Young creatives are using social media to shape the culture we consume. But what happens when they donât own their work?
Kayla Newman started her Vine account to record herself commenting on the minutia and mundanity of high school life. This was nearly two years ago, when she was 16. For her handle, Newman chose a nickname made up during an annual visit to her grandmother in Georgia: âPeaches Monroee.â She added the extra âeâ because it looked playful, she explained over email.
Like a diary, Newman began filming herself daily, though she has since slowed down to meet the stresses of senior year. When sheâs riffing as Peaches, Newman takes videos of herself from the passenger seat of her momâs car in her neighborhood of South Chicago. She and her mom dance at a stoplight in one early Vine; she offers an impromptu speech on self-confidence in another. In the video everyone knows, uploaded on June 21st, 2014, Kayla admires her precisely arched eyebrows: âWe in this bitch. Finna get crunk. Eyebrows on fleek. Da fuq.â
I know the line by heart. Such is the nature of internet virality. As of this writing, Kaylaâs original âOn Fleekâ Vine has generated over 36 million âloops,â or replays. Thatâs where any sensible person stops the tabulation. A month after Newmanâs upload, someone named Kevin Gadsden reposts her Vine to YouTube, where it acquires around 3 million views. The expression âon fleekâ passes through the clutches of Ariana Grande, who vines herself singing it in August 2014 for another 9 million loops, and then through those of seemingly every other social media-literate celebrity outfit that fall; corporate entities like IHOP and its rivals employ the phrase in an effort to feign cultural relevance; talk show host Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooperexchange vaguely unpleasant jabs about its meaning. âOn fleekâ ascends to near-officialized language.
Itâs impossible to track the chain of ownership from there on out. In fact, the chain becomes more like a swarm. Put plainly, there is no recognized ownership. The phrase Newman gave the world was used to sell breakfast foods and party cups, but it only belongs to her in an intangible sense, on the rare occasions in which people choose to give her credit.
âI gave the world a word,â Newman said. âI canât explain the feeling. At the moment I havenât gotten any endorsements or received any payment. I feel that I should be compensated. But I also feel that good things happen to those who wait.â
What things come to those who innovate? And who can be called an innovator? When we talk about technology, the designation of âdigital innovatorâ is usually reserved for the engineers who create platforms or the entrepreneurs who instruct them to. Rarely do we see that language applied to the users populating those platforms, though they are techâs bread and butter. A cursory glance at the user-generated content rising to the top of the internet heap reveals how much of it is produced by black teens, members of a burgeoning Generation Z who experiment with the iPhone gaze.
In an article for The Guardian, writer Hannah Giorgis argued that content-sharing among black users and consumers constitutes a â21st century meta-languageâ that gives place to dances, songs, memes, and other âsociolinguistic phenomenaâ that are compelling enough to make the leap from the producerâs specific context to even the most corporate of marketing campaigns. Evidence teems. In August 2015,Dancing with the Stars shot a promotional campaign featuring mostly white celebrity has-beens doing Silentoâs âWatch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),â a song and attendant dance popularized on Vine. In one breathless appearance on Ellen, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton tried it too. In those moments, black teensâ internet production becomes a means for communication and entertainment. Their names as creators are harder to find.
Denzel Meechie, 20, was physically spent when he called me. After we talked, he headed back to an Atlanta dance studio to record a video of himself and his crew improvising to songs from Drake and Futureâs just-released mixtape. Meechie is a dancer, first by habit and then by trade. Heâs influenced by Les Twins and the fluid lines of ballet, but he isnât inclined to rehearsing. In his videos, his preferred backdrop is the chrome of industrial spaces. He likes inventing dances that follow songs heâs moved by, something he posits elevates the impact of any given track. The Vines on his account, @SheLovesMeechie, have been viewed over 200 million times; his choreography has influenced the way many people move.
âItâs never planned,â Meechie said. â[We] just go for it, and after we have a lot of takes, me and my director will cut in and put the best six seconds on Vine. If we got a good longer take, weâll put it on YouTube.â His first big break came as a surprise. âI went to the gas station one time, and I danced to this one song. It went viral, and all of a sudden my social media started growing because I was flooding it with dances.â The song was âPlug Snitchinâ by the Houston group Yung Nation. It hadnât been close to a hit before Meechie danced to it; afterwards, the crew found traction.
In mid-September, YouTube shut down Meechieâs channel, which had accrued hundreds of thousands of subscribers. âI had too many copyright strikes,â he said, referring to his use of songs without explicit legal permission from labels. According to Meechie, labels contact YouTube and demand his videos be taken down, often without the knowledge of their own artists, some of whom pay him directly to help boost their buzz. âAnd itâs crazy, you know, because the artists ask me to put the videos up.â
As prolific and internet-known as Meechie and his crew are, they are multiple steps removed from owning, in a tangible sense, their art, leaving them vulnerable to both YouTubeâs whims and to having their creativity lifted by outsiders. Atlanta, where Meechie is from, is legendary as a place where teens generate culture, and then go uncompensated as their style and tastes are usurped by a corporate machine hungry for Black Cool. Cultural sharing is ancient. That the speed and relative borderlessness of the internet makes cross-platform, global dissemination seem like a consequence of tech is a convenient amnesia. The propensity to share predates the young black creators doing so online. But they ought to claim lineage. Remember, for instance, the blues.
