Technically Incorrect

Is YouTube fame instant, but hellishly short?

Or can the remarkable talent of Susan Boyle transcend the quick fix provided by the Web?

As far as "Britain's Got Talent" judge Amanda Holden is concerned, the Boyle phenomenon will not enjoy the time-travel of, say, Boyle's Law.

On the eve of Boyle's semifinal performance on Sunday, Holden told the News of the World: "She'll be an instant international superstar--but I don't think she'll have longevity."

Saying that she was unsure whether Boyle would even perform well in the semifinals, Holden added: "I think it can go either way. We've built her up and the public could go, 'She's too big for her boots, she's too cocky.' She isn't. But we don't like too much success. It's a shame."

I'm not entirely sure which citizens of the world are members of Holden's "we." However, "we" sound like pretty dreadful people. It could be that she was merely referring to some specific sections of the British population. Those who watch talent shows, perhaps.

Still, Holden, a passable actress on British television who has now secured a presenter's slot on CBS's "The Early Show" (thanks, she says, to the fame provided by Boyle's performance), is very much in touch with the genial nature of the entertainment business.

She said: "After the show there won't be any time taken to record her album--there can't be. They need to get her into a studio straight after the show and get that bloody thing out."

Ah, yes, this is all about that bloody thing. Shove it onto iTunes and get everyone to download it within a week. Why does it have to get out fast? Because human beings are appalling.

Or as Holden chose to describe it: "This world is fickle. We pick people up and spit them out just as quick. We move on very fast. But who cares? She won't. This is more than she ever dreamed of anyway."

Well, now. Who knows just how big Boyle's dreams have become? And who knows whether "we" really are as fickle as Holden describes?

"We" probably are. But wouldn't it be endearing if "we" made an exception in this case?

There are not many stars who have had the good fortune to have their toenails inspected by the media. Yet such an honor was bestowed this week on Susan Boyle.

Yes, she came to the door of her house in her dressing gown and the media had her at hello. With one lens focused on her outgrowing toenails, a story was born.

Yet this was merely the latest in a veritable joyride of coverage that might, perhaps, make Ms. Boyle wish that YouTube had taken its YouBiquity and shoved it.

Cybersquatters have leaped on her digital back in an attempt to find their fortunes, or, at least, their four cents' worth.

Simon Cowell, a man who has created his own form of transatlantic ubiquity, has, with no hint of irony, said that he fears she may already be too famous for her own good.

"Choose the right song, focus yourself, shut your front door, maybe take a holiday and come back to the person you want to be and not as the person you think you should be," were his kind words at a media conference.

And there was her brother Gerard. Gerard seems to be a nice and thoughtful man. His view is that Susan is already "too big" for a mere British talent show. She is also, he said, not being protected by the "Britain's Got Talent" producers, shattered and in desperate need of rest.

Oh, and he also seems to think that she should dump the show, release a record and amass a vast amount of liquid capital before her emotional capital shows any signs of dwindling.

Even former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan made his first question at a recent meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown: "So, tell me about Susan Boyle." As if Mr. Brown would have had any inside information because, well, he's Scottish too.

So, while I ponder her little makeover (yes, she's touched up the gray hair and got herself a nice leather jacket), and the vast makeover that YouTube has wrought, I say to myself: "Does the huge reach of YouTube fame inevitably ruin those involved?"

Shortly followed by: "Where are those digital bean counters at Visible Measures when I need them"?

Well, the chaps at Visible Measures have helped me with some numbers, delving into their records as never before, and concluding that only four viral videos have ever had more views than Ms. Boyle's almost 190 million.

The most viewed of all time was Soulja Boy's "Crank That." Followed by the movie trailer for "Twilight." Then comes Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" and Jeff Dunham's "Achmed the Dead Terrorist."

Of these, only the dead terrorist, a ventriloquist's puppet, can truly claim to have survived the vast fame bestowed upon him.

Soulja Boy and Mariah Carey seem to have drifted into something of an ethereal wasteland. Soulja Boy was, last year, robbed and assaulted at his home. While Mariah Carey seems to be attempting to occupy the space that Barbra Streisand might one day leave behind. But not with anything that might be described as success.

"Twilight" is a movie which, I am told by several thirty-somethings who are obsessed with the books on which it was based, is but a thin parody of the literature.

Indeed, you might think that "Twilight" star Robert Pattinson felt such a vast need to shed his character in the movie that in his latest, an opus called "Little Ashes," he plays Salvador Dali and sheds his clothes.

If an event or a person creates an emotional effect on others, the Internet can magnify that effect, seemingly beyond all imagination and control. And certainly beyond the total control of the person featured.

One can only wish that Susan Boyle will be able somehow to cope with the footprint YouTube has, by its mere existence, created for her.

But she will surely find it hard to refuse to be the star of her own personal "Truwoman Show," a program over which she may have less say than she would wish.

In the interview with Larry King that I have embedded here, when asked how all of the fame will change her, Ms. Boyle replies: "Well, I certainly won't be lonely anymore."

