Nostalgia is a cash cow, which might explain the slew of kids show reboots released or announced recently: Gossip Girl, Zoey 101, Friends, Full House, Powerpuff Girls and, briefly, Lizzie McGuire .
I would call out to my mom whenever I did a new pogo stick trick or handstand variation: “Look at this! Are you watching?!” And, to my delight, she would muster a “Woah! Cool!” before going back to whatever she was doing.
As an attention-hungry kid, the premise of iCarly, a show about a girl with a hit eponymous web show, immediately drew me in.
I started to post Youtube videos called “The Annie Show” with mind-numbingly stupid clips of me blabbering about my elementary school life: my classmates, homework, toys.
Schneider has stated that his original idea was for a normal girl, in a twist of fate, to star in her favorite TV show, but that a casual conversation with friends led him to instead write a script about a girl with a web show.
The quote, often attributed to Andy Warhol, took on new meaning: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Suddenly, home videos weren’t just for parents’ future nostalgia — they could be a ticket to fame so global and enchanting that elementary schoolers on my playground in West Michigan would quote the clip’s lines.
Today, a slew of child Youtube stars bring home multimillion dollar earnings, but there was no real model for iCarly at the time of writing; its writers may have speculated at what it would be like to be a kid with a web show.
Though the gang enjoyed fame and glory, they encountered realistic challenges of internet fame.
A 2019 article in the Wall Street Journal describes the “lonely burden of today’s teenage girls,” who are “unwitting guinea pigs in today’s huge, unplanned experiment with social media.” Reading the piece, I recognized my 12-year-old self and shuddered.
Critiques of social media aren’t anything new, or special, or even very interesting to me.
I have gained a following for posting Wikipedia screenshots, and while most interactions are positive, I get my share of trolling and the occasional threat of violence.
No one could have expected an aughts kids show to predict the psychological challenges of the creator economy, but I think it’s fair to expect the revival to absolve the original’s sins.
Miranda Cosgrove, who played sweet albeit high-strung star Carly, doesn’t share internet cool-girl prowess with her character: Miranda’s feeds are populated with cheugy selfies and airy musings like “About to sleep in the middle of the day” and was unusually obsessed with their feet.
I’m eager to dive back into my elementary school guilty pleasure and I’m ready to let Carly Shay guide me through the internet once again, though I’m not sure if she’s the right person to do it anymore.