Whisperings from Whispered Pearls

There are certain reality shows I like and continue to watch, mostly Survivor and The Bachelor. I like them because they provide what really only podcasts provide in the media landscape: truth.

From the first moment when Sue Hawk gave the blistering speech to Richard Hatch on the first season of Survivor ten years ago, TV was changed forever. And hopefully, those who make TV realized that while scripted shows are wonderful, it is the scent of the real that people really hunger for.

Some shows: Survivor, The Amazing Race and sometimes The Bachelor, seem to adhere to “let’s leave it real” as their esthetic. The problem with these shows, and adding “writers” to them, is that then you are manipulating reality, diluting what was already pure. I can’t speak for anyone else, but that makes me not want to watch them anymore.

Last season, The Bachelorette had a particularly heinous twist (obviously some producer came from The Amazing Race or some similar show) where the bachelors were running obstacle courses and crap to get to the one woman to date. It was absolutely horrible. I hope they never repeat it. It was a big misstep.

Another (and yes, we have a trend now) is manipulating the ending. And I’m so pissed off about it, I have to write about it.

Let’s revisit, shall we? In that very same Bachelorette edition, there was a guy named Ed that we didn’t see very much of. Certainly didn’t see Gillian (the Bachelorette) falling for him in any way whatsoever. There was big drama when suddenly he was “called back” by his work. In other words, it was his job or his new girl (potentially).

Even then, I thought: come on now. You know ABC vets these people six ways from Sunday, and they have to sign papers which state: during the next (six or eight) weeks, I have enough free time to pursue this thing till the end. Certainly. It was so in EVERY PREVIOUS Bachelor/Bachelorette version.

But apparently some (obviously male) producer decided that wasn’t dramatic enough. We couldn’t just see Gillian falling in love with Ed (which, btw, we didn’t). We had to have this big reveal. He leaves. Shocker! He can’t live without her, he comes back. She takes him back. (Which comes from out of nowhere.) And another contestant whom we had seen her falling in love with, Reid, gets bounced. And HE comes back, heart in hand, to actually propose. But no, unbeknownst to us, she had somewhere along the way (not in the edited and shown version of the show) fallen in love with this Ed guy.

Dear God, put a woman on this thing!

What we want to see (speaking for the women out there) is some poor schmuck (male or female) gradually falling more in love with someone among the candidates. So that at the end, when they propose, we can all go: “Awwww” because that’s how it’s supposed to be. That is what fell into place right before our eyes. We are lucky to have seen it. They are happy to have it. Swoon.

Like Tricia and Ryan. Though we didn’t really understand it, it was obvious she liked him. That was beautiful. (And they are still married.) Is that so hard to put together? Come on, producers!

No, apparently they like this “finalist towards the end suddenly gets called away by his/her job, then comes back because she/he is too in love.” Yawn. I know it’s a scripted manipulation. You know how I know? Oh, other than they did it frikkin LAST SEASON TOO? I’m currently watching The Bachelor episode where he is frolicking with his chosen final three. AND THEY CUT TO ALI, the girl who had the job angst on the last episode, in her apartment. CUT TO HER. Being all angsty. “I can’t stop thinking about Jake.” Make me throw up.

Oh, lemme guess. She comes back, disrupts the final rose ceremony and he bounces someone else to keep her. Maybe he’ll end up marrying her, like Gillian did with Ed last season.

For me, from this moment on, this is no longer fun. Any more than being manipulated in real life is fun. No thanks, Bachelor. I hate this.

I admit it. I’m a girl, and I’m addicted to The Bachelor/Bachelorette.

It was one of the reality shows that hooked me from the very beginning, with its attempts at classy romance. Lush locales, pretty clothes, elegant people. I loved it.

I’ve watched nearly all the seasons of both shows (all episodes). Didn’t care for the Navy guy (who chose no one in the end) or the blond guy (I think second season.) Other than that, I was pretty much there. I’ve seen their twists and turns, but by and large, it was predictable. And we LIKED THAT.

It’s fairly simple, really. Classy women wanna see a classy woman (or man) choose another classy man (or woman), and take them on elegant dates. Simple formula. It works. Don’t mess with it.

That is one thing that reality shows should have learned from the first season of Survivor, and we know from Twitter. Leave people to themselves, and they’ll surprise the heck out of you. Just thinking of that speech of Sue’s from the final Tribal Council gives me chills now.

The Bachelor series has been fairly free from controversy. Other than the guy picking the girl, then dumping her last season, and re-picking the previous girl, in front of a national audience, there wasn’t a whole lotta drama. (Don’t worry about the dumped Melissa. She went from tears on The Bachelor, to finalist in Dancing with the Stars, to a cushy gig with ABC News.)