I wonder if she knows what that means. I wonder if anyone does.

Which is why I have also embedded new video of a 22-year-old Susan Boyle singing "The Way We Were." She looked very different then, didn't she? That's shattered pictures for you.

You wept for Susan Boyle.

Now prepare your finest large-mouthed, water-loving reptile tears for those who have so far failed to make money out of her astoundingly popular YouTube video.

It seems that British channel ITV, which is graced by "Britain's Got Talent," failed to reach agreement with YouTube over advertising. So the clip of the sublime Ms. Boyle continues to run with no advertising gracing its hem.

It is touching that while Susan Boyle tries to hang on to her authentic humanity, these two commercial entities are tightening their jaws like large men in a night club standing around the dance floor, waiting for Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes to give them permission to clutch a potential catch.

"We don't want to be part of YouTube's standard terms and conditions, because content like Susan Boyle is unique," Ben McOwen Wilson, ITV's director of online, told the Times of London.

More than 100 million unique views, indeed.

It seems that ITV is insisting on preroll ads that would then direct viewers to the channel's own Web site, while Google has never been too keen on the preroll method, preferring those fetching texts, sometimes in a lovely yellow, that look like, well, Google search ads.

Does ITV believe that Google still isn't making too much money from its YouTube advertising methods, which is why it wants to drive more people to its own, very British home? (Any of you ever watched ITV's glistening soap opera "Coronation Street," for example?)

Google, clinging to its natural sense of justice and propriety, says it offers content owners the majority of the revenue. How much of a majority is unclear.

I know there are many of you out there who hope that these two large entities continue talking till swans turn turquoise and global warming washes us all away.

Somehow, the essential honesty that Susan Boyle represents would surely be slightly tainted by a scrolling text reading "Need A Makeover? Try L'Oreal Skin Scrub Made From Real Scottish Soil!" Or even: "Need A New Wardrobe? Ross Dress For Less is Best! Ross Is A Scottish Name, You Know!"

So to lift all virginal advertising spirits, I enclose a YouTube video of Ms. Boyle talking to one of her local newspapers, the West Lothian Courier. You may or may not enjoy the fact that, because it's not an ITV video, there are some ads running beneath it.

You will, though, hopefully smile when the interviewer describing Entertainment Weekly as "a big American magazine."

If the Web didn't exist, Susan Boyle would be, at best, a local hero. At least for a substantial amount of time.

However, the Web's insane insatiability, coupled with that of Simon Cowell, means that no sooner has she reached the quite strange figure of 100 million online views (and growing with every minute the world turns) than "Britain's Got Talent" attempts to inject a rival.

So, in the interests of social science, may I present 12-year-old Welsh boy Shaheen Jafargholi? He and his single mom graced the show's auditions last Saturday. (Well, in fact, the auditions were many months ago, but let's not quibble to a dribble.)

And just as Susan Boyle's impact was based not merely on her talent but her overwhelming authenticity, you may feel that little Shaheen's performance doesn't quite leap the authenticity barrier quite so effortlessly.

Shaheen Jafargholi. Age 12.

(Credit: "Britain's Got Talent")

In the YouTube clip that has already given Shaheen 1 million views since Sunday, you will see Shaheen begin to sing "Valerie," a song Amy Winehouse made famous (originally a Zutons tune, but somebody killed them), only to be halted by Cowell's right hand.

"You've got it all wrong," declares a deadpan Cowell. The audience gasps. The cameras cut to the audience gasping. The audience is about to weep. So is Shaheen's mom. The world does not have enough buckets to collect their tears, nor enough tissues to wipe them away.

But wait.

Neatly, and remarkably conveniently, Mr. Cowell asks Shaheen if he sings something else. Shaheen, just as neatly and conveniently, has some music prepared from another song, Michael Jackson's sweet, innocent ditty, "Who's Loving You?"

This is a composition that features the stanzas: "Wheeeeeeen I had you (had you), I treated you baaaaaaad and wrong my dear. And girl since, since you went away, Don't you know I sit around, With my head hanging down..."

For me, this sounds a little less authentic emerging from the elevated, if powerful, gutturals of a 12-year-old than "I Dreamed A Dream" coming from the lonely hopes of a 47-year-old (now 48).

Oh, entertainment. Pain is your father. Hope is your mother. And greed is daddy's overly enthusiastic, attention-craving, highly neurotic lover.

I know there will be very many among you who, inspired and never satiated by the YouTube video of Susan Boyle, wonder whether this is the most popular viral video of all time.

It is my duty to bring you an answer (as well as a Boyle interview with Scottish television that has already enjoyed more than 1 million views).

Visible Measures, a company that clutches the pulse of the online audience and refuses to let go, has identified more than 200 unique videos of Boyle's performance. According to Visible Measures, the combined figures seem to have exceeded the performances of George Bush's shoe thrower, Tina Fey's Sarah Palin, and President Obama's victory speech.

But she hasn't quite caught up with the "Evolution of Dance," which may have enjoyed as many as 300 million views over the years.

