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Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

theguardian.com

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Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#141

Post by tlrobinson »

gowld wrote: post #138
RIMR wrote: post #79

I am always amazed by how many people get into this "Beat the system and make tons of money" mindset. If there's anything that has proven itself time and time again, it's that people who seek immediate wealth, and who fantasize about their "million dollar idea", are absolutely not the kinds of people who become successful and wealthy. The people who become devoted to a field or a technology - who make the business th…

Your comment is hosted on ycombinator.com, an enterprise founded with the specific goal: "Beat the system and make tons of money". The only distinction is the "immediate" part.

Y Combinator's motto is literally "Make something people want."

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#142

Post by JohnStudio »

gowld wrote: post #138
RIMR wrote: post #79

I am always amazed by how many people get into this "Beat the system and make tons of money" mindset. If there's anything that has proven itself time and time again, it's that people who seek immediate wealth, and who fantasize about their "million dollar idea", are absolutely not the kinds of people who become successful and wealthy. The people who become devoted to a field or a technology - who make the business th…

Your comment is hosted on ycombinator.com, an enterprise founded with the specific goal: "Beat the system and make tons of money". The only distinction is the "immediate" part.

Ya, that's the irony I find in that. I thought I was the only one not drinking the kool-aid here from the outside in view.

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#143

Post by [deleted] »

david927 wrote: post #134
neaden wrote: post #4

One thing I've been struck by with movies and films like the Wolf of Wall Street, the film Wall Street, Fight Club, or even the Great Gatsby is how many people end up coming away with the exact opposite message of the movie. They end up idolizing the vapid, shallow lifestyle that the movie is critiquing, because even though the film is critiquing that it can't help but also make it glamorous. Michael Douglas has said…

I remember in Marketing class they taught us about "Herb the Nerd". In the 1980's Burger King was expanding and as part of this came a big advertising campaign centered around a nerdy-looking guy called Herb, who was the only person who hadn't been to a Burger King. If you could spot him in a Burger King restaurant, you could win money. It was a colossal failure , and instead of increasing customer volume, ended up h…

[deleted]

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#144

Post by 794CD01 »

LandR wrote: post #140
watwut wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have also to do with how movies are made usually. If you really think about it, most detectives in detective stories abuse power and do things that cops really really should not. But, we are supposed to suspend reality and root for them. Same with action movies - main character does a lot of damage to everyone around, steal cars, hurt innocent people and we are supposed to ignore that. Happy end involves m…

To your point its possible to make movies differently, there is a game called spec ops that is very subversive of the military shooter genre. Where other games want you to feel cool shooting and killing people spec ops constantly wants you to feel bad about your actions, at one point asking "do you feel like a hero yet? " Very good game.

People like the idea of it when they read about it online, but it sold poorly and the few people who played it didn't enjoy it.

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#145

Post by Bartweiss »

gowld wrote: post #5
neaden wrote: post #4

One thing I've been struck by with movies and films like the Wolf of Wall Street, the film Wall Street, Fight Club, or even the Great Gatsby is how many people end up coming away with the exact opposite message of the movie. They end up idolizing the vapid, shallow lifestyle that the movie is critiquing, because even though the film is critiquing that it can't help but also make it glamorous. Michael Douglas has said…

Fight Club gets a lot of retroactive flak now that people know how they were "supposed" to read it. The book was a dramatization of the way young men feel about life. If the author and book had any valid insight, then of course young men would identify with the "bad" lifestyle in the movie, and not suddenly turn into old men while watching the movie. The movie is entirely showing the fantasy from the "vapid" perspect…

> If the author and book had any valid insight, then of course young men would identify with the "bad" lifestyle in the movie

Nicely put. I don't really understand how the negative ending of Fight Club is supposed to stop people from identifying with it; it's not as though it shows another happier path people with the same sentiments ought to endorse.

"If you feel this way and commit to it completely, things will go wrong for you" is totally compatible with "many people feel this way", and if the movie wasn't relatable it's not clear to me how it would have anything useful to say.

