Olivia Rodrigo and Anthony Fauci
Twitter comments on pro-vaccination video by Olivia Rodrigo:
Keith F: "Who the hell is Olivia Rodrigo?"
Allen: "If you're asking who Olivia Rodrigo is, you aren't the target audience. Either way, get vaccinated."
It is fully understandable if most of my readers are unfamiliar with Rodrigo. The 18-year-old singer-songwriter is the number one recording artist in the country. The fact that readers haven't heard of her and don't know her songs is a fact worth considering in itself. You think Democrats and Republicans live in different media worlds? People live in different media worlds from their own children and grandchildren, too.
She has nine million TikTok followers, 14 million Instagram followers, 1.3 million Twitter followers, and 638,000 people following her on Facebook. There is a generation story in those numbers, too. Notice which media venues interest young people--TikTok and Instagram--and which ones do not. Facebook is old fashioned.
News stories about Rodrigo's effort to encourage people in generation Z to get vaccinated reference the enormous amount of mis-information on TikTok. Nothing she does will contradict misinformation. She doesn't share data on risks and benefits. Rodrigo's influence comes from her presence. She is a star. She connects with young people. She supports vaccinations. That is the message.
She met with President Biden and Anthony Fauci. That, too, is a message. Theoretically, these important people validated and honored her, and she was gracious enough to play it that way, saying it was a tremendous honor to be there at the White House. No one is fooled. She does not benefit from being photographed alongside Biden and Fauci. She has so much star power she can spare being off-brand for a moment, and she is graciously validating them and their message of vaccination.
In a large White House room, with echoing sound, she recorded a four-minute video with Fauci. They bantered back and forth reading Tweeted comments addressed to them.
I share the video to make two small points. One is to show how awkward and pointless some political messages can be. The video is cringe-worthy. It is worse than worthless. Dr. Fauci, who can be persuasive to many people when he is solidly in-character as an earnest physician and immunologist, looks like a fish out of water here with Rodrigo. He looks like a good actor pretending to be a bad one delivering lines in a stilted way—or a man genuinely uncomfortable; no doubt the latter. Rodrigo makes scripted pleasantries with forced chuckles. Not all publicity is good publicity, but fortunately hardly anyone watched--only 37,000 views on YouTube. This isn't how she communicated with her age cohort. That was by TikTok and Instagram, where it was just her being herself.
The second point is to share that dark part of the internet: The un-moderated comments on a YouTube video. Readers whose orientation is to perceive Andrew Fauci as a veteran public servant in a difficult and thankless job may be blind to a certain way of thinking about him. I will share a few comments:
***Go to hell, enemies of humanity.
***No thanks that is the mark of the beast I will not be a experiment!!! Fools.
***Before starting the video look at his illuminati hands. All these 'elites' in their gay secret societies and their gay symbolism. wonder why we don't trust them.
***Vaxxed people are causing the variants. GAIN OF FUNCTION! What level of proteins are being elevated in our blood after the vax? You might actually get people sick.
***Go home and pray to God for forgiveness, Fauci.
***Selling poisonous snake oil for the Illuminati. Anyone else also curious why a major Democrat or fake news personality hasn't died yet?
***Another smooth-brain celebrity shilling for the fascist government.
***Why they gotta bribe to get vaccines if they're so healthy? That shit's literally the mark of the beast.***Can't watch this guy anymore. Did you ask Fauci why he promoted the weaponization of Coronaviruses?
Twitter and YouTube flame comments are not representative, but they are real. The writers give glimpses of the angry id that underlies a much broader response to political issues. I consider them the tip of an iceberg, the unfiltered voices that reflect what a broader group of people suspect is maybe-true, or partially true, or something to consider and worry about. He and the vaccine are understood to be evil, dangerous, corrupt, and agents of tyranny. The commenters represent a body of people who are not "vaccine hesitant." They don't need information and reassurance. They have all the information they need. They perceive an enemy.
We are isolated in our own screens. Out of one, many.