The now legendary video clip featuring Miss Teen USA and the
response it fostered has fascinated me since it happened.
I may be a little late to the party in discussing the impact
the video has had, but I feel we should dig a little deeper behind the
phenomenon that is Miss Teen USA contestant Caitlin Upton.
Just to recap, Caitlin was asked why a quarter of Americans
can’t
find the U.S. on a map, and gave such a startlingly incomprehensible
answer (even for a beauty pageant) that it has to be seen to be
believed.
I have embedded the video here, for those of you who might (like me) have been
spelunking in Romania or working on the space station last week, and
therefore missed the global furore caused by her comments.
Miss Teen USA Caitlin Upton
Not surprisingly, the clip made it to YouTube in the blink of
an eye, and became the latest viral sensation. At last count, the video
of a confused Miss South Carolina had been viewed more than 12 million
times.
Interestingly enough, however, Caitlin (or her agent and/or
parents)
didn’t shy away from the publicity.
She showed up
on The Today Show
— where she
explained that
she was flustered and didn’t hear the answer properly, and
then gave a
somewhat better answer.
She also took part in several
other events
that made light of her blooper, including a geographical pop quiz put
on by People magazine on
its website.
As marketing consultant Bruce Clay notes
on his blog,
instead of hiding or trying to avoid the consequences of her blunder,
Caitlin effectively took advantage of the same forces that made that
blunder so notorious, in what he describes as a textbook example of
“reputation management,” Internet-style.
CNN’s Jeanne Moos notes in her
video
on the Miss South Carolina phenomenon that in the new YouTube era, no
one is safe from an embarrassing video clip, and mentions the
“Star
Wars Kid”.
The Original Star Wars Kid
This was Montreal high-school student Ghyslain
Raza, who videotaped
himself
pretending to be a Jedi knight, only to have the clip uploaded to the
Internet by fellow students, much to his embarrassment. He later sued
and reached
a settlement, and hasn’t been heard from since.
Caitlin, meanwhile, has gotten at least as much positive
mileage out
of her televised confusion as she has negative coverage —
much like the
“Tron guy,” a sci-fi enthusiast who was much
ridiculed for posting
photos of a rather
unflattering
Tron costume he made.
The Tron Guy
The Tron guy (also known as Jay Maynard) turned
his humiliation in to multiple radio and TV appearances, and was asked
to appear at a number of sci-fi conferences and fan events.
Obviously, it’s a lot easier for an adult
— or someone with PR
management professionals on their side — to handle unwanted
Internet
attention than it was for 15-year-old Ghyslain Raza.
But Jay Maynard
and others have shown that there is a flip side to Internet
embarrassment. Can anyone remember the name of the Miss Teen USA
winner? Unlikely.
Written by Mathew Ingram, a technology journalist. Catch his views on the intersection between media and the web at MathewIngram.com. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.
