Receiving, Remixing, Recuperating "Rebecca Black—Friday"

Abstract

On March 11, 2011, popular internet humor blog the Daily What published a post containing a single YouTube video. The video’s static thumbnail evoked placid suburban domesticity: a medium close-up of a white adolescent girl smiling widely, framed against a background of green foliage. This post, with its innocuous image—seemingly suitable for advertising home insurance or back-to-school supplies—was inexplicably and provocatively captioned “Where Is Your God Now of the Day: I am no longer looking forward to the weekend.”1 Prior to the Daily What posting, the video had received relatively little online viewership. But just a few weeks later, on March 30, it had edged out the music video to Justin Bieber’s “Baby” to achieve the dubious distinction of the most “disliked” video on the YouTube platform.2 The video in question was “Rebecca Black—Friday,” one of the most infamous viral videos of the early 2010s.3 In the video, over the course of three minutes and forty-seven seconds, singer and central figure Rebecca Black narrates and moves through believably mundane situations— a schoolgirl eagerly anticipating the weekend as she completes her morning routine and commute, to a Friday night party full of friends.