At Least He's Still Pretty

 

If anybody has learned how to leverage the power of dewy good looks and the global forum of the Internet, it is Cameron Dallas, who has gone from being a shining light of  YouTube and Vine, to lucrative personal appearance tours and a charmless but financially successful movie (Expelled, now available on Netflix).  Now Cameron has decided to try his hand at music and has released his first rap song, which briefly, very briefly, entered the top ten on the iTunes chart.  I confess that I am not exactly a hip-hop kind of guy, but even I can tell you that Cameron's song, She Bad, is not good.  I'm not going to say that it is the worst thing I have ever heard, but it's right up there.  But why take my word of it when you can hear for yourself?

Meanwhile, On YouTube...

First of all, let me point out that this video was posted three days ago and already has over a million views. For real. And what's all the fuss about? YouTube stars Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier, stripped to the waist and torturing each other with food. 

And you know, whatever.  I mean, I watched it, too, and not without some interest. But considering how easily Cameron uses the word "fag" as an insult, and how casually homophobic Nash Grier can be ("Gay rights? Nahhhh"),  it seems crazy how blatantly homoerotic this thing is.  Honestly, it is only a few pixelated genitals away from being a Japanese S&M video.  About the only thing missing is some candle wax and a round of bukkake at the end. In fact, it actually ends with a hilarious injury and a trip to the hospital. Fun!

Cameron Dallas Is Famous On The Internet

There are a lot of pictures of Cameron Dallas online. A lot. Most of them are on-line because Cameron Dallas put them there, first on Tumblr, and then on pretty much every social media outlet you can think of. He currently has 1.1 million followers on Vine.  Unlike most of the popular YouTubers, who tend to combine dreamy good looks with sparkling personalities and a genuine sense of humor, Cameron seems like a nice, unexceptional, albeit gorgeous 19-year-old boy. He's done a little modeling, but he will never really be a professional model because he's too small for the sample size. Rumor has it that sometimes, when bullshitting with his friends, he will thoughtlessly throw out some homophobic language. I haven't witnessed such behavior, and I hope it isn't true, but obviously his appeal isn't that he's smart. 

The internet is full of boys (and girls, too) who use social media to promote themselves.  What magic formula makes Cameron Dallas the object of adulation to so many people when there are other equally handsome boys flashing their abs for the camera and oversharing their lives with anyone who cares to listen?  Another example of this kind of thing is Benjamin Lasnier, a 14-year-old from Denmark who posted pictures of himself to an Instagram account until he obtained over a million followers and a recording contract with Sony.  Can he sing? Who knows? Yet there are scores of  handsome boys singing their hearts out on YouTube,  some of them with real talent, who aren't getting recording contracts.

Andy Warhol was wrong when he said that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.  Now that almost everyone has easy access to mass media, we can see that it still takes something special to be famous. The question before us is: what is that something? Being pretty certainly doesn't hurt, but it has to be something more than that, right?  Right?  I hope so. I don't want to live in a world that is completely superficial.  But then again, I do follow Cameron's  Tumblr page, his Instagram, his YouTube,and even his Vine, so who am I to judge?