected. It also has a cadence to it that makes it weirdly readable; it’s somehow well written enough that each bad choice can stand out and shine. If the writer hadn’t had *any* talent, it wouldn’t be entertaining. It’s sad that someone who was obviously earnest, maybe even had some real potential, wound up suffering that much public humiliation.
rebecca doing a hyperpop cover ov her own song with dorian electra and the auto tune cranked to hell was fucking iconic
That collab made history
I remember being young and loving Friday, I had no idea people hated it
SAME BRO
I remember being confused by how much people disliked the song. Like, I was an adult when it came out and wouldn’t seek it out on my own but there are waaay worse songs
I disliked it but I was an edgy kid with a very specific taste.
Nowadays, I'm just ambivalent towards it lol.
Yes me too lol I was 12 or so and I liked the happy tune 😆
same I genuinely think it's really good, it's catchy and has a nice beat going on
It probably wasn't a widespread thing and I don't even know if they exist anymore, but we actually had a "teen club" where I live. Basically an event center at a hotel got turned into a dance club for kids every weekend. It was like going to the roller rink, but dancing instead. I think they may have had pizza and pop too but I can't remember. Maybe that's the sort of club Rebecca was heading to on Friday night? Or we'll just pretend it is to save our sanity.
Oh, we had those in my city (in Brazil) as well! We called them matinés and they started at like 5pm, ended by 8pm at most. It was just a badly pulled together dance floor, pop music blasting at deafening volumes, smoke machines and lots of soda lol
My city had sober clubs in the 80s for teenagers, my mom always used to talk about em
My tiny county seat (can't even call it my hometown--I was out in the sticks) briefly had "Club Teen". It was in a strip mall. I went to a birthday party there in... seventh grade? I think it stayed in business less than a year. Weird vibes.
I believe my town had specific raves where only 18 or younger were permitted. I'm sure there was an age you needed to be to get in, too,,, not sure what, though.
We had those in ireland we called discos (no connection to actual disco). Though because ireland sometimes does fulfil its cultural stereotypes there was a LOT of drinking going on and apparently some shady stuff with the guy who ran the most famous one having a "list" of girls who could get in free or something. Basically, they where just nightclubs for people who didn't look old enough to get into real ones.
Wasn’t it also Patrice Wilson who made super creepy threats and serial killer found footage style videos towards Ethan from H3 when he called out Patrice for his gross videos on Allison Gold? It was years ago now but I remember Ethan saying he was legitimately scared for his family because of Patrice Wilson being a complete psycho
That video was a lesson. Paige christie had a video disecting the situation.
Oh my god I completely forgot about this, but now that you mention it it totally rings a bell. That was weird as hell
I came here to see about this bc didn't Patrice literally do a creepy Livestream with vague threats towards Ethan?
For the longest time I was under the impression that Friday was just something that Rebecca made independently, but looking back on the music video, it makes total sense that it was done by a production company. So much about the song makes more sense now that I know the full story
God I remember one of my friends in High School was really into Ark music videos but in a morbid curiosity way. She was the person that first brought to my attention how weirdly sexual a lot of these videos got, especially the Shush Up song (she sang it a lot so the chorus kept getting stuck in my head). I'm glad Strange didn't pull any punches with saying how creepy Patrice was for making these vids and exploiting all these kids just to try and make money off the music industry since he already failed at being a star himself.
The way that interviewer grilled the literal actual 11 year old was. A lot.
A few years ago, I stumbled across a video from another Arc alumni named Jenna Rose. She did two videos with them, "My Jeans" and "OMG", and in the latter she and her dancers, who were all 12-13 at the time, were all wearing skimpy outfits and doing some inappropriate dancing. Jenna made a reaction video where she condemns Ark/Patrice for manipulating and sexualizing her, and it's pretty hard to watch because she was clearly very distraught and traumatized by the whole experience. I actually saw that video when it first came out, and even then as a dumb teenager I was like "I don't know if I'm okay with this.
