3by9

The One Trick Pony With No Tricks

The web is a place where false dreams tend to take a hold of you and turn them into reality. In 1950 (sorry I went with a period a long time ago for dramatic effect) if you started a business and nobody showed up with the exception of a couple of people you know you failed. If you wanted to be an entertainer and only a handful of people showed up at your show week in and week out you would consider another alternative.

The web however has a different way of treating these events. Get a couple people to watch your video then maybe you can get a couple more. Not getting enough people, then that means you aren’t spamming enough sites. You know you are entertaining and that people want to see more of you, maybe if you just found your niche crowd things would be different. Let’s try the so called echo chamber.

Now the echo chamber can encompass a lot of different groups, but for the sake of this entry let us go with the sites that compromise the majority of news over at Techmeme. So you found your crowd and you know if you make it big with them then you will become popular. You look around at the videos that they do and Scoble seems to be the most famous man in the video scene. That simply means you have to go against him and what better way to do that than do the complete opposite. His stuff is for PBS, your stuff will be VH-1.

You’re a tough guy and maybe you already have some history with these people. Maybe they didn’t respect you like you felt they should have and you know this crowd isn’t violent. They won’t threaten to beat your ass like they might out there on the streets. You can basically do whatever you want and either you fail or succeed with no real consequences because this is just one set of people in the big scheme of things. You figure it would be best to parody one of the talking heads in the echo chamber. Be the kid in the back of the class that clowns the teacher all the time, that sort of deal.

Working with limited resources and no real motivation to make a full production you figure that a puppet and web cam will work just fine. You do your parody and the reaction is mixed as it should be. People love that something different has come out from the echo chamber so they support it. Others hate it because it is something different and doing a parody of real people that they might be involved with isn’t that cool.

Those are just haters though. You have learned to feed off of them. If they hate you as much as they do that must mean you are doing something right. Besides, look at all the people who love what you are doing. You need more exposure though and you see one guy runs the show. For some reason everyone tends to bend over backwards for this guy no matter how big of an asshole he can be. You’ve made fun of him in the past because you didn’t need him, but you see that you can use him as a resource. Friendship? Save that for the suckers, you know to make it to the top you need to use people just like everyone else.

You realize this guy isn’t as cool as you. In fact he is a bit socially awkward. You show him that he tool can have charisma and let him in on things. He bullies one way you bully another. The partnership just makes sense. People see that you partnered with him and although they don’t like it and probably hate both of you secretly, they would be foolish to go against you so they align with you. Parody me! Parody me! they say. The way they see it, you can either be tied to the tracks or riding the train.

There can never be one side to any situation though. There are the people who side with the big dogs and there are those who wonder why the big dogs are even in place. You are one of the big dogs now though because everyone is talking about you. You knew you could make it. What was the point of you treating people with respect all those years? What was the point in you actually giving a damn and trying to make something wonderful? All you had to do is throw in some jokes and pick the right people and you made it to the top. But you really don’t need these people, you want bigger and better things. This small bit of exposure from the echo chamber has shown you that you were meant to be famous, you were meant for bigger and better things.

Some deals come in, many people wonder how you were able to pull them off. Some question what the companies are even thinking, but you know better. You have the audience’s attention and these companies can appreciate that. You expected the news of these partnerships to be bigger though because in your head they’re huge. Whatever, it doesn’t matter you are about to make another trip around the bases after smashing a homerun. But something goes wrong, one deal sputters. No biggie, you have two of them.

You call off your parody and play it as if you were proving a point. Like you were the big man, the genius of the world. Let this be a lesson to all, don’t fuck with you because you know how to do things. You are the bigger man because you hung it up, not the other person. You let yourself know how proud you are of what you have accomplished. It’s not easy to knock out a sleeping man, but you did it.

But again, something isn’t right. The new deal with the big communications company that would show your content to the world has disappeared. It seems people outside the echo chamber didn’t appreciate some of your work. They didn’t react like the echo chamber haters did, no these people said they would take action. So what does the communications company do? They should have stuck by you if they knew real talent when they see it, but they folded. All because they didn’t want their brand associated with such a thing. You mean companies have to watch out for themselves. You don’t need backstabbers like that in your life. You know that in this life either you are holding the knife in your hand or in your back and you are glad it’s always in your hand.

So what, bigger deals will come down the road. You still have your echo chamber. You still have your insecure, buddy kingpin to rely on. Now you just need another target to mess with to keep the cycle going. People love it when you do the same stuff over and over again, it works for porn, it can work for you. Anybody that wants to write a blog entry hating on you is only doing so because they can’t have what you have. They aren’t willing to sacrifice the friendships and respect of people to get where you are so they don’t deserve the position. They aren’t as talented as you. They don’t have your vision so let them hate. They can’t even make it big in the echo chamber. Scrubs.

The thing is I don’t think anyone should hate on anybody else for having the drive to succeed. You have to respect that drive. When people lose respect it usually is because what they sacrificed to achieve that success. Sacrificing going out every night with friends is one thing, sacrificing those friends is another. If you can’t respect the person for who they are and what they stand for, it will always be hard to respect what they have achieved. Call them haters if you want or you can just call them the people who make or break a career.