Slashdot Mirror
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.
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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.
Doctor who?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.