K.J. Greeneâs 2008 essay, âLady Sings the Blues: Intellectual Property at the Intersection of Race and Gender,â published in The Journal of Gender, Social Policy & The Law, situates the American conundrum of race and proprietorship at the specific moment of blues music production. Blues leans on an unpredictable meld of instrumental prowess and rapid improvisation, and not on a premeditated, capitalist-conscious calculus. âBlack artists had no input in [copyright law], and examination reveals that it is in some respects incompatible with Black cultural production in music,â writes Greene, arguing that multiple copyright standards were specifically structured to preclude black blues artists, especially women, from claiming ownership. âThe idea/expression dichotomy of copyright law prohibits copyright protection for raw ideas,â Greene wrote. âI contend that this standard provided less protection to innovative black composers, whose work was imitated so wildly it became âthe idea.ââ
Part of the reason the originators of viral content are stripped from their labor is because they donât technically own their production. Twitter does, Vine does, Snapchat does, and the list goes on.Â
Intangible things like slang and styles of dance are not considered valuable, except when theyâre produced by large entities willing and able to invest in trademarking them.
This week I am very happy to present a collaboration comic with my friend Chrissie, who has been generous in sharing with me her experiences of gender dynamics in a technical field, and then helping me craft them into a comic narrative.
Whenever I see Chrissieâs work Iâm always impressed at the cool, creative things she does. When we were discussing this comic, she told me: âI find men persistently try to direct me lots now too, which is probably the biggest problem I consistently run intoâ, and my feelings around that fact are a terrible and familiar blend of frustration, sadness, and lack of surprise.
When we talk about the differences in how men and women are treated professionally, especially in technical fields, we are often dismissed with âeveryone has to deal with thatâ, or âwomen need to demonstrate more confidence with their skillsâ, or âtheyâre just trying to be helpfulâ, or âitâs all in your headâ.
Itâs frustrating when we know something like this is happening, but we spend so much of our time actually trying to get people to believe that itâs a real phenomenon. I find narratives like Chrissieâs validating in that she has a comparative set of experiences and is like âoh yeah, people totally think Iâm less competent at my job now. itâs totally a thingâ. Â So, can guys just believe us already and get on helping it not happen?
When my wife transitioned, working in tech, she found that her coworkers and subordinates did start treating her differently. She even had one guy working under her who tried to tell her how to use a piece of software that she herself had taught him only three months before.
Edvard Munch. Girls on a Bridge, Evening Melancholy, Man in Womanâs Hair, Into the Forest, Young Woman on the Beach, Moonlight, Holger Drachmann, Man and Woman, Two Women on the Shore, Evening Melancholy II. 1890s.
We try so hard to hide everything weâre really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if itâs somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life.
I really didnât want to write this review. I still donât. Not because Meryl Streep is a lie (she appears for like 15 seconds). Not because the main character never existed in this supposedly historical film (the director calls it a âcomposite characterâ). Not because Suffragette is a bad filmâitâs not. Itâs fine. Itâs Oscar bait. Whatever. I didnât want to write this review because Iâm tired of writing about white people. Iâm tired of fantasy worlds where people of color donât exist. Where even the made upâexcuse meâcomposite characters are white. It gets really disheartening to see yourself written out of popular culture, written out of history time and time again. Itâs really hard to keep answering my sonâs question: âHow come there arenât any brown people in this?â
Atena Farghadani is a 28-year-old Iranian artist. She was recently sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in prison for drawing a cartoon.
This cartoon, that she posted on her Facebook page last year, depicts members of the Iranian parliament as animals. It was drawn in protest of new legislature in Iran that will restrict access to contraception and criminalise voluntary sterilisation. Atenaâs charges include âspreading propaganda against the systemâ and âinsulting members of parliament through paintingsâ.
Last August, 12 members of the elite Revolutionary Guard came to Atenaâs house, blindfolded her and took her to the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran. According to Amnesty International:
âWhile in prison last year, Atena flattened paper cups to use them as a surface to paint on. When the prison guards realised what she had been doing, they confiscated her paintings and stopped giving her paper cups. When Atena found some cups in the bathroom, she smuggled them into her cell. Soon after, she was beaten by prison guards, when she refused to strip naked for a full body search. Atena says that they knew about her taking the cups because they had installed cameras in the toilet and bathroom facilities â cameras detainees had been told were not operating.â
She was released in November and gave media interviews and posted a video on YouTube detailing her beatings, constant interrogations and humiliating body searches. She was then rearrested possibly in retaliation for speaking out and has been imprisoned ever since. In January, Atena went on a hunger strike to protest the horrible prison conditions. Her health suffered dramatically, and after losing consciousness and suffering a heart attack in February, she was forced to eat again.
The quote used in the comic is taken from the speech Atena gave at her trial. It has been translated into English by the Free Atena Facebook page. You can read the whole thing here.
Time is now against her, she has just two weeks to lodge an appeal. Michael Cavna, comic journalist for The Washington Post, has launched a campaign appealing to artists to help bring awareness to Atenaâs case by creating their own artwork in support of Atena and using the hashtag#Draw4Atena. Can a bunch of artists and a hashtag really make a difference and put pressure on the Iranian Government to release Atena? Probably not. But just remember that Atena is currently in prison enduring horrible conditions, and if her appeal isnât successful, she will be there for another twelve years. FOR DRAWING A CARTOON AND POSTING IT ON FACEBOOK. Donât we owe it to her to at least try?
Alot worse actually happens out there.. once Being a soldier (which turned me into an activist) showed me..
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