New Ark Music Factory Act Might Pull Another Rebecca Black
Ark Music Factory pioneered the internet hate slingshot with Rebecca Black, catapulting her from dire cyberbullying victim to mainstream fame. It appears that's also their strategy with their newest terrible music video.
Here's the video for Madison Bray's "Girl Swag." It's 10-year-old Madison bragging about her girl swag, and tweens trying their best to look hard, but actually just looking like grumpy bar mitzvah guests. (For you olds, here is a helpful guide to "swag.") At this point, it's got over 2,000 "dislikes" on YouTube compared to 335 "likes"—definitely a Blackian ratio.
With its last act, Lexi St. George, Ark Music Factory briefly experimented with the untested "trying to actually be good" technique of music production. And it largely worked: The video for St. George's "Dancing to the Rhythm" was completely bearable. This makes the unabashed badness of "Girl Swag" seem like a conscious attempt to rev up the internet hate machine. For the sake of fame-hungry 10-year-old girls everywhere, let's hope it doesn't work again.