As about 10.1 million people watched the 2013 Video Music Awards (VMA’s), Miley Cyrus reached an all new record on the social media website Twitter. As most people know, Cyrus gave a performance that many described as controversial at the VMA’s. This caused an outbreak of Twitter comments that peaked around 306,100 tweets per minute. Not only that, but Cyrus holds the record for having the most tweeted about VMA performance, having 4.5 million mentions from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., with Justin Timberlake coming in second place with 2.9 million mentions.
Cyrus’s performance included elements that shocked many people.
“After sticking out her tongue and singing We Can’t Stop with giant teddy bears, things took a turn.” Carly Mallenbaum, writer for USA Today said. “For Blurred Lines, she stripped down to a nude bikini, touched Robin Thicke with a foam finger and did a Jersey Turnpike grind on him.”
Some people don’t feel the same state of shock that seemed to be the initial reaction during the VMA’s.
“I may be in the minority here, but I do not understand why people were so shocked by Miley Cyrus’s VMA performance this year,” said Susan Minichiello, a reporter for the Sidney Herald. “Maybe it was scandalous because it broke away so definitively from Old Miley, a squeaky-clean Disney star who performed country pop alongside her father. But so what if it did? Don’t we all change from how we were when we were 14 years old?”
Others believe Cyrus’s performance was such a shock to viewers for other reasons.
“She has been an inspiration to many people and I think that when she was growing up on Disney Channel she was a role model to a lot of kids,” junior Jamie Speth said. “It was just that it was a big shocker that she all of the sudden, out of no where, changed.”
Many factors may have been the cause of this change.
“I think that hanging around older celebrities and her parents recent divorce were big influences in her personality change, ” junior Haley Lindsey said. “I feel like when she was a teenager she had to act innocent because she was Hannah Montana, who was a good figure that little kids looked up to. Once Hannah Montana went off the air she figured she was a adult now and could do whatever she wanted. Now I just think she is trying to live out her teenage years through her early 20’s. She is making up for lost time.”
“Living out” her teenage years appears “rebellious” to some. While many people speculate as to why celebrities move so drastically away from their childhood innocence, it isn’t just confined to celebrities.
“I think all celebrities go through a point where they feel like they need to be a rebel and do whatever they want,” Lindsey said. “But it’s not just celebrities that do it, it’s also average, ordinary kids that do it too.”
There have been speculations that Cyrus’s performance was purely a publicity stunt that worked in her favor.
“Miley Cyrus caused quite a stir at the VMA’s with a well-timed publicity stunt where she twerked her way into mostly negative headlines and articles containing any number of affronted adjectives that people use when a girl gets up on stage on live television and removes most of her clothing in order to twerk with a foam finger, a bunch of stuffed teddy bears and a striped Robin Thicke,” Leslie Nuccio on Meltwater.com said. “Miley is taking a page from a tried-and-true playbook: start with the hair and the clothes, then shock the world with a publicity stunt that’ll get everyone talking. And that’s because it works.”
Because of her VMA’s performance, Cyrus has broken twitter records, scored a hit single and come back into the spotlight.
“You look at all the people who performed that night at the VMA’s and we’re all talking about Miley. She didn’t even win an award.” Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com said. “But she won the night.”
