Buzz Culture
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Buzz-culture, the idea that people will care about an event once there is controversy or drama surrounding it, has become very important in today’s media. Events like the Oscars or the deadly Travis Scott concert have become highly discussed due to the controversy surrounding them.
Recently at the Oscars, actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock after he had made a comment about his wife’s medical condition, alopecia. Before this incident, many people did not care about the Oscars as they had in the past. Now, many people are planning to watch the Oscars again to see if anything happens in the coming years. Many speculate that this was a planned scandal, something that would bring back the attention to the Oscars, especially due to the camera angle that the slap was recorded and the fact that no one stopped Will Smith from getting up on stage to attack Chris Rock. Hundreds of thousands of comments on his most recent TikTok videos and Instagram posts poke fun at the slap or are arguing back and forth on who was in the wrong. Sophomore Stephanie Chu said, “I feel like the punch was very unnecessary, he could have spoken up after the show… [Will Smith] could have done anything more passive instead of going up and punching [Chris Rock].” Smith eventually apologized for his actions on live television, and it was recently revealed that he will be banned from the Oscars for the next decade.
Astroworld, the infamous concert by Travis Scott, resulted in the deaths of ten people due to a crowd surge that killed and injured 200 people. Scott was said to have been unaware of what exactly happened until the morning after the concert and offered to help families pay for funeral expenses, but all across social media, people were arguing that the stampede was Scott’s fault. Sophomore Rylynn Robben commented, “What happened there is honestly a tragedy, we lost a lot of lives over something that shouldn’t have happened.” This horror resulted in nearly 400 lawsuits filed against Travis Scott that are becoming a single case handled by one judge.