When The Parodies Won

Bibi is this YouTube personality from Germany who got famous young and has a gift for polarizing the demographic you’d expect—the tween crowd, the adjacent circles, that whole sprawl. The stans went to bat for her, tweets and emojis flying. But what actually formed around her was something else: a complete parallel industry of people whose only goal was to destroy her debut single.

How It Is (wap bap…)—I don’t even know what to call that sound—is genuinely terrible. Like, I’m serious, legitimately competing for worst song of the 21st century. I honestly can’t think of anything worse. The parodies that exploded online weren’t even parodies anymore; they were mercy operations. Actual masterworks, some of them. People came, saw what she’d released, understood what needed to happen, and immediately made something better.

I know I’ll get mail. People saying jump out a window, make a song yourself if you’re such a critic, the whole defensive stan routine. But here’s what I think: if you’re making money off something this fundamentally, obviously broken, you’ve earned what happens next. I’d sooner listen to Helene Fischer forever. At least she knows what she is.