I found out that Queen Elizabeth II was unwell through a meme. above a video of a screaming woman floating in the air, I read: “Queen Elizabeth’s soul flies across the globe to Trisha Paytas’ baby.” Two hours later, Buckingham Palace announced that Her Majesty had died. This wasn’t the first time I got the news of the day via Trisha Paytas. For a decade now, I’ve seen the 34-year-old American influencer pop up all over social media. And I still don’t know what exactly she is famous for.
If the Los Angeles influencer world had a boss, it would be Trisha Paytas. The bimbo fame with her platinum blonde extensions, puffed-up lips and layers of makeup has a knack for pissing off as many people as possible. While most influencers try to paint a perfect picture of themselves, Paytas attracts viewers by showing the worst version of themselves. I asked on Instagram and Twitter that my followers know Paytas from. The answers I received: from a compilation of howling influencers; of her feud with well-known YouTuber Ethan Klein; and of a clip in which every time Paytas says ‘Jesus’, there are short fragments of her sinning.
With her Youtube Channel full of useless lifestyle advice, bad music videos, and cringe-inducing snitch vlogs, she offers Generation Z and Millennials endless entertainment. She belongs to a group of YouTubers, most of whom hate or pretend to each other. With their endless bickering and howling, they rake in millions of viewers and dollars.
Everyone is actually a little bit Trisha. We all talk about bullshit sometimes, but she’s brave enough to document it on the World Wide Web since 2007. She also documented her pregnancy for nine months. When it was announced in her ninth month that the Queen was unwell, the internet was filled with memes in which her baby Malibu Barbie was referred to as the reincarnation of Elizabeth II.
Rather pseudo event than real event
Being famous for no apparent reason is not a new phenomenon. American historian Daniel Joseph Boorstin already stated in the 1960s that the celebrity is someone who is known only for his celebrity. In his book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961) he argues that the visual revolution in journalism and other media has ensured that fame no longer equates to greatness. His book was published a year after the first televised presidential debate in America between Kennedy and Nixon. Many commentators argued that Kennedy won the election thanks to his TV appearance.
The culturally conservative Boorstin denounced the new mass media. He coined the term pseudo-event: an event that is not spontaneous, but fabricated for sharing in the media. Think of a press conference about corona, or a Youtube video in which Trisha Paytas films herself lying on the kitchen floor crying.
Boorstin warned of a future in which the media consumer would rather look at the fabricated image than at reality. He was right. But the allegory of the useless celebrity is quite entertaining, as are the memes it produces.