Shut up haters, Katy Perry’s live stream was genius
If I was the kind of person who planned things, I would have set up a gallery space this weekend and kept it open 24/7 to show each and every minute of each and every camera on Katy Perry’s live-stream event.
In case you missed it, in what seemed like a last ditch effort to make people care about her new album “Witness,” Katy decided to live-stream her entire weekend on YouTube.
She didn’t have her phone. She didn’t leave her house. And for hours on end all you could do was watch her sleep on her white circular bed surrounded by white string curtains with her little dog Nugget curled up at her side.
But as unbelievable as it sounds, the whole thing was kind of genius.
READ ALSO: Something’s up with Katy Perry
Although I’m living for the Katy Perry-Taylor Swift drama and I think “Bon Appetit” is one of the best songs of the summer, I don’t care about Katy’s new album.
I’ve had three days to listen to it now, and I haven’t even been tempted.
But even though I didn’t listen to “Witness” once, I turned in to watch her live-stream at least seven times over the weekend. And by at least seven, I mean it was probably more like 12 times.
And I didn’t just tune in for a second, I tuned in for thirty or so minutes at a time.
Not because I’m a rabid Katy Perry stan or because I’m DESPERATE to watch her meditate, but because it’s mesmerizing to watch people do ordinary things on camera.
Hundreds of humans from vloggers like Casey Neistat to the cast of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” have built an empire primarily off of just this. Doing things that should be boring in front of a camera, like putting on makeup or eating salad. But somehow it’s not boring. Even though it is.
And that’s the market Katy tapped into this weekend. Only she did it to the ultimate extreme.
READ ALSO: Taylor Swift is sabotaging Katy Perry’s album release using Spotify
While I wasn’t interested in some of the more scripted moments of the weekend that were destined to be “content”, like when Katy had a therapy session so she could “spontaneously reveal” she’d had suicidal tendencies while the tears poured out of her eyes, I never regretted whenever I’d randomly tune in. Especially when Katy was about to start doing something and she hadn’t gone full daytime talk show host yet.
Like when she greeted a visiting meditation teacher at the door and offered her some water to be polite, and then immediately kept walking upstairs while one of the women she pays to do things for her fetched two bottles of water for them.
More often than not, these moments didn’t seem like they were meticulously manufactured to show Katy in the best light humanly possible, which made them seem authentic.
I saw Katy randomly burst into a rambling story about a “weird” dream she’d had about Selena Gomez.
I watched a clip over and over again where Katy admits she used to say she wasn’t a feminist because she didn’t know what that word meant.
I’m proud of Katy for acknowledging her mistakes with cultural appropriation. She’s learning pic.twitter.com/uyHd3upmzx
— la bella vita (@drugproblem) June 11, 2017
I obsessed over the moment when Katy had no choice but to nod and say “Yes kween,” while some random girl pretended to ask her a question and instead bragged to Katy about how she was an influencer with over a million followers.
And on Sunday night I fell asleep to the dulcet sounds of Caitlyn Jenner, whom Katy had invited over to dinner, trying to explain to somebody why she’s a conservative Republican even though conservative Republicans tend to be transphobic af while literally everybody else, Katy Perry included, ignored her.
READ ALSO: Katy Perry had a “weird” dream about Selena Gomez
Yes, Katy Perry’s live-stream was thirsty, performative, and often times a piece of blatant propaganda, but it was also weird and wonderful. Just like life.
And just like Katy Perry.
Semi-manufactured, but occasionally brilliant.
Like they say, sometimes art imitates life.
