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wordtowords · 11 months

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Chris, Mick, and the Art of Artifice

artifice - noun - clever devices used to trick or deceive (Google).

Let's face the music and accept that for whatever reason(s), human beings embrace the concept of deception. And now that the Internet (via social media) has opened the backstage door for endless opportunities for a little or a lot of artifice, no one is safe from scammers, or in my case, ordinary people pretending to be rock stars.

Because I am in the music business along with just about everyone else, I have to spend time on social media just advertise my original songs and get them circulating among listeners throughout the globe. Although I am a minuscule presence on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook, I try to post at least three times a week to generate a following, which isn't easy as there are 100,000 songs released on the music streaming channels daily and 100,000 artists promoting them. Apparently as FB is the medium of choice for celebrities, more grifters use it to impersonate them than any other platform. I am lucky because the con artists who hit on me generally do not want money; they just want to take me to bed. Case in point, one man, who just happens to have the name Christopher Cross like the musician (who is actually the real imposter since his surname isn't actually Cross) tried to impersonate him in order to trick me into meeting him. Fortunately, I was onto him right from the start. Just in case this should ever happen to you (maybe on YouTube in the comments section), an authentic celebrity would never ask you when you became his or her fan. And most likely as an icebreaker, he or she would never thank you for being his or her fan. I know from experience that unless they are extreme narcissists, celebrated people tend to want to step away from themselves for a few and come across as being average. So it was clear that Chris wasn't the celebrated Chris since he made the mistake of doing what all trolls do initially: he asked, "How long have you been my fan?" (I replied, "I've never been your fan." Oh, well. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.)

Of course, it is true that there are famous types out there who do interface with fans and do use artifice (such as different names) so that they don't attract attention. I am contending with someone right now who claims to be Micheal Philip Jagger, which is Mick Jagger's full name. Even though he has the blue checkmark verifying his identity, my daughter claims that he is in no way real, mainly because eighty-year-old men don't know how to navigate FB. Sensible, smart she contends that Mick no doubt has troops of well-paid assistants assigned to connect with the public on social media. The real Mick, romantically linked to a thirty-six-year-old dancer, would not have a second to reach out to me. Which all makes sense, yet this inchoate swindler is atypical so far. Like Macbeth and most politicians after him, Micheal could just be quite good at duplicity until some day, his artifice is exposed as such, and he is uncovered and cancelled (the beauty of social media).

On the other hand, I did read an article on the web stating that you can never truly be sure whether or not you are being hoodwinked. It is possible that the person is indeed the person he or she says he or she is. Just make sure you don't wire any money to him or her and you don't friend him or her. As far as my Micheal, I am playing his game, pretending I don't realize that he is attempting to be Mick. And I am acting as though I am the bigger celeb whose privacy is kept private. In the end, the greater pretender will win, I suppose, if there can be a winner at shenanigans. Let's put it this way, if the actual Mick should die, and Micheal keeps liking my posts, I'll have my answer. (I hope it doesn't come down to that, though, because I am Mick's fan.)

The obvious paradoxical takeaway here is that sometimes you have to be deceptive in order to expose deception. Truth doesn't come easily.

#word-to-words, #slice-of-life, #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #good advice, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #philosophy, #truth, #social media, #deception, #human nature

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karliesbuzzcut · 3 years

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A Grande Interlude

Intro | part1 | part2 | part3 | part4

Funnily enough, this chapter begins exactly the same way as the last one: Russell is sad about Girl A and moves onto Girl B in order to make a point. He also wants Girl B to produce his music.

Writing songs for women (hoping they’ll touch his pee-pee and make him famous) is classic Russ behaviour. I’m only covering two cases, but he also tried it with Kylie Jenner (‘Win a Date with Kylie Jenner’) and Katy Perry (‘You Won’t Ever Have To Write Another Sad Song’). There’s also a generic song for the Instagram flavour of the week, perfectly titled ‘Right Here, Right Here (You Deserve a Better Life’).

This time, Ariana Grande drew the short straw.

Russ purchased a ticket to one of her concerts in Salt Lake City, as well as a meet&greet pass. Where is he getting all this money? I have no idea — some questions are better left unanswered. Either way, by going through his Quora profile, you can tell some primo wooing was about to take place.

The best part is that, when Russ says “a letter”, he means an entire notebook and one of his songs.