I feel so bad for Jenna Rose, but I also unironically love My Jeans.
Wow i expected you to mention Rebecca Black's Saturday that she made years after that both is actually decent and has Patrick being arrested in the music video
That's what he deserves
what a queen
I remember finding out about this but never got around to watching it; I should go watch it
On your point towards the end, Nickelodeon and Disney definitely did do creepy and revealing things with their child stars :/ especially anything with Dan Schneider and his web content where things got VERY weird
Glad someone brought this up. A lot of terrible things were happening to the Nickelodeon and Disney kids behind the scenes.
I came to point this out, Nickelodeon DEFINITELY put their child stars in wildly inappropriate situations
honestly i know theres probably a lot of ndas and legal threats but im desperate for a full expose on how these child stars were treated, like the time someone on victorious said that he didnt remember filming it bc of how much he drank and how (alleged) dan scheider apparently knew about this??? its fucking wild
@@iwakeupandboomimaratyeah the guy who played beck
I remember hearing Patrice Wilson was a creep, but I thought maybe it was just old internet gossip. Jesus that alphabet video was worrying.
I am not sure why, but I started crying when you said you did your school presentation on Rebecca's 2012 song, In Your Own Words. It really sheds light on a child's desire to make the world around them better than it was when they got there.
I remember when the Chinese Food video started going viral and people my age were laughing at the whole “Friday again but even creepier” vibe. I remember being annoyed that we learned nothing from what happened to Black and so when the other two came out I didn’t engage; I knew from friends that they were deeply uncomfortable but wow I wasn’t expecting that.
Honestly feel so bad for all the bullying she went through
It's well deserved however
The Friday anger confused the hell out of me. There were a lot of ways that you could legitimately react to that video and I don't get why anger would be any of them. Almost everyone seemed to agree that it was funny, so why not just laugh?
Misogyny really seems like the best explanation for it.
Also that song is just catchy as hell. Say what you like about its overall quality, but the hook is strong.
Claiming the most lyrically complex song had to be written by the nine year old was such a fantastic burn XD
As someone who sang Friday as part of his senior year talent show in 2018, and won, I have a very fond appreciation for the song.
Here's how my awareness of Rebecca Black went: Friday is released -> Nothing for over 10 years -> I watch a collab video made by a bunch of lesbian youtubers, some of whom shared a house, and there's Rebecca Black because she's one of the housemates. That took me several minutes to accept as reality and that I wasn't dreaming.
wait what channel was she on?
Me too omg I remember being like wait that's Rebecca black???
My music theory professor uses this song as an example for pop music/its chord progression and he said that he enjoys watching everyone’s reactions lol
Can’t wait to walk around saying “Rebecca Black, you are 13 years old. You are not going to the club!” under my breath all day long 30:41
"we as a culture irrationally hate media and modes of expression common to young girls"
And that attitude really did a number on me, an uncracked transwoman teenager during that same era. Apparently everything girly around me was evil.
Agreed, I remember thinking the song was charming. Let the girls be girls; some of us would give so much to have had that simple experience 🥺
I feel like the people who cyberbullied Rebecca Black and girls who liked One Direction went on to become the exact same people who cyberbully girls for liking mcyts. Like they have not changed at all.
@@thequeenofcringe1585 mcyts ?
@dayjoyy kpop too, yes
This song came out when I was in HS and I unironically liked it. What Rebecca went through was horrific and I'm glad she's doing ok now. ALSO, she actually can sing and has some nice songs, I personally love "Girlfriend".
same here! “girlfriend” was actually one of my most played songs in 2021
@@icedflatwhite It's so cute! And super queer which I also love.
@@societycrumbles exactly! my little queer heart is so happy while listening to this song. it's just so incredibly sweet, i love it so much
I honestly respect the fact that she chose to leave it up despite the losers who tried to bully her off the internet. That couldn't have been easy, especially for a teenager.
Rebecca's latest music is actually phenomenal. I've listened to Girlfriend so many times.
