Mass Culture Theory in Youtuber Commentary

Commentator and YouTube Cody Ko has a video titled "It's Everyday? No. (Jake Paul reaction). I believe that in this, although I completely agree with the video, and am a fan of it, critiques an element of popular culture through the lens of mass culture theory. This is an older video, being at about a couple of years old. It is about YouTuber Cody Ko reacting to another YouTubers, Jake Paul,  music video to his song It's Everyday Bro. At the time of the video, around the summer of 2017, the song had made it to the number 2 spot on iTunes music charts, second to Justin Bieber's Despacito, making it popular culture. Cody Ko tears the music video apart humorously, but the video as a whole tends to have a gatekeeping elitist feel to it, similar to the ideas in Mass Culture Theory. Cody Ko compares the song to mainstream rap music, which would be the equivalent of someone comparing a teenager's drawing to a Renaissance painter. It focuses on Cody Ko's taste and aesthetics versus the taste and aesthetics of Jake Paul, and in the end devaluing Jake Paul's work. The YouTuber makes a list of things that shouldn't be rapped about, and talks about the quality and creativity that the lyrics are lacking. He says things such as "It's a sad day for music," and  "don't rap about YouTube. It's not cool" (Cody Ko 2017). Although I agree with Cody Ko on this, it is putting down one aspect of popular culture and devaluing it due to believing that the quality that would have been spent on any other mainstream rapper would have been immensely better. YouTuber Cody Ko addresses that music is much harder to make than it seems, and makes the comment: "This video was wrote, shot, and edited in one day... Yeah. It's pretty [explicit] clear, bro" (Cody Ko 2017). Which comes from the Mass Culture Theory of things that have value in them must take time and not be quick and easy. This video is satire, of course, but within that has some pretty elitist views that I would not have recognized at first.

Music

Music "is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence, which exist in time"  This what you will find if you were to Google "what is music". Music means something different to everybody that comes in contact with it. Music to one person is healing and therapeutic, while another uses it a conversation piece.

Music has stood the test of time. Always being created, duplicated and manipulated. With all of the different genres of music, the way that music is talked about varies. For instance if you were to talk about classical, you would begin to talk about the different instruments that are heard, where the composer draws inspiration from and maybe even what key they are playing in. A broader conversation can be about rap and hiphop music. The lyrics will reach different audiences because not every talks about the same thing. As much as people think you will only hear about the struggle, there are also artists that talk about art and culture. What the culture is varies because you have something like trap music, where you will here more about what happens in more urbanized areas and what they go through and how they "flipped a quarter brick". There will be the mainstream rap that will toned down with talks of love and other relatable topics.

My connection to music has always been that of a coping mechanism. I find myself turning to music when I need to find comfort. There are songs that bring me joy, and pain. Music is used in so many ways, it is easy to connect a certain song with a memory that is either bad or good. A good memory would be from a time that I hung out with friends and we could not stop singing "Glamorous by Fergie" at the top our lungs. I see us all sitting in the car on our way to a party, just in our own little bubble creating a memory from a song we knew from our child hood.When I hear the song now, I am instantly brought back to that moment.