So he goes to the concert and seems to have the time of his life. He gets a picture with Ariana, which is pretty cool, I guess. And he seems to be genuinely happy, as seen here:

*lets take a second to appreciate the bitter shade thrown at Tay.

...but there’s something secretly bothering him 👀

By now you’re familiar with Russell’s tactics. He’s that guy on tinder who, if you take more than 10 minutes to answer, will tell you that you’re an ugly slut anyway.

Pst! “Her manager isn’t a nice guy either” 👀 I think we can actually agree on that one, Russ!

Let’s ignore Russ’ violent tendencies and casual racism for a moment. We don’t want to get depressed here. Instead, I think we should take a closer look at Ariana’s face. You know, the face of a medieval executioner or whatever:

🙂

Where’s the black hood and enormous french sword? What the fuck kind of beheading is this, Russell?

But, with this picture as his profile pic, he goes on to rant about how she hugged a random fan and not him. Purposefully ignoring that this “random fan” was a teenager and not a nearly 30 YEAR OLD MAN IN A SUIT, WHO BROUGHT HER FLOWERS EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS A STRICT “NO GIFTS” POLICY. Sit down, Russ.

While that whole post is absolute gold, my favourite part is when he said he isn’t going to sue Ariana, and moments later *spoiler alert* he sues Ariana. I guess he realised that it’s healthier to just be honest with oneself and admit that “yes, I am a shitbag willing to try anything to get a pretty girl to acknowledge my existence.”

As you might’ve expected, it was another small claims court. In Utah. It’s beautiful in a way, I think. Poetic💫.

You might be wondering what he means with “she only felt sorry yesterday because people got hurt”. Well... you’ll be clenching your cute butt at this.

He thought it would be a great idea to post this right after the Manchester Arena bombing. Yes, the one that happened at an Ariana’s concert.

Yep.

His “friends” on Facebook weren’t crazy about that decision either. Which of course made Russ even angrier:

didn’t compliment my suit

... people died, but she didn’t compliment his suit. I want an Uber to drive me into the fucking sun.

However!! Ultimately, Ariana saw this post and called Russ to apologise.

lol jk

Of course she didn’t: she hired a lawyer. Or someone on her team did. Ariana hasn’t given this man a second thought since she met him.

This lawyer, by the way, is the same one who defended Taylor Swift. Isn’t that marvellous? I imagine him very sexy, I don’t know why. I think I’ve seen a picture of him, and I know that I could easily look him up, but I don’t want to. I’m very attracted to the image I’ve built up in my mind. SHUT UP LET ME HAVE THIS.

Before we get into this trial, please let me tell you this cool thing: so I’m getting most of my information from Kiwi Farms, right? Russell’s thread has, at time of writing, 2600+ pages. Russell is to that community what TTB&co is to us. So obviously, the day of the trial was their Christmas Day. And someone from Utah actually said “I have the day off today, screw it, I deserve a treat” and went to witness the spectacle in person. And wrote it all down. An actual angel from heaven I’m telling you.

That’s the kind of community I hope we develop around here. I want to imagine that if TTB gets sued by Josh or whatever, whoever is closest will travel to the trial and take pictures. Or you know what? Fuck it, we will all travel and make a fan convention of it. We can compliment each other’s suits!

Anyway, back to the topic on hand. You can read the transcript but I’ll give you the tl;dr:

First of all, Russell is late. The judge and Sexy Lawyer both assume he isn’t showing up, and the judge even decides to dismiss the case. But then Russ shows up. He wrote the time wrong on his calendar, and he even tries to show the judge his phone to prove it.

The trial was a mess — a short mess, though. The judge makes such a nice effort to explain the law to Russ. Then he gives him an almost fatherly talk about how you can’t just post whatever toxic shit you like on Social Media. And I absolutely loved it, because this adorable boomer was trying really hard to connect with ~the youth~. My favourite part is the judge trying to describe emojis:

“How do you explain: seven days later, happy happy, emoticon people, what are those, teddy bears? I don’t know. Things.”

That’s me trying to speak The TikTok with the kidz.

... turns out dear Russ had posted on Facebook that “there will be blood!” at the trial. And also that he would kick Sexy Lawyer’s ass 🤷‍♀️. For all of this, Russell apologises — but also he says this:

“I wasn’t associating it with any threat whatsoever. I was saying something stupid. I was being troll-y. I have over 1000 followers on Facebook.”

*none of the screenshots are mine

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