I'm posting a favorite song of mine to honor the creator of Samantha, Sol Saks, who passed away today in Los Angeles at the age of 100. We all miss her too.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Sol Saks
I'm posting a favorite song of mine to honor the creator of Samantha, Sol Saks, who passed away today in Los Angeles at the age of 100. We all miss her too.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Celebrities, Mirrors and Social Media
Few things are as pathetic as celebrities from old school media discovering the web is a conversation and the rules that protected their feelings and egos don't apply. They emerged in an era of carefully managed engagements with the press, with their fans, and everyone they worked with. Their art went one way and so did their expression. Their fan mail was sorted; their images were hand crafted. Their art was carefully stage managed or filtered through the ears of the A&R men and women who made sure every utterance was sweet and inside the soft box of a demographically targeted marketing strategy, through the publicists who ensured the dollars would not be diminished by the tedium of genuine conversation, argument, and doubt.
Having never developed the thick skins and awareness of what it is to be a person in an unfiltered world, they still want to be special, protected and privileged. They don't want conversation. They want fans behind the barricades. They want to be stars with their own special and largely empty place in the heavens. They fear controversy because with it comes opinions and yes, proof that they are occasionally in error, that like everyone else, they can be unpolished, imperfect, not a star at all.
In the entertainment business it is said that you must keep the people who dislike you to a minimum, ideally zero.
Que lastima!
That's not the web. Sorry, but it simply isn't. Social media is... social. The nasty people you will encounter in a restaurant are on Facebook, and guess what? They have a right to it and if you engage them, they have a right to tell you what they think if you are slagging on the waitress or the people who manage those free services you are using to promote yourself. For any opinion you offer, there will be people who disagree. For any statement you make about topics outside your expertise, there will be experts who will correct you. For any candidate you endorse, there will be people who are voting for the other candidate. For any privilege you plead that does not help the rest of society, there are people ready, willing and eager to call you a selfish twit.
If all you want are compliments and to sell your wares, you've outlasted your place in culture. Get over yourselves. If you can't handle conversation, if you can't be told when you are wrong, if you can't debate with facts and emotions equally, you have no reason to have a Facebook page. You don't need friends. You need mirrors.
Having never developed the thick skins and awareness of what it is to be a person in an unfiltered world, they still want to be special, protected and privileged. They don't want conversation. They want fans behind the barricades. They want to be stars with their own special and largely empty place in the heavens. They fear controversy because with it comes opinions and yes, proof that they are occasionally in error, that like everyone else, they can be unpolished, imperfect, not a star at all.
In the entertainment business it is said that you must keep the people who dislike you to a minimum, ideally zero.
Que lastima!
That's not the web. Sorry, but it simply isn't. Social media is... social. The nasty people you will encounter in a restaurant are on Facebook, and guess what? They have a right to it and if you engage them, they have a right to tell you what they think if you are slagging on the waitress or the people who manage those free services you are using to promote yourself. For any opinion you offer, there will be people who disagree. For any statement you make about topics outside your expertise, there will be experts who will correct you. For any candidate you endorse, there will be people who are voting for the other candidate. For any privilege you plead that does not help the rest of society, there are people ready, willing and eager to call you a selfish twit.
If all you want are compliments and to sell your wares, you've outlasted your place in culture. Get over yourselves. If you can't handle conversation, if you can't be told when you are wrong, if you can't debate with facts and emotions equally, you have no reason to have a Facebook page. You don't need friends. You need mirrors.
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