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#146

Post by bartread »

lkrubner wrote: post #106
smacktoward wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because film is a visual medium, and in these movies the protagonist always looks cool . He may be doing terrible things, but he's wearing hip clothes and driving a gorgeous car while he does them. The visual language is all screaming "this guy's great!", and it ends up overwhelming the message the story is trying to tell. If you want to know what most people will think of a character in a movie, watch the movie…

I don't know if it's a matter of the protagonist looking cool. When Breaking Bad was on the air, I had a surprising number of friends who identified with Walter White. He did not look cool, he did not act cool, and the writers of the show did everything in their power to communicate "This man is a moral monster and a horror of a human being." Yet some people that I otherwise respected still identified with him. They…

The interesting realisation for me about Walter White came when I started watching the season through for a second time.

But first... SPOILER ALERT!

I mean the first time around I had some sympathy for the guy - he was a disappointed and somewhat embittered middle aged man still trying to do his best to support his family, and then he's given this crappy cancer diagnosis. I felt bad for him. Fair to say that by the time he just lets Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, choke to death on her own vomit whilst unconscious I'd entirely lost that and felt nothing but loathing for the character (which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the show, or think he was a great character).

But what I realised on revisiting the show a couple of years later is that Walter White didn't break bad. He was bad from the very beginning. I mean look at the way he interacts with people in the early episodes of season 1: he's largely an asshole. The only thing that changes is that, initially because he's driven to, he becomes much more comfortable with manifesting his assholery overtly.

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#147

Post by dhimes »

lkrubner wrote: post #106
smacktoward wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because film is a visual medium, and in these movies the protagonist always looks cool . He may be doing terrible things, but he's wearing hip clothes and driving a gorgeous car while he does them. The visual language is all screaming "this guy's great!", and it ends up overwhelming the message the story is trying to tell. If you want to know what most people will think of a character in a movie, watch the movie…

I don't know if it's a matter of the protagonist looking cool. When Breaking Bad was on the air, I had a surprising number of friends who identified with Walter White. He did not look cool, he did not act cool, and the writers of the show did everything in their power to communicate "This man is a moral monster and a horror of a human being." Yet some people that I otherwise respected still identified with him. They…

Oh that really depends on which season. The brilliance of that story was how he evolved into the moral monster from someone who was morally unassailable. Could it happen to you? To me? What are our limits, and where is the tipping point of no return once we start down the path?

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#148

Post by Bartweiss »

gowld wrote: post #50
simonsarris wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always perplexed me. With Mad Men and Breaking Bad too, people idolized the main characters, which is interesting not only because they are bad people but because they are deeply unhappy, too. There's something extremely surface-level about people's takeaways from film characters. They want a certain level of panache that the characters can muster, but they ignore that even the characters themselves are miserabl…

Were Draper and White unhappy because of their actions in the shows, or where they already unhappy and their actions in the show were them making the best of it? They both had a tragic backstory (child abuse, cancer) before the show started. Maybe other hurting people identify: Better to be a drug kingpin than just waste away into nothingness.

> Maybe other hurting people identify: Better to be a drug kingpin than just waste away into nothingness.

It seems like this is an obvious read, right up until I see people mystified by these shows. "Better to be hated than pitied" is a simple enough sentiment, and if it comes alongside direction and certainty than all the better - even the certainty of having no way out.

Most people don't actually do that, thank god, because they have consciences. But it's simple enough to understand "I want to just commit to something, anything, and stop feeling empty" as a principle. Hell, Jim Profit literally slept in a cardboard box every night and people wanted to be him.

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#149

Post by jiveturkey »

tlrobinson wrote: post #141
gowld wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is hosted on ycombinator.com, an enterprise founded with the specific goal: "Beat the system and make tons of money". The only distinction is the "immediate" part.

Y Combinator's motto is literally "Make something people want."

isn’t there an implied, “in order to generate revenue”?

Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram

#150

Post by bartread »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #61
smacktoward wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because film is a visual medium, and in these movies the protagonist always looks cool . He may be doing terrible things, but he's wearing hip clothes and driving a gorgeous car while he does them. The visual language is all screaming "this guy's great!", and it ends up overwhelming the message the story is trying to tell. If you want to know what most people will think of a character in a movie, watch the movie…

I don't think it's just the visual element. I mean Scarface looks pretty terrible by the end of the movie, and people idolize him. I suspect it's more that stories are now told purely for short-term entertainment value. We don't focus on the substance of the story or the moral, we focus on the kind of clips that end up in a trailer. You see similar trends in popular literature too.

Yeah, I've always found idolising scarface a little strange. Likewise, I find it odd when people go around wearing t-shirts with Che Guevara's face on them: I mean, the guy's allegedly a mass murderer. Kind of an odd hero to pick, right?
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