People thought that whole thing was fake. To me, it seemed very very real.

This season, though… We have a wonderful new Bachelorette, another dumpee from last season’s Bachelor. By and large, she seems pretty straightforward and smart. Except for this whole nonsense with Wes. The Twitterverse is also starting to talk about how this was a producer manipulation, and not real. “Cause how could she be that stupid?”

For those of you not hanging by your TV every week, here is the basic gist. Wes is a musician. With a band. His deal for going on the show is to promote his music. He doesn’t give a crap about the girl. In fact, he has a girlfriend back at home in Austin, TX.

Now, what’s really fishy about this right from the start is that you know the producers vette the crap out of every contestant. Checking and rechecking and rechecking again so that no craziness shows up when they least expect it.

Either the producers are really losing their touch this season, or they planned all this. My roommate even thinks that Wes isn’t a “guy,” that he’s actually an actor. Because what we we’re seeing is Wes, trash talking the girl (Jillian) to his buddies in the guys’ house, then being all nice to her and telling her there was no problem. It’s brought up MORE THAN ONCE, the reveal actually spans three episodes.

And, bizarrely, she KEEPS him for two of those three episodes, finally getting rid of him this week.

When he’s trash talking her, he says stuff like he’s only there for his music, he doesn’t care about the girl. He just wants publicity for his band. When he takes Jillian on a hometown date, there’s Wes’ band. SURPRISE!

Now, I will say this: to the producers’ credit, they showed as little of his music as possible. Didn’t even really show his band (thankfully). They made the camera shots ALL about Jillian. Still. Wes was there.

It felt very much like Wes was manipulating Jillian, but it felt just as much that the producers were manipulating us. And it’s really never felt that way before. Not since “Johnny Fairplay” lied about his grandmother on Survivor has an audience (and show) been so manipulated and used.

Wes is in the limo, boasting about how he got to fourth place, while having a girlfriend. That’s something to boast about? That you AND YOUR FAMILY lied on national TV? That’s gonna sell records for you? And sell out your upcoming tour? Really? You think so?

I dunno. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but the people I see and interact with in social media are all about transparency and truth-telling. That’s the currency we trade on these days. So while everyone is steaming about what a colossal jerk Wes is, I think I’m a bit more mad about this season’s producers, who added all kinds of hokeyness this season: from the Amazing Race-style treasure hunt to the weird foot fetish guy to this guitar-playing Wes.

Just give us our Bachelor, straight up. No muss, no fuss, and especially no Wes. Thanks.

In response to this blog post:

http://blog.teamnimbuswest.com/2008/11/why-social-networking-locally-and-digitally-can-be-a-bad-idea/

I have this to say:

Boy, do I disagree with this premise.

First of all, perhaps 148.7 is the maximum number of relationships someone could have in 1998, according to some anthropologist (and even that I disagree with). But a lot has changed in the interim 11 years.

Things just don’t work the way they did in 1998. We are an accelerated culture. Things are moving faster, our communication methods move faster, we get and lose friends (and social contacts) faster.

Perhaps you could argue that those few friends whom you could sit around the coffee table with, pouring out your soul are few and far between (as you do state later in the article), but I really don’t agree with that either.

The nature of our interaction has changed with this new technology too.

The model, as you state the case, used to be that we’d be uptight and bottled in around our business colleagues and the public at large, only “letting our hair down” with a “few people.” It isn’t that way anymore and I certainly don’t operate that way.

I have become my brand, and those who know my brand know me. I’m a podcaster and an author, I blog frequently and am active in nearly every social network. And anyone who knows me in any of those places knows me, complete and unvarnished. There isn’t anything I hide from anyone.

Anyone in the blogosphere who cares to knows everything about me, from the fact that coffee ice cream is my favorite to the fact that I was sad about losing my job recently as newspapers dissolve.

I have a large listening audience (which I’m contractually obligated not to disclose), 17,000+ friends on MySpace, 1,100+ friends on Facebook, 2,900+ following on Twitter. Which of those would I be sitting down to have coffee with? Well, any of them that ask. Who am I going to glean information from? Build business relationships with? Advance strategic partnerships with? All of them.

Instead of parceling out morsels of information to my close associates, I can now share what I know with anyone who needs to know, and they share theirs with me. Who knows what types of questions I will ask my audience on Twitter? or they ask of me?

It’s become an ebb and flow of constant information, and constant relationships. I expect and hope that these people trust me, as I trust them, because that’s how it works now. I am honest and open and real with everyone in the blogosphere, to the best of my ability.