I never knew most of this...and yeah that got creepy. Hope all those literal children involved have had good safe lives after that was over.
About 2 years ago Rebecca Black released a 10 year anniversary remix of Friday featuring Dorian Electra, Big Freedia, and 3OH!3 (unfortunately released on a Wednesday, which weirdly enough the original was released on a Thursday so...) that kinda slaps in a hyper-pop kinda way.
BIG FREEDIA?!?
My gay ass feels obligated to tell all the people who might not know that rebecca black is actually an amazing singer who really deserves a lot of love after all the shit she's gotten over the years. Stream crumbs , it's amazing
The girl who did the "my jeans" song from 2010 (not by ark but similar vibes) was in the same year as me in college. I didn't know her, but my friends told me she was nice, albeit embarrassed by some of the songs lol. I guess she's a tv producer now, which is cool.
Jenna Rose, still sings
Idk why but I have been subbed to her for a lot of years lmao... I saw her go to college and shit and I live in Europe 😂 (followed on insta I think a while)
Keke palmer has my jeans!
@@MadameCorgi "rest in peace keke palmer, I miss you!"
i remembered from a now unlisted yms highlights video, apparently patrice was making weird student-quality films that just didn't go anywhere. also alison gold is still out there, just under a different name. don't blame her honestly, those creepy vids probably aren't very good memories. hope she and rebecca are doing ok.
either way, fantastic video!
what's the different name..??
@@rats_in_a_PACK can't really remember off the top of my head. all i know is she's a model or something, just doesn't do music anymore.
I remember one of the earler videos (post-Rebecca but pre-Mr. Wilson's peep-show) starring a fairly young girl singing about how she's "got that boom-boom" and dancing around in what I can only describe as an outfit suited for a Victoria's Secret runway. Angel wings included.
Shockingly, I can't find it now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Jesus Christ get this man away from teenagers
That sounds like Jenna Rose to me
Jenna Rose. She made a couple of videos a few years ago reacting to those old music videos.
@@polexiaaphrodisia8838 YES thank you I knew it was Jenna something
@@BreadisHere I found a re-upload and it’s so weird how much people blamed her back then. It looks like she’s doing well now tho
One can't fully dissect the Patrice-Wilson-Alison-Gold-era without exploring h3h3 Production's coverage of it and Wilson's _very_ weird response to the call-out. After h3 pointed out the suspicious undertones of the music videos, which arguably reached a bigger audience than anything concerning Wilson had for a good while, Wilson started a cryptically, button-smash-like titled livestream, which had a bunch of "h3h3" sequences in it's description and Name, which was showing only a closed, sometimes minimally moving curtain. It at some point cut to first person footage of someone exploring what appeared to be backyards or abandoned areas. Really odd and creepy.
What
@@transsexual_computer_faery I believe the stream started to loop at some point, so it became apparant that Wilson was not actually wandering around these areas in real time. While this was unfolding, h3h3 were recording a live episode of the H3 Podcast, which is still up. As far as I can remember, there has never been a clear statement about what the intention behind this, in all honesty pretty threatening, livestream was.
I actually loved this song. My fourth grade teacher would always let us have a dance party for the last 15 minutes of class on fridays and this would be the first song played every time. I was always too shy to dance, but it’s one of my few fond memories of public school
My grand kids showed me this! I think it is nice that they show me things so I can feel like I am part of their life. Cathy says it's just so I will stop asking what they are watching and who that is. I don't think they would do that. I love them and they love me!
i can't believe you didn't mention how she rerecorded Friday with Dorian Electra, 3OH!3 and Big Freedia for the 10 year anniversary and released it as a hyperpop BANGER
I would argue that Disney and Nick absolutely did the things you said they didn’t, in terms of exploiting child actors in potentially inappropriate ways. See the Dan Schneider ordeal for example.
The fact that Rebecca Black had to have more emotional maturity than the adults cyberbullying her is very upsetting.
