Kickstart #975: Beware the cult of celebrity
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Kickstart Today
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Monday October 27th 2008: Issue #975
Kickstart Today is published three times each week for opted-in
subscribers only. Publisher: Martin Avis. Your comments are
always welcome - to respond to anything you read here, please
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Greetings !
I just cancelled my subscription to a fairly expensive membership
site.
The site provided useful and interesting material each month and
I was happy to pay the amount being asked. But there was a
problem - and it eventually proved to be such a deal killer that
I decided that enough was enough.
The reason I resigned as a member was that the information they
give out each month is not archived. If I’m ever too busy to get
into the site to watch, read, or listen to the huge amount of
information they throw at me each month, that’s my hard luck.
After the first of the following month it is all gone.
This particular site give a huge amount of stuff each month, and
downloading it all would be a very time-consuming operation,
which I’m sure most of their members don’t do.
The very kindly offer to sell me previous month’s content if I
want it but why on earth should I, as a paying member, have to
pay twice for the same stuff?
I’m a pretty busy guy. Most of us are. I’m afraid that no matter
how good a membership site might be, there are months I can’t
visit and material that I don’t get around to seeing.
Why then, do they insist on penalizing me - one of their best
customers (a long-term paying member) by making life difficult?
I won’t name this particular site because the problem could
easily have been with any number of other membership sites out
there. The software they use to run their sites just works that
way.
And in my opinion, it stinks.
If I buy a book or a magazine, I have the information to refer to
forever. I think that if I buy information from you, as the owner
of a membership site, the same thing should apply.
I don’t expect to be given access to material from months before
I joined, and I don’t expect to be allowed access after I’ve
left, but I do think that as long as I’m a member, I should have
easy, unfettered access to an archive of everything I’ve paid
for.
Frankly it isn’t that hard to program the underlying site code to
achieve that, but for some reason, some of the people who write
the code for membership sites see paying customers in a very
negative way, and assume that everyone is out to con the site
owner.
Well, let me tell you that from now on, I will be looking very
hard at any membership site that I’m tempted to join. I will be
asking questions. I’m sure you can guess what my first one will
be.
Meanwhile, if you are a membership site owner, I’d love to hear
your comments. Do you allow members to access their historic
data, or are you part of the same problem? And if so, why?
#~#~#
We have a small mystery. Surrounding my new pond are large, heavy
flat stones that make up the border. The stones are laid on a
flat surface and overhang the pond by just an inch or two. They
are very stable and don’t wobble or rock.
Every now and then, we come down in the morning to find that one,
sometimes two, of the stones (more like slabs really) have been
pushed into the pond.
Our cats regularly walk around the pond and the stones don’t
budge. Although we do have foxes that visit our garden, I’d doubt
they were heavy enough to push two heavy stones around. In any
case, why would they?
I’m tempted to set up a night vision camera to film the pond at
night (if I had such a thing!) but failing that, the mystery
remains.
#~#~#
The week has started with a beautiful day here in Sunny Sidcup.
There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sunshine is making the
whole garden look happy.
Lots of our summer flowers are still in bloom, but most striking
of all are some nasturtiums that are climbing up pole a the back
of one of our borders. The sun has just hit their bright orange,
almost fluorescent flowers and they are so bright you almost
can’t see anything else!
They are saying ‘look at me!’ while the marigolds and begonias
and geraniums that have been hogging the limelight for the last
few months are having to play a supporting role at last.
#~#~#
Is Web 2.0 and the 21st-century cult of celebrity a dangerous
mix?
I’m not much of a celebrity watcher. All those garish magazines
that adorn the racks which seek to unearth, expose or make up
facts about the lives of people famous for being in the magazines
leave me cold. More than that, they leave me baffled as to why
such nonsense should be of any interest to anyone.
However, I can’t deny the obvious fact that such celebrity
watching is massively important to those who partake of its
vicarious delights.
In the main, I suppose that it is pretty harmless - if you accept
that being more interested in someone else’s life is more
interesting than your own can be harmless. Most people are quite
capable of treating their celebrity-watching as just bit of fun
and quietly get on with their own business after they’ve got
their curiosity fix.