My connections are WIDE AND DEEP. And no, having 73,000 followers on Twitter isn’t meaningless. It increases the chances that whatever I ask will get answered by someone. That’s huge. It also says to me that those people think that what I have to say has some value. That’s important to me, whether it’s 73,000 or 7 who are really listening.

But, as much as I do consider myself to be a brand, who hopefully one day will make money by my presence and my insight, I sure don’t look at those 73,000 followers as people who can help me “make more money in less time.” For heaven’s sake.

And, frankly, someone like you who was just talking to me because he was looking for a business opportunity “to make more money in less time” would be someone I bounce immediately from my Twitter connections list. Cause that person just doesn’t get it.

In reference to this article:
http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/02/28/should-traditional-media-fear-its-social-sibling/
I have this to say.

Listening to some of the voices online at the minute, it’d certainly seem that way. Yet history doesn’t bear these opinions out.
TV would kill radio.
DVD’s would kill movie ticket sales.
CD’s would kill vinyl.
The Internet would kill traditional media.
Music downloads would kill traditional retailers.

Maybe I’m looking at the wrong picture, but I still see all of the things that are meant to be dead by now. If anything, many of the doomed mediums are thriving and actually performing better than their replacements.Obviously, he isn’t seeing what I’m seeing here. Way back in the day, people used to sit around their radios and watch them. TV came along, with all its fancy pictures, that sure ended. Sure, people continued to listen to radio, but it was in a very different way than it was previously. The dominant media force became the TV.

As far as music, the only people listening to and enjoying vinyl records are the diehard collectors, who probably even have a few 78s in their collection. For that matter, CDs aren’t as prevalent with the youth of today as digital music. In case you haven’t noticed, buying online, listening on your iPod or computer, has replaced what was previously.

And last I checked, Tower Records has gone out of business. You can argue that there still are record stores around, but it’s all a question of time and priorities. The fact of the matter is that 20 years from now, everyone will be buying their music digitally, and not even think about what they have lost by not having vinyl around or brick-and-mortar record stores, for that matter.

Until recently, DVDs pretty much had put a serious dent in traditional movie ticket sales. Why go to a theatre, when you can sit at home with your friends and watch on your big screen TV, with the surround sound? People are going back now, interestingly, because of the recession, it is posited. But moviegoing has become less of a “we must do this in a theatre” proposition, and more of a “let’s get together with our friends at the theatre tonight” kind of deal.

What is succeeding in theatres is what cannot be done at home: big explosion type movies, great special effects, 3D things. Moviegoing has become quite a different thing than it was even ten years ago.

So, really, the only one left in that list is “The Internet will kill traditional media.”

Look around, my brother. For my money, newspapers are dead and dying daily. People get their news, their sports scores, their entertainment coverage, their crossword puzzles, their classified ads–everything they went to newspapers for, they now get online.

People who work at traditional media can piss and moan about how they wish this wasn’t so, and how it just “couldn’t happen.” It’s already happening. There was a story yesterday about how Hearst wants to “save newspapers” with a Kindle-like device on which people could read their daily paper. Are they kidding? Newsflash to Hearst: I already have such a device. It’s called an iPhone.

The only newspaper which seems to really embrace the changes and be adapting to it (the New York Times) is there, in an iPhone app, and I happily read it there.

Furthermore, the other item that traditional media–radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, I’m talking to ALL of you–seems to be blissfully ignoring is that people are CONSUMING information quite differently than they used to. Traditional media is busy arguing whether or not newspapers are dead, while people seek their information through Facebook and Twitter and whatever news aggregator sites they prefer. I like Digg. Radio is arguing about whether or not terrestrial radio is more viable than satellite while we are seeking out music through online stations and our iPods. TV is scratching its head about why viewership seems to be down everywhere, and doesn’t seem to notice how popular Netflix is, how many of their TV shows are being watched and sought out online.

It’s happening, people. Keep your head in the sand as long as you want to, it’s already changing all around you. And for us, the consumer, this is a good thing. Podcasts give us a breath of fresh air, where people speak truth and are free to swear if they want to. Why wouldn’t we seek that out instead?

If traditional media wants to save any vestiges of what it’s got left, it needs to quit bellyaching about whether or not it’s dying, and figure out some way to get those journalists and those radio DJs and those TV anchors onto the web, and find a viable way to pay them to do what they do so well, but do it THERE.

It’s not that we don’t want it anymore, we just want it in this new format in our time-shifted patterns, and wish to hell they’d quit staring at their vinyl records, and figure it out already.

I realized today why I am a true Los Angeleno now.

