Don’t Tase Britney (or whatever)

How small can an idea be, and still gain what at least appears to be cultural traction?

The answer is incredibly small. So small that we don’t even bother to attach a name to the person at the center of such an idea. We just call these people “[fill-in-the-blank] guy.” The two present examples are “Leave Britney Alone Guy,” and “Don’t Tase Me Guy.” In keeping with the rules of the game, I will not bother with actual names here, since it doesn’t matter.

Leave Britney Alone Guy is, of course, some guy. He made a YouTube video in which he offered a “tear-filled defense of Britney Spears.” Allegedly, he has a “large Net audience” that has made him “a darling of the mainstream media.” Also, he now has “a development deal.” Variety.com says: “Plan is to develop a docusoap built around Crocker, a 19-year-old who lives with his grandparents in Tennessee.”

Meanwhile, there’s Don’t Tase Me Guy. Again, this is some guy. This guy apparently said “Don’t tase me, bro,” while being tased at a John Kerry event. In an example of the kind of current-event product-making (“spinning products off events, or even off what the historian Daniel Boorstin called pseudo-events”) that I wrote about a while back in this Consumed, someone is selling related T-shirts. I would say the main change since that June 2006 column is that the threshold for just how pseudo an event can be before someone pronounces it a phenomenon and at least attempts to commodize it, continues to get lower.

[Update: I missed this earlier, but Adfreak prefers a different Tase Guy T.]

I should disclose that I haven’t bothered to watch any of the related YouTube videos; I’m operating on the Snakes on a Plane theory that once you “get” the phrase, you don’t have to bother with whatever cultural artifact the phrase supposedly refers to. I suggest you do the same. If you waste time actually watching Leave Britney Alone Guy, you may be several minutes late in hearing about Whoever Comes Next Guy.