Hot Problems: Is Bad the New Good?

Curiosity: What Makes Humans Humans

As human beings, our minds have been hard-wired to be curious about the world around us. One of the things we are curious about is how great something can get. With the development of new technology almost everyday, we always wonder how much futuristic and convenient our lives can be just as described in sci-fi books and movies. In today's digital age, electronic gadgets come out of nowhere and outshine other gadgets that just came out yesterday. Technology is becoming as fleeting as the complications of women's fashion.

"Like, iPads are sooooo last season!"

Y! O! U! You wanna!?

On the other end of the spectrum, however, is our natural curiosity about how bad something can get. In today's declining conditions of the music industry, pop songs are being mass-produced in factories, stuffed with senseless lyrics, then coated with a varnish of auto-tune. Every record sounds the same (you've got to step into my world! just kidding!). But it's true. Almost all of mainstream music sounds the same nowadays, getting downhill with everyday I hear the voices of androids on FM radio.

I have absolutely no idea how this happened, but the standards of good are starting to reverse themselves like an hourglass that has been turned. People are now paying more attention to train wrecks instead of the majestic branches of the trees that surround them. The train wreck is just too repulsive, but no one can just look away.

Double Take

This is the case with this viral video known as Hot Problems. It is a ridiculously narcissistic 'song' by two teenage girls who call themselves Double Take, and it's about the first-world problems that come with being 'attractive'. By the time I'm typing this, the video already has a whopping 10,039,432 views! Man, if this is a joke as they have said in an interview, then, well-played girls! Well-played!

Rebecca Black

A year ago, Rebecca Black has been said to release the worst song ever, Friday. Now that music just keeps getting worse and worse, this doesn't sound so bad anymore, even if it is, still, well... never mind. (Rebecca, we're all sorry for making fun of you then, okay?) At least this song has an innocent feel to it whereas Hot Problems is like a Ke$ha song made even worse with its slutty, full-of-oneself lyrics. At least Ke$ha sings with good range (with the help of auto-tune)... sometimes.

Face it, DT girls, you aren't really that hot. (Well, at least you admitted it in the interview...) As this guy said, "Listen, you two girls, it's not attractive when you open your legs wider and faster than Google's Homepage!" Maybe if you two have better personalities, you guys wouldn't be so bad and would have prom dates. (Well, when I was in high school, I wasn't able to get a prom date myself because at my ridiculous height of 4'10, almost all the girls in my school towered above me. Short guys: we have problems too; we're just like you, only we're short, short, short, short)

Jenna McDougall, TA vocalist

Meanwhile, a very underrated band (with a gorgeous girl with powerful vocals in it) makes really good songs (in my opinion, but it is a fact that their songs are way better than those of the two above) and has views that only reach five or six digits compared to those two aforementioned 'artists.' Here's Tonight Alive with their song Wasting Away, which only has 629,325 views by the time I'm typing this.  

(Disclaimer: for those who do not like pop punk, my point here is NOT to promote the genre and/or this band, but to get the point across that bad is starting to become the new good and that bands who work so hard to get their sound heard and see music as a passion don't get the credit they deserve.)

Sabrina Abu-Obeid

And here's TeraBrite, a two-piece band who parodied the song Hot Problems. Yes, the girl vocalist, Sabrina Abu-Obeid, is way hotter than Double Take. She's awesome too. This is the awkward moment when the parody is actually better than the song:

The culture of excellence is already in a degrading state in this world. If bad really is the new good nowadays, people mostly do the bad stuff now on purpose just for attention and fame. If this nasty trend continues, I'm just wondering what will become of art, music, and literature for our future generations. Man, I feel sorry for them! Gone are the days when powerful songs with deep, emotional and philosophical lyrics ruled the radio, the days when books used to inspire people and change lives, and the days when art was an amazing spectacle to behold. Money and fame are already starting to replace the true purposes of art, music, and literature: passion, self-expression, and inspiration.