The Curse of the Internet Girl: Why Internet Fame Isn’t Taken Seriously

Video Description

Hi everyone!

Because style is my favorite subject, today I want to talk about a problem I’ve been noticing in the music industry: the invalidation of internet-born success and fame.

As evidenced by the critical and popular reactions to Addison Rae and KATSEYE’s nominations for Best New Artist at the 2026 Grammys, I believe there is a strong stigma against artists who both came up through, and continue to maintain relevance primarily on, the internet.

I don’t like hearing terms like “TikToker” or “Viral Sensation” used to diminish or discredit the success of these artists.

To me, this undercuts the proof of relevance and credibility that internet success can represent.

You don’t have to be a fan of either of these artists, but I don’t think personal taste justifies criticizing the way they obtained and maintain relevance as doing so dismisses a system that benefits both artists and pop music consumers.

If you liked this video, make sure to let me know in the comments below and by subscribing and liking this video.

This video was a labor of passion and love for pop music and these artists, and I really hope that you enjoy it.

I’m going to be taking next week off of making a YouTube video to focus on my mental health, but until then I hope you have a wonderful day and thank you so much for watching!

: )))

Video Transcript

Imagine working for years and years to make it to the Grammys only to eventually get there and be told that you aren't a legitimate artist. Unfortunately for Addison Rae and KATSEYE, this is something that I hear far too much. Whether it's dancing on the streets of Hollywood in order to build a platform for yourself on this brand new social media app or fighting your way through a wildly competitive and probably traumatizing elimination TV show. They're often dismissed by critics and by the general public as not being legitimate artists. And today I want to talk about why I think that is.

In my opinion, I believe that the music industry and music consumers more broadly have a really strong bias against people that are internet born or internet native as musical artists. And while I definitely think it's okay for everyone to have their own point of view when it comes to what music they do and don't like, I often feel like the criticism of these artists is reflective of a larger problem in the music industry that I want to talk about today. But first, I think I should introduce myself.

Hi everyone, I'm Joshua Miller and welcome to my YouTube channel. If you're new here, style is my favorite subject and I make weekly videos on fashion, pop music, and Pokemon so that way you can live with style, confidence, and enthusiasm. And again, because style is my favorite subject, today I want to talk about the subject of fame specifically on the internet and why I think it's awarding the artists of today less credibility than they actually deserve. But in order to explore this topic, I think we need to first start with what is it that makes a good pop star.

Being a pop star is about so much more than just having a good song. You need to be influential. You need to be relevant. You need to be intriguing. But most of all, you need to have this presence that makes people want to look at you, no matter what it is you're doing. And the way that I feel like a lot of pre- internet artists did this is by maintaining a degree of distance from the general public that made their presence be an occasion in and of itself. Because the celebrities of previous generations weren't expected to constantly go live or post five stories every single day, the general public didn't feel like they had as much access to them. And because of that, whenever they left their house, they were they were more likely to have the paparazzi swarm them just because that was the only way to get to know them and get to see what it was they were even up to.

But as rising artists and popular music are expected to develop a strong social media presence, that means that they're required to be more accessible to people than they arguably ever have before. And by doing this, a lot of artists often sabotage their own scarcity just because they are constantly exposing themselves, which makes their presence seem less valuable.

And while the shift in the way that the persona surrounding pop stars has changed over time, I feel like there is one thing that hasn't changed and that's the fact that being relevant is essential to being a pop star. And in order to be relevant, you have to have a direct alignment between what you provide and where you provide it and what people want and where they get it. And when you think about it, where are today's consumers of pop culture? The internet. And because the internet is where people are, we can likely equate who is and isn't successful on the internet with who is relevant. But in order to make this argument, I also have to talk about the algorithm.

The goal of the algorithm on social media is to connect users with the content that they find interesting and that they ultimately want to watch. And the thing that I find the most interesting about this is is that the algorithm makes it so that way you can buy long-term interest if there's nothing to be interested in. While yes, if you have a lot of money, you can pay for the tools to know what is the most likely to go viral. And you can also pay to get your content in front of social media consumers. If people don't like it, it's not going to take off.

And I think that that's something that's really interesting about the algorithm because it's proof that in order to grow on social media, you have to be relevant, which again means that you have to be producing something that is aligned with what people care about. And just the algorithm is a way of screening and directly showing numerically who has that and who doesn't. And the other problem that I see surrounding conversations around credibility of the internet and internet fame in general is that there isn't often a commonly agreed definition of what fame even is. Like Whitney Yulan says, fame is just the resource of having people's attention. And if you have people's attention for a long period of time, that is proof of the fact that you are relevant. And because it's so hard to fake, but so essential to being a pop star, I really like how social media often functions as a way of screening candidates before they ever get the chance to have their break. In other words, when you are famous on the internet, that just means that you have people's attention, which is also just why I often wonder why do people think it's that different? It's the same resource. It's just moved to people's phones.

