That Should Be Me…

My ‘Bieber Fever’ that I thought I cured 11 years ago came back at full force this week. On top of the endless videos from Coachella that made me experience FOMO like never before, this week filled my (unfortunately) chronically online brain with more pop culture updates than usual.

Bieberchella: Starting strong with one of the biggest weekends of the year, Coachella. Justin Bieber’s headlining set quickly broke all sorts of records, and consequently so did my screen time. One of his newer songs, “Daisies”, has already reached nearly nine million views in just four days (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He9WmjUvpJ8). Every single time I opened my phone, J.B. appeared on my screen within seconds, and I had no problem watching the same video over and over again. And honestly, I never questioned it. It did inevitably reach a point where it felt more like a strategy than just my curated feed. With the countless influencers capturing all the ‘must-see’ moments and TikTok and Instagram continuously pushing the most engaging content, Bieberchella was genuinely impossible to ignore. From a PR perspective, it is pretty brilliant. Turing just a single live show into a constant, repeating dialogue that continues long after the performance.

Alix vs. Alex: The Alex Cooper versus Alex Earle drama is a totally different pull, but just as hard to ignore. Even as someone who is not super caught up with either influencer, I quickly found myself down the deep rabbit hole trying to unpack the story. Other creators were not only sharing constant updates but also shaping the narrative in real time, framing the most important moments and deciding who to believe. With situations like these, there comes a point when the original circumstances do not even matter, and the story itself becomes the content and is impossible not to stay caught up with.  

Plot Twist:
Watching The Drama ended up being completely different from what I expected, which honestly made it even more interesting. All the clips and edits I had seen beforehand made it seem like one kind of movie, but sitting in the theater, it felt like something else entirely. Still, whatever they did leading up to it clearly worked because both times I went, the theater was completely full. It felt like they really understood how to pull in a Gen Z audience, using just enough intrigue online to get people curious without fully giving it away. Even if the movie didn’t match the exact expectations social media set, it got people in seats, which says a lot about how powerful that kind of promotion can be. Robert Pattinson, I love you!