A Bieber or a Balloon Boy?

Lady Gaga doesn't answer her telephone for just anyone. But was Greyson Michael Chance's rise to stardom fate or fake?

We live in a world filled with the fake, the imitation, the knockoff, the inauthentic. Christian male Republicans who spend a lifetime trying to take civil rights and dignity away from homosexuals get caught with a boy toy for hire. Celebrity images on magazine covers are Photoshopped into the realm of the hyper-real. Something that was supposed to have been handmade in Italy has “Made in China” stamped on it. Something that is supposed to be pink flesh is actually clear silicon. Something that looks like a tan comes from a can.

So when amateur online videography took everyone by surprise and provided the driving force behind YouTube, the fastest-growing website ever, ordinary people reacted against this high age of inauthenticity by seeking out real people doing real things. We wandered out of the desert of the unreal and onto YouTube looking for real people, real pets, and real families, and sometimes we came away having made real friends.

Yet it did not take long for public relations agencies, marketers, advertisers, and other masters of the unreal to find their way onto YouTube. Armed with a keen insight into our postmodern culture of inauthentic authenticity, these hidden persuaders brought us a 19-year-old actress passing herself off as LonelyGirl15, Nike pimping professional videos as amateur stunts, and a growing number of other corporate-made videos disguised as homemade amateur productions.

So when a young boy named Greyson Michael Chance goes from being a nobody to cutting a deal with Ellen DeGeneres’ record company in the span of two months, the question that arises is: are we witnessing yet another fake? The amateur video of this 12-year-old boy from Oklahoma has a YouTube hit count of 20 million and climbing.

But like LonelyGirl15, Chance comes off as pretty slick for a recording made at a sixth-grade festival. The sound quality is well balanced, the editing is excellent – and so the critics have begun to circle Chance’s wagon.

As reported in the Christian Science Monitor, “the nearly flawless march from choirboy to Hollywood’s next ‘It Boy’ is also a good window into the perplexing problem of the modern digital world: namely media manipulation.” Even the “Discovery and Appearances” section of hisWikipedia page (wherein I found the above quote) has a warning attached to it: “This article or section reads like a news release, or is otherwise written in an overly promotional tone.” If we can’t trust Wiki, who can we trust?

It is not just Chance’s YouTube video that engenders suspicion. All the ensuing events have the skanky musk of a well-oiled marketing effort. As Scott Booker, CEO of the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma, told the Boston Herald, “I was amazed at the marketing machine that appeared behind him. In my opinion, looking at everything that suddenly appeared, there is no way a 12-year-old kid can have the time to do all that.” Heck, most of us can barely RSVP to a friend’s wedding, let alone execute an end-run for The Ellen Show and a conference call with Lady Gaga.

It remains to be seen if we have been had by yet another “balloon boy” whose star is rising suspiciously fast. If it turns out that we’re the victims of yet another slick marketing campaign, it probably doesn’t matter. Our kids will still buy his music, and we will still wear our fake tans.