Thoughts on the perception of public figures
I was watching this clip of The Daily Show where Desi Lydic highlights the change in how Dr. Oz has been portrayed over the years, and it got me thinking about the perception of public figures over time.
I remember watching CBS Sunday Morning segment in 1998 where Elon Musk was painted in a fairly good light as a sort of rebel taking on Microsoft. This was around the time that Microsoft was seen in a pretty bad light for the Internet Explorer anti-trust case.
Musk as he appears in the media I consume today is almost unrecognizable from the 1998 segment.
I also recall a time when Rudy Giuliani was seen in a good light (disclosure: I'm mostly going off of my memory of how he was perceived by the nation as Mayor of New York. I never lived in or near New York, so I can't really speak to how he was perceived locally).
I'm sure I could come up with other examples if I thought about it some more.
All of this has me pondering the nature of my own perception. I don't know any of these people personally, so I rely on what I see online and in the news to guide my image of who these people are. But when I see this stark contrast it makes me wonder what is real.
Did these figures change over time, perhaps corrupted by power and/or fame?
Have they always been this way, and I'm just seeing the media paint them differently over time?
Are they just in a Harvey Dent / Batman "live long enough to become the villain" situation?
Maybe all of the above?
I also think about this in context of aging. My views on the world have definitely changed over time. I think I've mostly grown in a positive way as a person. But I've also seen my own parents change their views and become disturbingly conservative. It worries me that I may also have a regression as I age. They are still mostly the same loving parents I grew up with. The only real obvious cause of their shift in views is the media they consume.
So I'm curious to hear other points of view on this phenomenon.
Musk and Giuliani are pretty easy examples of "the people who knew them or paid attention, knew they were assholes". I was the "evil republican" for thinking Musk was an asshole early in his career and now i'm the "evil democrat" for thinking the same (despite having to give him some legit credit for things like space X).
In essence most of these things encourage certain personality types, and people often just focus on successes until it matters to them. There really aren't many people in any serious position of power who would be liked by the average person under the level of attention we provide now (because the daily soap opera has become politics)
I think Musk and Guliani are particularly vile even among the selfishness parade that makes up these people, but the vast majority are unpleasant
Edit:
And I will say there's this unfortunate naivete that only good people should be successful. Steve Jobs was a unrepentant asshole (and idiot in many ways) but also undeniably brilliant in specific areas. He both succeeded because of who he was, and in spite of who he was.
History is full of this, and people aren't monoliths. They can be abhorrent shitheads on specific issues but still good or generous on others. We're so often now looking for fairytail success stories that just don't track.
I don't disagree with any of your points.
I do think there is a certain necessity to apply some sort of averaging function to the perception of famous people in order to process everything. We're all exposed to so much information on a daily basis that it feels pretty impossible to also maintain a multifaceted view of every celebrity.
I'd like to comment about Steve Jobs in particular. These are the things that made him successful, probably in this order:
I think most highly successful people are sociopaths. I've had a boss like this. He would take big risks and never showed any doubts and never cared who was harmed in the process. He also had a narcissism / superiority where he assumed he was the smartest person in the room at all times. I think this is the "reality distortion field" that Steve Jobs had. He was an authoritarian, and a lot of people are authoritarian followers. A lot of other people who maybe aren't authoritarian followers but lack self confidence will follow someone who just seems really confident.
Then I think early successes create a snowball effect where they have more followers to move to the next level.
There are a lot of people with all of the personality traits above except luck or talent. They fail and we never hear about them. So some kind of talent is needed I think, but maybe it just has to be a basic competence.
The internet pretty much changed everything in terms of perception.
A decade ago, the news media determined which scandals were news worthy. Public opinions on scandals were also shaped by traditional media narratives. Public figures resigned because of the relentless focus of reporters. The assumption was, that if the reporters didn't forget, the public wouldn't forget.
The internet changed our perception of public figures. It allowed us to learn about any scandal, no matter how news worthy. The internet also changed how public figures perceive the public. We've seen, real time, how effective simply denying a scandal really is.
The internet also changed the reporters focus. They can no longer afford to drive the narrative, they have to hop on the next scandal to get those juicy clicks and ad impressions.
Musk started tweeting controversial tweets in 2018, around the same time Trump demonstrated how effective controversial tweets were, and how ineffective the traditional media was in combating them.
The internet also allowed us to choose our perception.
Conservatives love Musk. I would bet that most conservatives are barely aware of some of the controversies surrounding Musk.
So some public figures, like Musk, have changed how they behave. Generally however, people don't change. Musk hasn't changed the way he runs his business. So chances are, Musk hasn't fundamentally changed, and simply put, Musk was like that all along.
Sometimes it is the publics perception that has changed. In 9/11, everyone loved Bush. Eight years later, Bush didn't change, just our perception of him changed.
So I would argue that no one has really changed, simply that our perception of public figures have changed, and their perception of the public has changed the way they act.
Not everyone. Many people opposed the war, NCLB, tax cuts, mass surveillance, privatization and other things his administration did. My family absolutely despised Bush, and I grew up knowing I would never entertain voting for a Republican.
The trouble is, there was a lot of rabid jingoism at the time. Sure, you'd had some people out picketing over the war for awhile, but in day to day life, people could be fucking nasty if you let on that you weren't a braindead military-worshipping sheep.
I remember people acting weird about haircuts, even...you could absolutely get (unusual but existing) pointed questions about being a "hippie or homo" if you weren't onboard the military buzz cut trend. (Which I have a deep loathing for because of that association.)
