Look, Someone Turned Thought Catalog Into A Music Video

Across the internet today, the media is chastising and degrading a young woman just because she dared to be an artist. She dared to reach deep inside herself, find out exactly who she was, and relate her essential self to her environment in a ballad to her beloved adopted home, Brooklyn. She’s being mocked for being brave.

Meet Catey Shaw, and meet her art:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2poC56ycWA&w=798&h=490]

The video has gone viral, and just like viral content’s namesake – actual viruses – the virality of her viral video is toxic and sinister. The virality of her content is poisonous; the most common motivation to share this young woman’s work is a concerted effort to mock and deride her.

Noisey has called her, “the Rebecca Black of Gentrification.” Gothamist said her single will make you, “want to move back to Ohio.”

Really, guys? Really? You’re going to attack a young woman just because she wants to contribute to the culture around her? Just because she wants to express herself in an original way? Just because she wants to take a little piece of Brooklyn, and make it about herself by raising property values and documenting the deterioration of authenticity in a song that sounds like you’ve heard it a million times before you’ve hit play? I think the real problem here, guys, is that you don’t understand Brooklyn.

Here at Thought Catalog, we’re taking the unpopular stance. Instead of falling in line with the aging grumps over at Vice and Gothamist, we’re saying that Catey Shaw is actually Good and Brave. We’re saying that this song is a good representation of Brooklyn, youth, and the debatably problematic issue of gentrification.

Catey Shaw is a girl after our own hearts, and we are wholeheartedly endorsing her work. We’re Brooklyn Girls too, after all. This town also belongs to us.