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Current Doctor Who Warns Against Facebook
judgecorp writes "Matt Smith, the current actor playing Doctor Who, doesn't use Facebook or Twitter, despite his geek icon status. He worries that social media encourages us to create "surrogate versions" or "celebrity versions" of ourselves. He also, arguably, doesn't need their help, being a celebrity already. Smith made the comments in St Petersburg, where he hosted the final of Microsoft's Imagine Cup for student inventors, won this year by a British team with a mesh music-playing application."
Use it or don't. Plenty of celebrities fall on both sides of the fence. Some love their privacy. Some embrace the public light and social media for all it's worth. This doesn't need to be a slashdot post.
Creating a surrogate or celebrity version of oneself is precisely the point of Facebook. It is a version of the self that can be exchanged through a social medium with others. That "surrogate" self can be be cited, exalted, devalued, and circulated. It's "celebrity" for people who don't necessarily have access to major media channels and networks of people to promote a traditional media celebrity self.
Everyone's gonna get their 15 minutes.
The question, to my mind, is why Matt Smith believe this is any different than the media that have made a surrogate version of him.
blog
Or just, 'Matt Smith Warns Against Face Book'. We know who Matt Smith is.
I stopped watching Doctor Who after all of season 5 blew huge balls, and the first handful of episodes of season 6 (except, partially, the one written by Neil Gaiman) were even worse. Still, given they've in the past mercilessly made fun of stuff like people relying on their GPS, I would not have been at all surprised if Current Doctor Who had indeed warned against Facebook, which could have been amusing. But why should I care about the opinions of a random actor?
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of Facebook or Twitter either. I DO think they have their uses, such as Facebook finding old friends you lost touch with years ago and to be hang-outs for fans and clubs and whatever. And some Twitter feeds are quite useful, giving news or humorous anecdotes.
But yeh, I've seen what Matt Smith is talking about. People exaggerate how "into" something they are, yet I know them in real life and the cause / sport / whatever they claim to be so into.... they maybe spend one weekend a year doing.
And some twitter rants: they just forward something they heard on Twitter and feel it's the truth, when you dig past the onion layers and find out it's not. But, I read it on Twitter Umm, good for you? That doesn't make it true.
Thank you Captain Obvious.
That's Doctor Obvious.
You see, THAT annoys me.
Personally I stay off Facebook. I made some dummy account years back just because I was unsuccessfully try to find an old friend I'd lost touch with. It's still there gather dust, I have ZERO friends on it and no posts since the day it was created like 3 years ago.
I'm in IT and I know people that feel the same way, they don't want to bother with the fake socialization or post stuff out there linked to their real name for the whole world to see. I have 10 years of experience behind me and a Masters in Computer Science. If that's not enough to show I'm in the IT field then it's a sad state of the field that someone with 1 year of experience and a FaceBook account would get preference.
Funny - I tell prospective colleagues that my FB account is for my hobbies; if they would like to connect to me professionally they may send me an invitation on LinkedIn. On a related note, I also don't give out my personal cell phone number. If you want to get in touch with me, call my office phone and leave a message or send me an email, or send a text message to my office number.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Doctor who?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I know tons of geeks who eschew social media so I think it actually gives him geek cred.
I noticed that a ton of IT students at my college don't use Facebook. And it wasn't some hippie fine arts college or something with people bringing typewriters in to be ironic, it's a low cost public one. So I researched it and in the #1 most likely demographics to use Facebook, the least likely group within it is IT professionals. I have a feeling we're all on to something, as I don't use it either.
Believe it or not, some of us aren't liars and pretenders and actually try to always be ourselves. This is very hard for the liars to grasp.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Not everybody lies. It's what makes some of us 'socially'' awkward.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Emphasis mine. That's like saying someone doesn't smoke, despite being a doctor.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
In everyone else's defense, they've been terribly inconsistent about the "the Doctor" versus "Doctor Who" throughout the show's 50 years. There was an era when the license plate on a vehicle of the Doctor's was "WHO", and the credits have occasionally listed the actor as "Doctor Who" as opposed to "the Doctor". Then there was the overemphasis on the question mark throughout at least Peter Davison's and Colin Baker's years, and that might have extended into the Sylvester McCoy years, can't remember for certain.
In my opinion, the 1996 TV movie that everyone claims to abhor has a lot more in common with the modern show than it does with the original run. It's almost like we needed a scapegoat for the change to be accepted, like how the George Lazenby James Bond movie is less well received even though one could argue that it's a much more coherent story than many of the other movies...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Funny as it sounds, I read the title as "Doctor, who warns against Facebook" - so I read on thinking it was about an actual doctor warning against Facebook for some weird health reason. :)
So it should have sounded as "Current Doctor Who who warns..."
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Numerous studies have been done indicating that it's not just an alter-ego problem. Here is a fantastic post on the deeper issues. As with TV, there are addiction mechanisms build in to keep you doing it. Of course lets not mention altering your brain waves and making you less able to process information.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
yes back in the late 80's i owned a software company that wrote addons for a BBS system called the MajorBBS that was really one of the first true multi-user online systems available for the general public to own and deploy. the interesting thing was that, consistently, when sysops ran the numbers, online chat represented 85-95% of the use of these systems that allowed all sorts of other really cool things to do, in real-time, with other users.
the point of this is that facebook and twitter are really nothing more then personalized chat rooms, and looking back it isnt surprising at all that they represent the 800lb gorillas of the internet because, to be honest, it seems that all everyone really ever wanted to do online is chat (besides pr0n and "research" of course).
i think a facebook backlash is inevitable, like everyone hating nickleback or david guetta...i stopped using it except to get a hold of my kids about a year ago, and i enjoy letting people know i think its a total waste of time...now if i was younger i could see a lot more useful uses for it, like hooking up...but im sure Matt Smith isnt hurting along those lines.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
I'm not a Doctor Who fan, and when I first heard "The Doctor", I thought of the holographic Doctor on Star Trek Voyager.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
That's too bad. I purposefully do not link my Facebook account with anyone at work (anyone at all). I have to work with these guys. Finding out they're racist assholes makes it a bit harder to deal with them without having to think about their personal beliefs.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
For they do not wish company.
The tinfoil is strong with this one.
Sylvester McCoy's umbrella had a question mark incorporated into the design of its handle.
The phrase "Doctor who?" and similar ones have appeared as a running joke throughout the run of the series, including a "Doctor Whoever-you-are" from Tegan when she first met the Doctor in "Logopolis." The only time the Doctor has actually been referred to as "Doctor Who" in the series was in a First Doctor story, "The War Machines" (1966); this is acknowledged as a mistake. The title of the series comes from the first story, in which hapless humans Ian and Barbara assume his name is Dr. Foreman (not too outlandish an assumption, as their student Susan Foreman calls him her grandfather) and he responds, "Doctor who?" Recent episodes, leading up to the 50th anniversary special, make much of the fact that we do not know the Doctor's real name, making the question "Doctor who?" part of the actual storyline.
There were two Doctor Who movies in the 1960s, starring Peter Cushing as a character who is actually called "Doctor Who," but they are considered non-canon.