I exist at the moment, in the greatest depression since my father died 30 years ago (certainly thus far the worst year of my life).

Heck, so far all that’s happened this year was a job loss, an industry that I worked for disintegrating, a radio station that I adored going online only, the bottom dropping out of the financial markets, and the man I love choosing someone else. It can only go up from here!But that last statement is what made me really realize that I truly belong here, here in Los Angeles.

This is a strange city. One that, blissfully, the rest of the country doesn’t really seem to understand, and probably wishes would just drop off into the ocean already. So let me explain.

People come here, with their dreams bundled on their sleeves, believing in their deepest hearts that they write better screenplays, or are better actors, or know the movie business better than anyone else. They probably come here, with stars in their eyes, or at least (as I did) with big dollar signs in them. Foolishly believing that this city was gonna be the path to riches. In reality, I have been broker here than I ever have been in my life.Here’s what I have found in story after countless story of this brutal town. You get two years. You come here, naive and full of hope and optimism. The city quickly shows you that things aren’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter. EVEN IF you are the best actor, writer, dancer, musician or cinematographer this town has ever seen.You get two years to tough it out. Many leave in the first six months, slinking back home with their tail between their legs. Many more struggle with not enough to eat, chasing that dream that brought them here. And if you can tough it out for two years, I think you’ll probably be here to stay.

The magical formula to succeed in this town is one that rears its head whenever times are toughest, like now. You have to BELIEVE at your deepest core, that whatever things look like now, it’s gonna turn around for you. Something’s gonna happen. Some combination of circumstances, some chance meeting, some accident of preparedness meets luck is going to fall into your lap and voila, you are back on top. That is, after all, how this town really works.

You have to believe in yourself with a fierceness that would make others quake. You have to keep plugging away when, in any other city, it would seem like every single door is closed to you. When you have absolutely no reasonable hope left, you have to pull more hope from your inner reserves. Although the flip side of this is that the town is then also filled with people who are never going to succeed at screenwriting or acting or directing like they think they are, but they plug away anyway.

What one discovers as one walks this perilous path is that if you truly love something, it’s something you HAVE to do, no matter the odds, no matter what anyone else tells you, no matter how people like you (as old as you, as heavy as you, as weird as you, as whatever as you) never can succeed at this. Case in point: who would’ve thought a few years ago that Mickey Rourke would be an Oscar-nominee?

And that is it. That is what drives me. This almost pathological impulse to continue when everything in the world tells me not to. To believe deeply that things will turn around. That those closed doors will open up, that that guy’s heart may turn around one day, and even if I try and try and try and nothing happens, it’s all about the journey, anyway, right?

That, my friends, is the essence of succeeding in Los Angeles. I am truly home.

The brickbats are flying fast and furious about the death of newspapers.

Having been a recent victim of a newspaper’s layoffs, I have a few things of my own to say about all this. I also consider myself to be deeply ensconced in new media, and have a few things to say about that, too. 

I wanted to comment on an article that I have posted on my Facebook, link here: http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/12/media-landscape-newspapers/ 

Max Gladwell, who already doesn’t understand social media enough to have a comments section attached to his dissertation (sigh), makes a case about the death of newspapers. What he posits is that newspapers shouldn’t die because they are still the Fourth Estate, the ones responsible for holding the government’s feet to the fire. To which I say: where has this Fourth Estate been in the last eight years then? Where are the angry epithets about all of the war crimes committed by the current men in power? As our habeus corpus was taken away, where was the outrage of that Fourth Estate? Did it reach to anyone other than the few journalists who knew what it meant? Torture? At Guantanamo and elsewhere? Where was the commentary about that? Global warming, and the corporations that condone it? And on and on.

To those ends, I say, the newpapers’ power to effect change has already transferred hands, in case Mr. Gladwell’s not noticed it. The news that affects people, gets into their system, makes them take political action, is already happening more on Facebook, MySpace and blogs than from reading any newspaper. WE the PEOPLE have become the Fourth Estate. We talk about things that are wrong with our government, and do something about it, as Obama’s largely Internet-fueled election proved. The newspapers, also in case you haven’t noticed, are firmly in the pockets of the land barons, the rich profiteers, the corporations who are carrying out the very things we need to be railing against.  We, we who still care about our country, are out here, carrying messages hand to hand, if necessary (well, ok, maybe with the little help of an iPhone) to tell others the truth.

We blog it, we podcast it, we status it on FB, we tweet it on Twitter. The thirst for real news will never die. But the place we look for it has already changed. And I would have told Mr. Gladwell that, if only he was new media-savvy enough to have a comments section.