The tweeting nation were shocked last Sunday as they were witnessing racist tweets from the Grime artist, Wiley, towards the whole Asian community! What started off as a personal argument against the singer Jay Sean turned into twitter madness as more and more tweeters witnessed these tweets and started to get involved, sending the Grime artist tweets back in their defence. Twitter being the starting point, this news reached other social networking sites such as Facebook within minutes of the first couple of tweets being published, with many being retweeted and statuses changed in regards to the quarrel. It had changed from an argument between two musical artists to one person against a whole community.
The tweeting squabble was followed up by a radio interview the next day, on Bobby Frictions show on the BBC Asian Network...where Wiley was present in order to put forward his arguments as to why he had started sending racist remarks in the first place. In his defence, he said that the argument was between him and Jay Sean and their musical differences and he was then targeted by Jay Sean fans. Wiley threatened to ‘slap a turbin’ off of a Sikh tweeter and to ‘smash up all the corner shops’ in the stereotypical view that all Asians in Britain own corner shops. Some tweeters believe that it may be a publicity stunt as both artists are due to release new singles and therefore in order to generate a ‘hype’ about each and to reach a wide audience, the artists turned to the most effective method: the world of social networking.
What are your thoughts? A pr stunt?
ReplyDeleteI personally feel that it was a pr stunt only because this argument came out of nowhere, there was not much lead up to it apart from Wileys sudden urge to pick a fight with Jay Sean and it werent even Jay Sean that got involved it was everybody else but him!
ReplyDeleteYes, that is a valid point, especially as both artists are due to release a new single, a pr stunt such as this one could be the easiest way to promote themselves. This argument also led to a single being produced by asian artist Shizzio titled 'Ethnic Banter'
ReplyDeleteI came across the 'Ethnic Banter' song (the outcome of this Twitter argument) on Facebook as numerous people had posted the link. You may be right Gurpreet as even Shizzio states in this song 'think you can cuss asians and then go on the asian network to go get pr?'
ReplyDeleteThere are many ways people get pr including such stunts as this - it managed to gain huge publicity from Twitter to Facebook to the BBC Asian Network radio station being aired nationwide - News travels fast hey.
ReplyDeleteOther memorable pr stunts include; David Blaines 44 days in a glass box, Madonnas kiss with Britney at the MTV awards and Googles streetmap view capturing the Stig.
Hi Gurpreet,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was a PR stunt as like you said above they both had singles coming out at the time.
Also racism is still a major issue in society still especially after the bombings in New York and London.
But it works, PR stunts like this makes people talk so therefore opinions are formed and debated. Word of mouth is the most effective form communication and alerting people of issues and events and with the help of social media it makes it easier to communicate these.
Once it becomes a popular enough issue more and more publicity is created as more people want to know and just like this more and more communication mediums want to become involved and associated with the buzz.