Mockery Doesn’t Touch It

There’s this German YouTuber—Bibi, I think—who made a song called How It Is that was apparently terrible enough that everyone from the internet to German TV comedians took shots at it. Carolin Kebekus did a parody on public television. The whole thing became this whole thing.

But here’s what gets me: none of it matters to her. Every parody, every cruel joke, every person dunking on the song—it all just keeps her relevant and keeps the money coming. That’s the thing about internet fame that took me twenty years of watching this stuff to really feel in my bones. Criticism doesn’t touch it. Mockery doesn’t touch it. You can be the worst, and you’re still getting paid for being watched.

I kept reading these sarcastic takes wondering if she goes home and cries about it, if she regrets uploading the song, if she questions her whole existence on YouTube. And maybe she does. But probably not when she’s counting the engagement metrics and the sponsorship money. The cruel irony is that the crummier you are, the more people pay attention, and attention is literally the currency.

It’s a weird thing to resent—that critics and comedians and people trying to be clever about why something is bad are basically just giving it more life. Every parody is free publicity. Every cruel joke is a signal boost. So Kebekus mocking it on German TV was just another advertisement, really.

I don’t know this person or her work beyond the reference. Maybe the song was actually good and everyone was just being mean. Maybe it was as bad as they say. Doesn’t change the equation. The system is rigged in a way that failing publicly is still succeeding financially, and that’s something I’ve watched happen over and over and still don’t quite know how to feel about it.