Jonas has a self-titled album coming out soon, and because the rise of One Direction and Justin Bieber has diminished his influence in the lucrative teen girl market, he needs to find a new group to promote his material. It looks like he’s found his audience: gay men.
His marketing team must be having a gay old time, if you’ll forgive the pun, because it’s a little too coincidental that Jonas has started popping up at gay clubs to take his shirt off, stripping down and emulating Mark Wahlberg for a photoshoot and tweeting “I love my gay fans,” around the release of the new album’s second single, “Jealous.” As a slight cynic, this doesn’t feel like a genuine way to attract fans—it feels like a marketing ploy.
Jonas isn’t the only high-profile act that capitalizes on the seemingly untapped mainstream market of gay men. The MTV show “Teen Wolf” has been working its werewolf-fueled magic in queer-baiting since the show premiered in 2011...
Conor Murphy, The Daily Cardinal.
Update: A sort-of - and somewhat muddled - reply on Towleroad; Yes, Nick Jonas Is (Sort Of) Queerbaiting His Gay Fans - So What?
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This is bullshit. Pop music has been sold on and directly to teenagers and their nether regions since forever. It's always been cynical. In the past everyone just assumed that a male pop star was selling to teenage girls and so what? It's fun, it's what teenagers want and it makes the stars a lot of money. But now it's being directly marketed to gay men it's suddenly "baiting" and we're supposed to hold our noses up.
ReplyDeleteI've watched Teen Wolf and it's got lots of hot chicks in it too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Nick Jonas' fanbase is largely made up of women. Why is it so bad that they're finally starting to outwardly acknowledge and cater to the fact that the bummers exist too?
Anyway, Nick Jonas is hawt and he's a diabetic and I, for one, will knock one out later while thinking of him and I shan't feel guilty or cynically manipulated for having done so.
Good day, sir.
But this is a particularly brazen pitch to Teh Gayz, and it's sad how much gay media has obeyed...
DeleteAll publicity by every pop star who ever became famous seems brazen, to me. Much more so than this. How is what Nick Jonas is doing any more brazen than the endless interviews pop stars give about their ideal girl etc? It goes back decades and it's always been brazen. They sell themselves on the notion that they're sexually and emotionally available to their fans. Smash Hits was full of it. This isn't any more brazen, it's just that the target has changed.
DeleteI don't think the sad thing is how much gay media has "obeyed" anymore than Smash Hits obeyed the marketing of pop stars to teenage girls in the past. The sad thing is that (gay) online media is only concerned with hits and will therefore print any old shit (so endless lists and items about celebrities instagram photos etc).
i didnt even bother with this after all.
ReplyDelete