Thursday, March 5, 2020

Amanda Onofrio Blog #4


If I were to google the definition of celebrity, Tana Mongeau, I am positive that these three adjectives would appear.
Tana Mongeau –
  1.     Controversial
  2.     Wild
  3.     Scandalous
21-year-old Tana Mongeau has become one of the most popular internet influencers and YouTubers to date. Mongeau, although a crazy young woman who loves to party with her friends, is in fact a very hard worker and is active on many of her social media accounts. Tana’s presence is visible on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. 
Visibility of Mongeau on Social Media:
  •     Twitter

o   Tana’s Twitter can be found using her username: @tanamongeau. The name that would appear as her current twitter “handle” is “future stripper” which accurately represents her very sarcastic personality.
o   She enjoys retweeting and responding to her supporters everyday
§  This is something that fans love about Mongeau and keeps them consistently supporting her
  •      Instagram

o   Tana, who is verified on Instagram with 5.2 million followers labels her account as “public figure”
o   The images she uploads on Instagram usually include scandalous selfies of her revealing her figure along with pictures and videos of her with friends and other famous celebrities
o   Mongeau takes advantage of the story feature on Instagram and posts videos of her daily life to remain present on the platform and allow her fans to stay updated on her daily life



  •     YouTube

o   Tana uploads as much as she can on her vlog channel “tana mongeau vlogs” and her main channel “Tana Mongeau”
o   Her vlog channel consists of miscellaneous videos of her attending award shows, traveling, work, and behind the scenes footage of her life
o   Her main channel is famous for her “story time” videos, question and answer videos, and collaboration videos with fellow YouTube friends and celebrities
With Tana’s recent MTV series “No Filter: Tana Mongeau” airing every Monday at 4 PM viewers are obtaining weekly videos ranging from 25-30-minutes of raw and real content of what this celebrity is up to.

The tone of her YouTube videos, tweets, and Instagram posts are all humorous and sarcastic. Mongeau loves cracking inappropriate jokes about her “ratchet” lifestyle, as she would like to call it, because she knows that is what her viewers love to see. While Mongeau’s Instagram posts tend to be very revealing and risqué, the playful tone in her posts match her big, energetic personality that she portrays to the public. 
Now you may ask, but how often does she post on these platforms? That is the perfect question as some may believe Mongeau is lazy and does not have the work ethic to support her own business. However…
Frequency of Mongeau’s presence on social media:
  •       Twitter

o   5-6 times a day with hilarious, embarrassing, and sometimes unprofessional tweets
  •       Instagram

o   10 stories a day
o   4-5 posts weekly
  •      YouTube

o   Mongeau is not as present on her “vlog” channel as she is on her main channel
o   Uploads usually occur 3 times a month on Tana’s main channel
o   Uploads usually occur once a month on “tana mongeau vlogs”
As a result of Tana’s YouTube videos being very entertaining and funny, viewers consistently support her and her brand even though she is not as active as they would hope or as active as other YouTube creators. Fans of Mongeau support her because of how authentic she is with the public. In a recent YouTube video titled “the truth about everything,” Mongeau discusses how authenticity has always been her number one priority when it comes to the Internet. She admitted how after her breakup with celebrity and boxer Jake Paul, the only thing that would get her back to her old self was authenticity from here on out. She wants people to support her because of the “real her.” Authenticity is “a localized, temporally situated social construct that varies widely based on community” (Marwick & Boyd, p. 124). Following her heartbreak she noticed how she was becoming inauthentic with her viewers and was trying to be someone that the audience wanted to see and in doing so, she lost her true self.
As stated above, Mongeau loves collaborating with other popular YouTube creators who she can share her sense of humor with and put out entertaining content. In the past Mongeau has “collabed” with creators like David Dobrik, Josh Peck, James Charles, and Bella Thorne, all receiving millions of views. She tries to frequently incorporate fun collaborations with different creators as this type of video tends to be many of her viewers' favorite. As Mongeau's content tends to be very miscellaneous, her collaboration videos do not have a set concept. For example, Mongeau has posted collaboration videos doing makeup tutorials, learning how to drive, and even cooking videos. 
         Unfortunately, much like many famous YouTube creators and celebrities, Mongeau has had her fair share of call outs and has been cancelled a time or two. Adrienne Matei refers to the action of calling out as “interpersonal confrontations occurring between individuals on social media…someone does something wrong, people tell them, and they avoid doing it again in the future” (“Call-out culture…”). In June of 2018, Mongeau hosted her own version of what is known as “VidCon” and titled it "TanaCon." As opposed to VidCon this convention would be a two-day free event including meet and greets, famous influencers, and more. With a turn out of 20,000 people in Anaheim, California, the event became overcrowded with thousands of dehydrated teens waiting hours outside in the sun. Due to this misfortune and the scamming of the management team that was hired for the event, the convention was shut down. The inorganization and poor planning of the event left thousands of Tana’s fans and several of her fellow YouTube creators that she had brought over for the event very hostile. For weeks following the flop of the event, Mongeau was being called out on social media platforms left and right. Not only was she being blamed for things but Mongeau was also receiving brutal hate, leaving her “cancelled” in the media. The anger that people felt from the entire situation left Tana with only one option and that was to be completely cancelled. Cancel culture is “a way to take away someone’s power and call out the individual for being problematic in a situation” (“Tales From the Teenage...”). Tana was cancelled immediately as she was being called out by fans who got severely burnt standing outside in the sun, angry parents, and many more. Justifiably, Tana was accepting of the hate as she knew she made a huge mistake and deserved anything that would come her way following the event.
            Thankfully, for Tana, things only went uphill after her most controversial scandal to date. She has been nominated for awards, launched her own perfume, created new music, and has remained scandal-free for some time now. Currently, Tana has remained authentic with the public, she has been consistently moving forward with new brand deals, her reality show, and much more. In my opinion, she could improve her social media presence by uploading more frequently on her YouTube channels. Her career began and evolved greatly through YouTube, therefore I think she should be spending most of her time on that platform as that was how she originally became popular. As long as she continues to remain scandal and cancel-free I think her social media presence will continue to remain favored by many, including myself. 

References
Marwick, A. E. & Boyd, D. (2010). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1), 114-133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313
Matei, A. (2019, November 1). Call-out culture: how to get it right (and wrong). The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/01/call-out-culture-obama-social-media#maincontent
Yar, S. & Bromwich, J. E. (2019, November 2). Tales From the Teenage Cancel Culture. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/style/cancel-culture.html



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