Meet Kelly

You may remember Nicki from X Factor in an earlier blog entry who sung I Will Always Love You by Whitney Housten (yes, I know it was originally Dolly Parton, but it was ole Witney Crack Ho Housten who put the song on the international karaoke map). Well, meet Kelly.



This new phonomenon of instant fame - just add water - tears and lots of them - brings a secondary phenomenon. When once your bad performance being likened to a singing Lassie would be relegated to the fish and chip wrappers of collective audience memory, it is now uploaded in celluloid cyberspace perpetuity. You've donned your best frock, practiced with your toothbrush and signed away your rights for a shot of five minute fame, only to be a star performer for all the wrong reasons with a YouTube fan base in the millions.

I wonder what this next chapter of infamity does for Kelly's self esteem. The YouTube viewer comments about her and her family are filled with bile and vitriole based on five minutes of telly. The next question is whether or not this family is always truly hideous, or whether the Jerry Springer devil had posessed them for the five minutes of Kelly's audition and made them act like pretentious, self righteous fools. Which is what reality TV preys on, but rarely considers the after effect.

Take this clip for example:



and here's what the show and the subsequent uploading of her horrendous performance has had on her life:



Should we have sympathy? I say not. They want instant fame, they get infamous instantly and become an outlet for cyber punters to vent their spleens at people they don't know, don't care about and can laugh at. I sure did. That's entertainment.