Additionally, another stigma or bias that I think surrounds internet oriented musicians is that there's a lot of pressure and a lot of just stigma against algorithmic or that Tik Tok style of music. Because social media functions as such a big way of artists being able to build their audience, songs are now being engineered to be sold in that way. Which is why we have songs like As It Was that start with that super easy to recognize Child Talking or we have songs like Espresso that have that really recognizable hook at the beginning. You don't have to hear a lot of a song one time on the for you page in order to recognize it for many, many years to come. And songs are being written for this. And I don't think that that's as bad of a thing as people often make it out to be. At the end of the day, the goal of pop music isn't always to create the best objective song.

These artists aren't competing for a fullbrite or a doctorate of music performance. They are trying to create a piece of culture and theater that sells and resonates with consumers. And because of this, things like the Billboard charts or which songs are able to make it to the Billion Streams Club on Spotify are the main ways that you can keep score and judge whether or not a pop song is good or not. And because of this, can you really blame pop music for heading in the direction that it's heading in? Because at the end of the day, it's always been a commercial product. It's just changing and evolving to go where the money is, which is realistically just in line with what pop music has always been. which is why I often wonder if the bias against the direction that pop music is heading in isn't even a criticism of the actual music and just a criticism of pop music.

And the last thing I want to talk about regarding the impact of the internet on music is the fact that the internet changed the way that musicians are able to make a name for themselves and enter the industry. Before the internet, which artists got to even go into the studio to research and develop the kind of music that would ever penetrate the global market was controlled by music executives and media executives. music executives got to pick which artists ever got to be invited into the studios to ever get to really try and make the kind of music that would be worth selling.

And they also leveraged their expensive and hard to get connections to get that artist in front of an audience to eventually sell their music. And while yes, consumers would eventually get to have a say in what music continued to be funded by which songs they listened to on the radio or which CDs they bought at the CD store, consumers didn't really get to have a voice and who got to continue moving forward in pop music as early in the process as they do now. Because of the internet, consumers get to directly interact with and amplify the artist whose vision they align with and whose vision they believe in. Through platforms like Tik Tok and even Tik Tok Live, audiences are able to invest in the artist and ultimately get to choose which artist it is they want to see move forward in the music industry. And I think that is a great thing, not only for consumers, but for artists as well.

The internet gives more musicians a genuine shot at getting to make a name for themselves in their industry because now the biggest barrier to entry isn't getting a music executive to sign a contract giving you a record deal. It's having a cell phone, internet access, and a song that is worth listening to. Which is just another reason why I think that internet fame shouldn't be discredited because in order to be famous on the internet, you have to create music that is worth listening to, which just is proof of the fact that you as the artist have an audience that cares about you and therefore you are influential and relevant.

So, going back to Addison Rae and KATSEYE, you don't have to love them. I will openly acknowledge that while I am a rising fan of both of these artists, I don't expect everyone to like their music and I don't expect everyone to be a fan of them. However, when you are criticizing them just for the fact that they came up through or maintain the relevance through the internet, you're not just criticizing them as artists, you're criticizing a system that benefits those very artists and us as music consumers. Which is why I hope that as the next generation of pop stars begins to emerge that the internet isn't something that's going to be used to immediately discredit them. At the end of the day, I would love for the music industry to eventually grow into a place where everyone has a shot at building a name and building a platform for themselves. And the internet is something that actually makes that possible in a way that didn't exist before it.

Because I think a musical world like this would be really exciting, not just for artists, but for pop consumers as well. I just think there's something really exciting about the possibility that everyone is able to earn their seat at the table as opposed to having it given to them by a couple of people in boardrooms. Which is just another reason why I don't really like when terms like tick tocker are used to discredit Addison Rae or terms like viral sensation are used to discredit KATSEYE because they not only attack the artist, they also attack the system that helps artists just like them and pop consumers like you and me. But that's enough of this rant. If you liked this video, make sure to give it a like and hit the subscribe button down below. I have to say this is probably the first video in a while that I've been genuinely nervous to make just because this is a topic that's really personal to me and it's a topic that I feel like is so important that I really want to do it justice.

And if you want to find me elsewhere on the internet, you can find me on Instagram and Tik Tok at Joshua Miller on both platforms for daily videos.

But until then, make sure to have a wonderful day and thank you so much for watching.

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