TOW #10- Perez Hilton Article

            Perez Hilton is a professional blogger who has been ridiculed over the years for his blog wrongfully bullying countless celebrities. He is known for offensive doodles over pictures and getting right to the point in his articles. His audience is not scholars or scientists, but he still manages to use similar strategies to appeal to his audience, people looking for the juiciest rumors around.

            In this particular article Hilton talks about Justin Bieber’s birthday mishap. He discusses the fight Justin and his crew got into with the paparazzi and how it effected his birthday. Hilton uses pop-culture slang, celebrity ethos, and sarcasm to ridicule Justin Bieber’s birthday fiasco.

            The famous blogger writes for people who aren’t looking for well written, grammatically correct, analytical pieces of writing. They’re looking for things that they can understand and have fun reading. To appeal to this audience he includes pop-culture slang. Instead of saying Bieber, he is referred to as the Biebs. He also uses “the pits” as the slumps or down in the dumps and “ugh” which is a very informal expression of disgust. Hilton uses this language to connect him to his audience. He also quotes a tweet from Justin himself that says “Worst birthday ever.” This gives ethos to the author that he actually did have a very bad birthday and it was not made up. Most people need this proof from the blogger because of his reputation. Lastly, Hilton uses sarcasm to show his mocking tone of Bieber. It is explained that after his birthday was ruined he returned back to his hotel and Hilton says, “that’s seriously SUCH a shame! Especially since it was CLEAR how much he was looking forward to everything!” It’s clear that this is sarcasm because it is explained that Justin really didn’t mention the party at all before its occurrence. Also, afterwards Hilton changes to a serious note by says “but we seriously” wish Justin a happy birthday, showing that before he was not being serious, therefore had a sarcastic tone. This tone makes fun if Bieber and his birthday gone wrong because he is such a fortunate kid and makes a big deal out of one event gone wrong.  

            Through pop-culture slang, celebrity ethos, and sarcasm Hilton is able to clearly tell the story of Justin Biebers birthday and what he thinks of it. It did not make me think the same way about Bieber as Hilton, however I clearly understood his views on the singer.  

Link to the article