Visible Measures calculates that in the week that ended Friday, Boyle's "I Dreamed A Dream" attracted 47.7 million views and more than 125,000 comments.

The shoe thrower and Palin were in the 30 millions. While President Obama achieved around 18 million.

Now, please consider this. Boyle, who has revealed that she's been taunted with nicknames such as Susie Bong or Susie Simple over her lifetime, will not sing again until around May 23 at the earliest--the next round of "Britain's Got Talent."

How will the online community bear not having new Susan Boyle material to get them through their mundane cubicled days?

Perhaps a video of Simon Cowell singing "You're So Vain"? Just a viral thought.

It is hard, after the millions of YouTube views and hundreds of thousands of Technically Incorrect hits accorded to the story of Susan Boyle, not to add a snippet or two as the days take us, her, and the world into the muddied waters of fame and fantasy.

So here is the latest little Susan tweet for the weekend.

The Scottish newspaper the Daily Record has unearthed a recording from 1999 of Ms. Boyle singing the Ella Fitzgerald classic "Cry Me a River."

Only 1,000 copies of this recording were ever made.

As you may be able to tell, Ms. Boyle could sing in 1999 rather as she can sing 10 years later.

Which is not the same as might be said for, oh, I don't know, Axl Rose.

If Susan Boyle is overwhelmed, she isn't exactly showing it.

On Thursday morning, the YouTube singing phenomenon (11 million hits and counting) appeared on CBS' "The Early Show," standing in her living room in her best pearls.

In the face of morning show questions, she gave honest and comfortingly short answers. Scots don't gush. Some Scots barely speak at all. (Try watching the original series of the Scottish detective saga, "Taggart.")

How does she feel about stardom? "It hasn't really sunk in yet." How did she deal with the laughter when the audience clapped eyes on her? "Well, you have to take yourself seriously, so what I did was concentrated on the song."

How did she find the courage to appear on the show after the death of her mother? "I wanted to make this a tribute to my mother. It was something I had to do. So I had to get on with it."

Did she have professional training? "I did, in Livingston." Livingston is a town 15 miles from Edinburgh. And though Susan may never have heard of "The Early Show," or perhaps even of CBS (also publisher of CNET News), she has no qualms about assuming that you know where Livingston is.

And then, as if to prove that her performance was no fluke, she sang unaccompanied. She didn't even have a couple of back-up singers from the local pub.

Finally, she was asked what she will sing next time on "Britain's Got Talent." (She hasn't won. Last Saturday's performance was only an audition.) Her pithy reply: "Why don't you watch the show and find out?"

Then CBS produced on the phone Patti Lupone, the singer who first performed the "I Dreamed A Dream" song in the London stage version of "Les Miserables" in 1985. She praised Susan's courage and pluck. How was that for an endorsement, Susan? "That'll do."

As for the people who used to tease her, belittle her, Susan says they're now nice to her. "So I may have won them 'round."

It's sad to think that she might have felt a need to do so.

One can only hope that, should she agree to take the calls of sleazy agents and managers wishing to profit from her newfound fame, she offers them simply: "Nope."

Or perhaps another short, more homespun phrase. Oh, wait. She's a church volunteer, isn't she?

She has the eyebrows of a Roman Emperor. She has the square shoulders of one of his centurions. And she walks like a bouncer who had one too many years in the NFL.

When Susan Boyle stepped onto the stage of "Britain's Got Talent" this past weekend, the audience laughed and the judges could barely stop their cheeks from bulging through a guffaw.

Here was a self-confessed, never-been-kissed, unemployed 47-year-old Scotswoman who, when she saw herself on television, said she was mortified that she "looked like a garage."

She told the judges she wanted to be a professional singer. Simon Cowell (yes, he) looked like he wanted to ask her to clean his car.

Susan Boyle has become an overnight sensation on YouTube.

(Credit: YouTube/"Britain's Got Talent")

She insisted she wanted to be like Elaine Page, a diminutive English singer who has starred in "Evita," amongst other musicals. The audience choked.

Then Susan Boyle began to sing.

Frankly, she hasn't stopped. More than 6 million people have already turned to YouTube to see what all the fuss is about. They're crying in Calcutta. They're bawling in Brussels.

Why? Because watching someone so far removed from anyone's physical conception of a star finally get an audience for her extraordinary voice is as moving an experience as you're likely to enjoy this year.

Here all the unrealized hopes and dreams that so many harbor till their death are laid bare in an operetta of just a few minutes.

Here is a woman who suffered mild brain damage at birth, who was laughed at in school, and who has probably been laughed at for most of her 47 years because she lived with her mother, because she lives with her cat, and because she doesn't look like friends are supposed to look.

Yes, she is now famous. She will get a recording contract. And, one suspects, she might not enjoy it all as others might.

But if, on watching the YouTube clip, you do not spontaneously burst into tears (I give you at the most 30 seconds into her performance), then you are either an alien creation of Ray Kurzweil or you should pop along to your local shrink for some considerable surgery.