Those of you who use social networks (particularly Twitter) and don't possess an immunity to mimetic viruses have by now probably heard of Rebecca Black. If you haven't, she's a 13-year-old from California who features in a recent YouTube video singing Friday. The song has been viewed by millions (over 26.5 megahits at the time of writing) and has attracted much criticism for its shallow, unimaginative lyrics, extensive use of autotuning, and musical banality. Consequently, young Rebecca is now the person its cool to hate, and will probably soon overtake Justin Bieber as the world's most loathed singer.

Most of the criticism is along the lines of "Is this what passes for music these days?" and bemoaning the shallowness of modern pop culture. Unfortunately, but predictably, much of it has gone too far and extended to exhortations of suicide (in response to which Miss Black herself has been laudably sanguine, even retweeting some of her "death threats" and rightly chiding those who make light of teen suicide).

My thesis is that most of this criticism is misdirected. Before your howls of protest rise too high: no, I don't actually like the song. The song itself is just as terrible as everyone says. But the criticism is based on a false assumption about the pretensions of the song's promoters.

This is the way I see it. Imagine you pay £300 for a track day at Silverstone. You get to have fun driving around the British Grand Prix circuit in your Audi TT or whatever you have. You might run onto the grass a couple of times, and maybe lose control of your rear wheels in some of the tighter corners, or even spin around 360° by mistake. But it's OK, because you're only there to enjoy yourself.

Now imagine you get a friend to take a video of your session on the tarmac. That's only natural: you want a souvenir. Then you want to show the video to your friends, so you put it up on YouTube and send them the link. All perfectly normal behaviour in the digital age.

But then your video starts getting more hits, and then more. Soon it has millions, and your driving imperfections are known to half the Western world. You start getting criticism for not being up to the standards of a Formula 1 driver, and even death threats for daring to think you're as good as Lewis Hamilton.