Performative hate is TikTok’s biggest marketing campaign: Moonbeam to Mainstream

Benson Boone didn’t need to have a genius marketing campaign this summer, TikTok did it for him. Under the disguise of “hating” him.

In June, Boone began promotion of his newly released song “Mystical Magical” through tiktok videos dancing to the lyrics while eating ice-cream in reference to “Moonbeam icecream” as described in the song. A harmless series of videos most artists do to promote an album rollout, tours, and songs. However, tiktok took a few negative comments as an opportunity to use this as “manufactured virality”.

Quickly mystical magical became the backdrop to thousands of “I hate Benson Boone” videos, he was mocked for the way he sang “Moonbeam” the way he dressed and performed on stage, the audio was mashed with Despicable Me’s, “Tonight we steal the moon” and songs such as Bruno Mars’s ‘Talking to the Moon’. This became a textbook hate train everyone wanted to get on. This is a pattern seen many times of tiktok users using trivial moments, milking them for laughs and views, or to appear to be in on the joke.

Thing about the internet’s performative hate, any publicity is good publicity. Each hate video or trending remix to the song intended to roast him, was just TikTok engagement. Each time these videos were posted comments would also be pushing the song onto more peoples ‘for you pages’. Allowing Boone to sit back and allow this attention to inflate his streaming numbers. Boone new this was happening and decided to lean into the joke, he asked if “You’re going to hate me at least have good reason.” His self-awareness, slowed down the hate train as it directly spoke to the fact there was no reason to try and bully/humiliate what had he done other than promote his song innocently? By the time his album American Heart released, it gathered mixed reviews from outlets. Users grew tired of hate videos and to spark discourse began posting the inevitable “I’m tired of pretending I don’t like Benson Boone” videos.

This seems to be the pattern as public opinion swings on a pendulum. Everyone feels the need to carry the same opinion online, while secretly disagreeing. Streams only continued to grow throughout all of this, charting higher and higher. This was a case study into performative and bandwagon hate being mocked online isn’t career ending, its often the rise of fame. This dislike/hate only fuels the very success it tries to reject.

Mystical Magical was the song of the summer many claimed we never had, powered by the people who swore they couldn’t stand it.