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The YouTube Hangover
By AprillBrandon in Pop Goes the Culture
February 26, 2008

What do you get when you combine bad singing and dancing, horrible videography and two overly inflated yet untalented egos? Heidi Montag's low budget video for her new (I wince to call it "song" but for lack of a better word) song.

If you don't know who Heidi Montag is...well, one, consider yourself lucky. Two, she is yet another reality TV personality who is trying to propel her 15 minutes on a crappy TV show into a legitimate career, along with the help of her creepy boyfriend, Spencer Pratt, who makes me want to shower vigorously every time I see him.

Montag and Pratt are both on the reality show "The Hills," which although I've never watched it, has something to do with a bunch of rich, spoiled white kids talking about stuff and junk.

See, Montag was best friends with the show's star Lauren Conrad, but once Montag started dating Pratt, things with her and Conrad went sour and soon it was an out and out war between the two former BFF's. Montag even went as far as to encourage another friend, Jen (a.k.a. Bunny) to make out with Brody Jenner, who was dating Lauren at the time, while they were at a party that Lauren was at too! (Or so I've heard...not that I've ever watched the show during a marathon on MTV while I was nursing a hangover one Sunday).

Anyhoo, Pratt is now trying to help Montag launch a music career and decided to produce a low budget video for her first supposed single "Higher." However, once it was online, the video was...well, to put it nicely, not well received by the general public. In fact, people hated it. Vehemently.

And it's not hard to see why. Basically all it is is Montag rolling around on the beach lip syncing (along with some cut shots featuring dancing I haven't seen since Elaine on Seinfeld let loose at a company party). And the song, well, it's not my personal taste.

But why am I bringing all this up? Well, Montag and Pratt are now speaking out against the public backlash in celebrity tabloid magazines like US Weekly (or so I've heard...not that I read those or anything). They apparently are shocked at how cruel people can be.

And to that I say, what do you expect when you put yourself out there like that? If you willingly post a video you made, the general public does not owe you anything and don't have to be "nice" about it. Granted it'd be great if the world was a nice, fuzzy place and people didn't feel the need to post evil comments anonymously, but that's not the world we live in.

So if you feel the need to try to make yourself famous and you put yourself out there in cyber land, don't start whining when people don't like it.

That said, however, it's a different story when someone becomes infamous online unknowingly. Newsweek just wrote a great article about the dark side of Internet fame and how anyone can be filmed or photographed online, much to the detriment of their private lives.