But there are always a small number of people who get far to
caught up in it all. Those are the sad folks who go that bit
further and blur the line between casual interest and obsessive
fascination. And then there are the more dangerously extreme -
the stalkers, both virtual and physical.
Lately, something has happened that has got me thinking that
there is a whole world of danger out there that hasn’t been
plumbed yet.
I, a self proclaimed non-celebrity junkie, found myself
‘following’ Stephen Fry on Twitter.
And then a weird thing happened. I sent him an @stephenfry tweet.
As I clicked on the update button and despatched my message to
posterity an alarm bell rang inside my head. “What do you think
you are doing?!?” it pealed.
I don’t know Stephen Fry, I have never met him and don’t know
anyone who has. I’m not his friend. I’m not even a vague, friend
of a friend’s cousin’s uncle kind of acquaintance. And yet, for
that moment of out-of-character weirdness, I felt as comfortable
sending him a message as I would to any one of my ‘real’ friends.
I suspect the reason is that through reading his blog, and
latterly his Twitter posts I’ve been seduced into a feeling of
familiarity. He shares of himself in much the same way as I share
of myself here in Kickstart. For the most part it is entirely
benign. After all, I know that having sent him a tweet isn’t
going to result in me camping out on his doorstep or rummaging
through his trash.
But, can the same be said of the other 11,842 people who are
following him? Of the myriad celebrity-watchers who are following
the increasingly huge number of famous and not so famous
‘personalities’ who are using Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and the
other Web 2.0 social networking sites?
This modern-day window into the lives of the famous people is, it
seems to me, far more intrusive than most newspapers, for the
simple reason that it puts the so-called celebrities on the same
level as you and I. They aren’t generally making up glittering
stories about themselves, no, they are sharing their breakfast
habits and what they are up to on a day to day basis. They are,
perhaps unwittingly, opening themselves up in a far more personal
way to the prying eyes of their fans.
And to some fans, this level of access to the minutiae of their
idols’ every day life is beyond fascinating. It is mesmerizing.
Stephen Fry today twittered about how he was eating boiled eggs
and soldiers for breakfast. I hope he enjoyed them, but I also
hope that the sharing of such intimacy doesn’t make some poor
misguided soul think, even for a moment, that he or she is now
part of the great man’s inner sanctum.
The world is full of obsessives, and I worry that social
networking by celebrities may be feeding the fantasies of an
unfortunate few.
Now, perhaps I should send a private Twitter message to my friend
Stephen to warn him to watch out for who he inadvertently
encourages.
[If you promise that you are not a stalker, you can follow me on
Twitter at Kickstart_Twips]
#~#~#
I’m sure there was something that I really wanted to recommend
you buy today, but I’ve got so excited writing about Stephen Fry
(oh Lord, how many more times can I drop his name today?) that it
has completely escaped me.
I hope I remember what it was soon - apart from being concerned
over my increasing forgetfulness, I bought a Playstation 3 at the
weekend and now I need to earn some money so I can afford to feed
it some games! 
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The Quote of the Day
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William Shakespeare wrote,
“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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I read an unattributed quote earlier today that went, “When you
want what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.”
Isn’t that so true?
Read it again:
When you want what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve
never done.
Dreams, goals, targets, aspirations … these are all things that
we want to achieve that are in some way beyond the place where we
are right at this minute. And the ONLY way that we can ever hope
to attain them is to move beyond this comfortable place.
To achieve, we must stretch, and the more we stretch, the more we
can achieve.
In looking for the source of that fantastic quote I was
unsuccessful, but in another way I was very successful because I
found another quote that I loved:
“When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe
in everything that’s necessary for believing in it.” Ugo Betti
Now that’s powerful, isn’t it!
And put those two ideas together and you get pure TNT.
So this isn’t so much an action point today as food for thought.
Bon Appetit. Dine well.
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The Foolproof, No-Nonsense,
Kickstart Guide to Making Money Online
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*** Catch up with parts 1-28 of the Foolproof, No-Nonsense,
Kickstart Guide to Making Money Online at http://imkickstart.com
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Fascinating Facts
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Silly names for gadgets are not a new idea.
In 1934 the ‘Portable Super-Regenerative Receiver and
Transmission Device’ went on sale.
At least that was what the manufacturers called it. Everyone else
was quite happy to call it a walkie-talkie.