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Let’s dispense with the news straight off: The metaverse meetup that’s slated for 23 February now has a location: Planet Thailand in Williamsburg, which is letting us take over their back room for the event, so you’ll be able to munch Pad Thai and eggplant and wander around and chat to whoever you want to. More importantly, though, a bunch of us checked out Uffie at the Hiro Ballroom last night, and she was awesome — at least, in her way. And in fact, the show was a really interesting look at how deeply the idea of lifelogging and recording one’s raw experience has infected the choices entertainers are making and how that’s affecting the kinds of media that are being created these days. (Pics at the end of it all as well.)

The place wasn’t exactly packed, but it was crowded enough so that we were glad we’d scored a table above the crowd, near Uffie’s family. Yes, there was a table full of 40- and 50-something Uffie relations in attendance; I asked one of them if they were Uffie’s family and he replied, “How can you tell?”

The show was . . . brief. Like no more than four songs. By the time we were ready to Uff, Uffie had popped her Glock and was out. That doesn’t mean she isn’t still the 3pointD mascot, though. (I was tempted to write “mercifully brief” above, heh.) Interestingly, I had the strong sense that here was an artist a performer a young woman a girl who had been deeply influenced by the YouTubean ripples that continue to spread through society. Her presentation is not, in fact, that of a performer. She comes off like a harried, angry teenager, scoffing at both guys who want easy sex and the girls who give it to them, and being sure to note the importance of wearing cotton. At the same time, of course, she sings about being a bad-ass, rated-X bitch who’s gotta sell sex, but really, who can blame her? Uffie goes out of her way to construct some cred, which she’s forced to do since she seems to hail from a relatively cosseted Miami upbringing (see this TV segment about her if you doubt that). She’s a study in the performance of non-performance, not unlike LonelyGirl15.

The point here is that the lifelogging trope of recording your raw experience has become so important to a certain generation that performers now go out of their way to construct a “raw” experience that dovetails with that of their audience, or with the experience their audience imagines it’s having. This isn’t particularly new, of course; there have been constructed celebrities for decades. But this usually manifests itself in performers who pretend to be more “outside” than they really are. Uffie pretends to be more “regular.” Interestingly, this is also true of her audience, who are club kids who are not exactly beset by too many exigencies themselves. So in the end, Uffie’s pretty metaversal, in her way. Plus which, the Uffie songs now playing on my iTunes remain awesome, despite her middling skills as a performer. Go, Uff! See you at Planet Thailand.

Make some noise

Popping the Glock

3pointD, Glitchy and Jerry Paffendorf (l - r) at the Uffie show

The lovely Electric Sheep who accompanied us, Jessie (left) and Meg

Prince Paffendorf