I fondly remembered the H3H3 videos on “Chinese Food” and “ABCDEFG.” When you mentioned that Allison Gold had done three songs with Patrice, I was thinking, “Huh, one, two…” and then it hit me like a ton of bricks when I remembered “Shush Up.” I think I blocked that one out of my memory because it was too disturbing
I remember "Friday" coming out and despite being a bit older than Rebecca, I was still bewildered by the cruelty of the internet. Glad she came through it strong! Also, excited for you to hit 1 mil subs!
got absolutely blindsided by the "it's a metaphor for substance abuse" joke
I feel empathy for her, having all that harassment at a young age. Ark "music" is more to blame than her for how the song turned out. He took thousands of dollars from her family and gave her a lazily-made pile of crap.
I came across Friday in the weirdest possible way. I was sent it by someone who often sent me viral videos while I was waiting to be evacuated from Japan during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. It SOMEHOW still stands out in my memory despite...you know...all that
As the generation of college kids who was busy making fun of her, this is a good and important video for us to take a look at ourselves and reevaluate how we look at this things.
This is the first time I thought about Friday since my kid was born. I hope to better be prepared to identity this stuff in advance.
I remember in college we did a bit of a deep dive into the label's other stuff and realized how really fucking creepy and exploitative Ark and Patrice Wilson are.
I appreciate your effort documenting this shit Patrice Wilson has done, it really colors the whole 'bad singer' YT phenomenon in a hugely different way. Great journalism tbh
Honestly, thanks for the trigger warning. I kept watching but it made the utter shock of the horrible thing he portrayed using a child slightly less gut wrenching.
I very much support the practice of youtubers putting a huge QR code on the screen during their ad reads. It gives an easy way for those interested to link to the product being sold, and it lets me know when to stop skipping forward to get back to the actual video
When this video came out, as a kid, I didn't think it was that bad and actually kind of liked it. But at the time it was "cool" to hate on her so of course I joined in... it must have been so hard for her but glad she made it through.
Gosh I can’t believe I’m old enough to be nostalgic. For Friday of all things
i love when it's friday, specially when i gotta get down on friday
You simply _must_ get down on Friday
As someone who already knows a bit about Patrice's weirdness, I hope this video gets into the bizarre and grotesque "menstruation" music video that Patrice did a while back
I could've sworn this guy was also behind the jenna rose videos (which were equally disturbing as the alison videos)
And nickelodeon has definitely had its fair share of creepy moments. In an early episode of Icarly there was a push from the creator for the girls to specifically wear bikinis in a scene, not just any swimmers. So gross...
Rebecca Black's evolution from awkward meme girl to queer pop icon is really something else
when i was in 6th grade (so 2012) i was apart of a video production class that made the daily school news. every friday episode, without fail, started and ended with the entire production crew having to dance & sing friday on camera
I am so sorry that happened to you
We listened to Friday on the school announcements every Friday of my highschool career, and it was fantastic. It brings up such good memories
We had these pep rallies every Friday morning in elementary school and they'd play it
You talked about "i don't need you boy" and i got excited, then i looked it up and realized i was thinking of a song from a musical called Six
I was 10 when Friday came out. I always thought she was an older teen, not a middle schooler. But I didn't actually watch the video very much if at all, nor did I care much about it. It was definitely in the perifory of pop culture knowledge, I saw memes and clips and heard people talk about it, plus the radio possibly, and that's it. Never would have questioned the concept of "getting down on Friday" for a teen so much older and cooler than me.
as a person who first encountered Rebecca Black through the song "Girlfriend", I will forever be flabbergasted by her origins
Oh man, I remember when h3 covered this way back. Teya is just digging into our brains now.
