How YouTube came about with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl

O YouTube officially emerged in February 2005, but its origin is exactly one year earlier, in the SuperBowl February 2004, when a controversial incident at the performance of singers Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson inspired its creators to found a website for sharing videos.

The #NippleGate

O SuperBowl, National Football League Championship Finals (NFL), is famous all over the world for several reasons. First, because it is the most expensive commercial break in the world, with values ​​that in 2021 reached an average of US$ 5,5 million dollars for 30 seconds of viewing. It is also known for being one of the biggest audiences on TV, with average ratings of 100 million viewers per game. And the last reason is the famous halftime shows.

Since 1993, when Michael Jackson performed on a stage in the center of the lawn between one room and another, singing and dancing to his hits "Billie Jean","Black or White"and "We are the world“, the tradition of bringing music stars on the rise has continued. And that's when, 11 years later, his sister Janet Jackson starred in the biggest controversy of all in a halftime show. SuperBowl.

On February 1, 2004, several artists performed during the break of what was the 38th edition of the SuperBowl, including Justin Timberlake who, at the time only 22 years old, had just left the boyband 'NSYNC to bet on a solo career. The song being performed at the time in question was his, "rock your body“, then Janet was her guest in the choreography in question. Exactly at the end of the performance, Justin pulls part of the singer's clothes, exposing her right breast on national television.

Everything that happened at this moment was a veritable avalanche that mixed the puritanism that still reigns in North American culture with evasive explanations that have not been completely elucidated until today. Janet's nipple adorned with some sort of piercing appeared no more than half a second at the exact moment Justin ended the song with the lascivious line "I'll have you naked by the end of this song” (“I'll leave you naked until the end of this song” – in free translation).

Like SuperBowl it is a “family” event, that is, accompanied by grandpa and grandson, a program with an indicative rating of “Free” would not be the most suitable place for this degree of nudity. But the issue escalated in such a way that the hot potato was passed from one to the other. THE NFL blamed the CBS (the broadcaster that broadcast the event) which in turn blamed the MTV, responsible for the halftime show. until the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the body that regulates the media in the US, imposed a fine of US$ 550 thousand dollars (more than R$ 3 million reais). It was then that the rope broke on the weaker side.

Janet Jackson was already receiving a series of sexist, misogynistic, sexist and even racist comments for what happened. Even going public apologizing for what happened, her career from then on was summarily sabotaged and it would take years to rebuild. In all interviews and official statements about what happened, the singer always maintained her version that it was a "wardrobe malfunction” (free translation of “wardrobe malfunction“), that is, that she and Justin rehearsed so that only part of her clothes were ripped off at the end of the choreography, but that at the time of the show, an extra piece ended up exposing much more than it should. To get an idea of ​​the damage that the event, called #NippleGate, caused in Janet Jackson's career, her songs were banned from radio stations, her clips were no longer shown on MTV and their participation was excluded from the Grammy, the top music award in the world.

And Justin Timberlake? After all, he was the one who pulled the singer's clothes, exposing an intimate part of her body to an audience of millions of people, but American traditionalism removed him from the narrative, placing the victim as the culprit. And while Janet was burned at the stake as a pop culture Joan of Arc, Justin's career remained intact, earning him the nickname "The Teflon Man," as none of the negative accusations from the incident hit him.

YouTube.com is born

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, the original founders of YouTube, still working in PayPal when the whole #NippleGate controversy took place. The break scene SuperBowl 2004, which ended the choreography of “rock with you” and ended up with Justin exposing Janet's breast, lasted about half a second. The subject at the time caused a spike in search terms in the Google involving the name of the singer, but it was practically impossible to find any video reproducing the event, at most photos and descriptive texts were found, with the accusatory bias on the figure of Janet.

Because of this, the three co-workers hatched the idea of ​​creating a website that could bring these videos together in one place. O YouTube came exactly 1 year after #NippleGate, with the official debut on February 14, 2005. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim have already admitted in several interviews the direct influence of Janet Jackson's video research on what happened in SuperBowl 2004 gave rise to the YouTube, in addition to the tsunami that swept across Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004.

O YouTube arose, but not only, since another service of the Google that was created under the influence of a controversy between celebrities was the image search service. at the ceremony of Grammy 2000, actress and singer Jennifer Lopez wore a low-cut dress from the brand Versace that almost brought down the search service. The day after the ceremony, users were interested in photos that showed the dress, but as the Google did not offer a filter for specific searches for images, the site crashed and created a tool to extract images linked to a given keyword.

Sorry 17 years later

In February of this year the documentary “Framing Britney Spears” shed light on Justin Timberlake's sexist attitudes throughout his career, both with his ex-girlfriend and Janet Jackson on the controversial episode of #NippleGate. And then, 17 years after the “Teflon Man” silenced, the singer and now producer finally spoke out, apologizing to the artists in a post on his Twitter account. Instagram.

"I know that I have failed in those moments and many others and have benefited from a system that tolerates misogyny and racism.” were some of Justin's words in his apology. Janet even responded in her social media, but not directly. Without naming the singer, she posted a video in which she thanks her fans for, 35 years after the album's release "Control“, the album returned to the top of the charts among the best sellers.

As interesting as discovering how the YouTube emerged in the midst of a controversy involving artists, it is also worth noting the evolution in people's thinking about a case like this. If it were today, would Janet have suffered the same judgments and prejudices? And Justin, would she have gotten away with it or would she have been thrown at the stake?

Anyway, the importance of YouTube as a video platform is undeniable. According to a 2018 survey released by Google, the YouTube is the preferred medium by Brazilians to watch videos online. And this trend only increases, because while in the last 4 years the consumption of videos on the web increased by 135%, in the same period the growth of traditional TV was only 13%.

With traditional TV losing ground to the dispersion of the online audience, what will be the future of mega-events like SuperBowl and its possible controversies?

Also watch our video about the origin of YouTube:

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Sources: Vice , People, Google