By Stephanie Miceli
Have you ever heard of Riot! in Paris? (Insert awkward silence).
Well, maybe you’ll get to know them better in the coming weeks. The Brooklyn alt-rock and hip hop duo is spending the next month writing personalized songs about people based on their social media profiles. They’ve already written songs about four famous people: actor Aziz Ansari, model Kate Upton, photographer Terry Richardson, and New York meteorologist Mike Woods. The songs are personalized down to the tone and personality of their subjects.
Fortunately, you don’t have to be a celebrity to get your own song. So, if you don’t mind being social stalked and have always dreamed of being serenaded, you can request a song through Track Me, the site documenting the project. If the duo deems you songworthy, after digging through all your excessive participation in trending Twitter hashtags, Boloco mayorships, and tell-all Tumblr posts, your dream can come true.
This is not only an interesting PR tactic for a little-known band, but it brings a larger issue to the forefront: young people have supposed inattention to online privacy issues. It may certainly be a wake-up call if two strangers can write a song about you as your best friend could, merely from your online social properties. If you’re a tell-all social media user and get chosen, this could go either way; the band’s relatively modest social influence (618 Twitter followers) won’t give the videos too far a reach. However, if they’re following blows up because of this stunt, just be prepared to have all the skeletons in your social media closet on display.