One of the earliest podcasts of theirs that I've watched is Ethan and Post Malone watching a live stream that he was doing. It is the most wild things to watch and I'm surprised this didn't come up in this video. But then again, I wouldn't know how to tie that info into this video. It's just so bizarre to watch. Clipped: th-cam.com/video/lTyhFYVHUBA/w-d-xo.html
Full ep: th-cam.com/video/tr1Loa7r7sY/w-d-xo.html
i was almost waiting for this to come up since the h3 situation was a relatively recent partrice wilson weirdness
I cant get over how crisp her blazer is
When I heard Saturday I felt awful for taking part in the cyberbully culture. It's genuinely such a good song
Apparently Rebecca Black is releasing her debut album this year, which its crazy that she went 12 years without releasing an album but i guess being a child star and whatnot got in the way
The way that people treated her was crazy and goes to show that even if the internet is terrible now, at least there is more nuance now, and people can look at something like Friday, and see the strings too
The only way I know that time is passing is because of this TH-cam channel. It’s the only one I actively look forward to seeing.
FINALLY someone talking about AMF. They were a horror show and I have a Facebook Notes rant posted around the time of Friday to PROVE it! Someone posted a video about Friday recently, shaming everyone for being nasty to a kid and I was like "...... but you're not going to talk about the creepy, seedy producers who tried this with numerous rich kids who were variously exploited for fame potential and didn't take any of the heat, despite writing AND producing that garbage?"
Yay for doing your research instead of white knighting and moralising about something that some of us got and were bemoaning the music, not the artist, at the time and ever since. Some people can tell that children have no agency in the music industry - shock, horror, who would have EVER thought?
The neuron activation I had seeing the title of this video is really something.
Friday was so universally reviled that some of my highschool teachers would use it as psychological warfare.
Listening to it while trapped in a classroom is like auditory waterboarding.
How about no. Begone bot.
8:04 you made me gigglesnort with "I was like 't.A.T.u. who?!' 😮"
oh my GOD the anti bullying tour that guy devon fox was tallking about, MY MIDDLE SCHOOL WAS ONE OF THE SCHOOLS. the band's name was after romeo and they brought this girl up and sang to her. oh my godddd bringing up so many memories
I just love how Rebecca Black is the new hyperpop queen .
The fact that Alison was too young to even understand why people were comparing her to Rebecca is so fucking disturbing to me. She genuinely had no idea what was happening
i loved butterflies and over you. such good songs.
really, 2-4k for a whole song, music video, and photo shoot sounds like a great deal
Yes I still get butterflies stuck in my head and Alana Lee’s perfect storm still goes hard
They even throw in the life-ruining childhood trauma for free. What a bargain!
I remember shortly after the Alison gold era, Patrice made one song starring himself to "address the haters" and I stg he seemed like such a man-child it was so weird
Strange I swear I was just about to comment "Didn't Katy Perry put her in a the music video for last friday night???" And then you said it.
No it was so weird that Rebecca and the rest of the Ark/Patomuzic kids were the ones getting more hate (and a great big chunk was from grown adults if I’m not mistaken) than the company itself?
Oh my god that bit about it being the most disliked video brought me back to when there was a BATTLE to keep baby at most disliked. I remember actively checking the dislikes to make sure Baby stayed on top.
Oh Lady Gaga was so real for saying Rebecca is an icon
Friday came out a couple months before I graduated high school, and I am grateful I got to experience it with all my high school friends ❤
I was a kid when Friday came out and when I learned that people made fun of it I was so sad. I genuinely loved that song when it came out.
okay but please, please tell me you witnessed the absolutely iconic rebecca black redemption moment that was “saturday” because that shit BANGS
So glad that we as a society have started calling out the exploitation behind the scenes rather than dunking on the children who did literally nothing wrong lol
22:44 Also, just to add to this mess, I think the kimonos are worn wrong. They must be worn left over right, not right over left. Right over left is only worn by dead people...
She's buds with Dorian Electra which I think is really rad
Me: *waiting for the mention of 'Chinese Food' to feel validated for the ick I always felt with that video*
'The Thanksgiving song'
THE WHAT NOW?!!
for real tho,a full grown man in a panda suit is rolling around and tickling a middle school girl in 'Chinese Food' and its SO FECKING CREEPY!!!
EXACTLY
That producer wanted to be Usher but ended up giving R. Kelley vibes. Yikes x1,000,000