The Internet Is Pissed At Rihanna For Her Screensaver Performance On ‘SNL’

Although everyone ought to be talking about the “sloopy swish” or Anne Hathaway’s Crazy Carrie Mathison impression, people are instead focused on another aspect of this weekend’s SNL: Rihanna’s hypnotizing (HIPnotizing, if we’re being ironic) performance of “Diamonds.” Or, the Windows Media Player visualizer that you were going to fast forward through, stopped for 15 seconds, then actually fast forwarded through the rest.

Everyone one on Tumblr is very upset that Rihanna’s SNL performance appropriated seapunk via green-screen. The f*ck is seapunk? It’s that internet-art influenced music and visuals trend from last summer/whatev. It’s very specific. Dolphins. Fractals. Molly Soda. Tropical #vibes. Undulating, low-fi CGI. Green hair. Lots of intra-scene spillover with oily rainbows. (Via Animal New York)

Remember the cover of that MIA album that people hated, even though it’s pretty good? /\/\ /\ Y /\? That’s seapunk, a subgenre which was at least partially “inspired” by Ecco the Dolphin, from the Sega video game of the same name. Anyway, how “very upset” is everyone on Tumblr and Twitter? Well:

Rihanna can get f*cked. Way to be utterly unoriginal and rip off a DIY online counterculture that you do not participate in nor contribute to. Not only that but you did not give the web artists that inspired you any credit whatsoever. Plagiarist…I mean, I dunno why I’m surprised, seeing as how Riri has had no qualms’ about ripping off other people’s art before for her own shallow usage. (David LaChappelle’s photography/”S&M” video.) Musicians pay to sample music and beats. Sampling visuals pioneered by a group of DIY web artists should be no different. (Via)

Or most aptly:

To oversimplify things: people are mad because they believe their DIY, reaction-to-the-standard aesthetic has been co-opted by Rihanna, a pop star, the most mainstream of mainstream lifestyles, thereby robbing their style and culture of its power and purpose. “Seapunk,” or whatever you want to call it, will now forever be associated with Riri and Azealia Banks, not the unacknowledged “founders” of the concept. In other words, pop is doing what pop has always done, which is turn an underground sensation into something easily digestible for the masses (fashion does the same thing; think Kurt Cobain shirts in Forever 21). But the thing that separates what Rihanna’s doing and what, say, Gwen Stefani did with her Harajuku Girls a few years ago is that, in Stefani’s case, there was a direct acknowledgement of where she took her idea from, i.e. Japanese culture. Sea punk people are pissed because a) they got no credit, and b) keep yo’ Top-40 out of our Tumblrs.

I’m not sure who’s in the right (or if they’re both in the wrong), but everyone stop and listen to the Ecco theme.

Thank you.

(Via Animal New York) (Via Twitter) (Via Tumblr)