Many people who wanted Bush to be taken to The Hague weren't open about it in public.
Oh yeah, I protested against the Iraq invasion. But immediately after 9/11 he was extremely popular. Not according to me. According to polls.
Are you saying that, if you didn't have a buzz cut in the years following 9/11, you would be called out?
I was a rural teenager then, and while the country was definitely very hoorah, I can't imagine folks being called out for not having the right haircut.
I remember everything getting jingoistic as fuck, but iirc short cuts were already popular on guys, but no one who wasn't already doing a buzz started. I was in college when the Iraq war itself started and same thing though in a much bigger city.
Not that there weren't buzz cuts beforehand, but I have zero recollection of the guys going military aesthetic or being harassed for it.
Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but I don't think it was widespread. Maybe in military family communities?
Yep. I remember it happening not long after the war started. I was fairly young though. Some random person at a gas station definitely picked an argument with my mom about it once because my brothers and I didn't have short hair.
It wasn't a large city, but it wasn't a rural area either.
Oh ok, some random dude having issues with boys with longer hair doesn't shock me, that was going on my whole life, in media too.
There was a real anti-hippie attitude carried over from the 70s in media and then boys haircuts were longer (in the front/top) during the 90s - I'm thinking of home improvement and JTT - and there were similar complaints then. Doesn't surprise me a random guy had opinions.
Idk I bounced between the "gender neutral child haircut" and long hair as a kid. So I didnt have (those) issues as a girl
In this context, I often think about the Dean Scream. Especially because it was essentially a manufactured event. The scream picked up differently on the mic and made him sound crazy, but in the loud room, it was totally normal. It went viral and tanked his political career.
I think about the Dean Scream a lot. It's wild to think about how much Trump gets away with and then consider that Howard Dean was undone by a simple scream.
I consider myself liberal and I wasn't aware of a lot of things until maybe 5-6 years ago. I think a lot of that was shaped by the perception that the news imposed on me when I was relatively young (I was in high school when Musk was first arriving on the scene). It took me a long time to look past those old memories and find the alternate narrative. It's something that weighs on me as I guide my own kids into adulthood. How do I teach them when to dig deeper and challenge assumptions? How do I teach them to protect themselves from burnout and despair in the process? It's doubly hard because I have for sure not mastered these concepts yet.
1000 times this. If you crack it, please share with the rest of us. :)
My daughter was very disappointed because she was excited for our first woman president, but it doesn't weigh on her day to day, probably because we don't discuss the scary stiff in front of her. Sometimes I wonder if we should. But if we're powerless to do something about it, how much more powerless is she?
She's on a team at school learning about women's rights for her participation in MMUN, so I'm hoping that will be a gentler, or at least self-guided, awakening. Last night at the grocery store, she asked if I knew that it took 150 years for women to be able to vote in America!
I'm pretty much at the point where I would strongly prefer everyone who isn't already in politics to just never, ever talk about politics. If they have any kind of public profile, shut up. And I don't go looking either. I'm just so tired of finding out stuff I didn't want to know about someone and ruining what used to be a very simple virtual 'transaction.'
Now in business and that kind of thing, no. Politics plays a role. Not so much, except on a local level, with Joe's Landscaping. But when it's Microsoft or someone huge (including their key execs and so on), yeah they do impact politics. They're gonna talk politics, because politics affects their money.
When billions of dollars of revenue is flowing, even the most minor changes in laws or taxes will have vast impacts, which is why they spend so much lobbying. The execs who approve the lobbying are impacted too, because they're raking in tens of (sometimes hundreds of) millions of dollars a year so they care too and of course are gonna run around talking.
Because they're rich assholes, I never agree with them. I hate 'em. They deserve to be hated. They're greedy shitheads, mostly know it, and mostly don't care because they're freaking rich. Why would they care? They move and shake in the halls of power, walk into the best seats at any house in the world whenever they want, and live like kings. Of course they don't care. So I try to just ignore them because until the revolution comes that's pretty much as good as it'll get for me.
I'm used to ignoring them. Everyone else though, I don't care and honestly I just don't want to know. It'll just ruin things.
Like, for example, there's a guy on Youtube I watch. Does a lot of guy stuff. Builds, rural, outdoor hobbies, you get the idea. The stereotype is he's probably a conservative. But never, ever, does he even hint at political stuff. Not obliquely, not third or even fourth hand. Nada. The worst he's ever gotten at any point in anything I've watched is he gets a little upset, frustrated, with the local bureaucracy around zoning regulations sometimes.
If he is conservative, I don't want to know. I really don't. I enjoy watching what he shares online. I just want to go on enjoying that stuff. He builds and everything, it's fun to watch and think about. Relaxing. It'd just ruin it all if he started dropping opinions in. Why screw things up?
Same for actors really. There are a few actors, over the years, who I used to like who have ... taken turns. I'm not naming names, because then all anyone's going to do is want to debate and argue over what they may or may not have done, why it is or isn't worthy of canceling, that sort of thing. Not the point.
What is the point is they injected opinions into their public profiles.
The hypocritical aspect of this on my part, on really everyone's part if they'd be honest, is I wouldn't mind if they shared opinions I agree with. The issue is when we don't agree. That's what I'm afraid of. That's what has ruined things in the past.
I'd rather not know. Let me keep watching their movies, their shows. Listening to their music.
Just keep it professional. Voting is supposed to be anonymous. For a reason. This is one of them. If they want to be a raging asshole, by my perspective, in the voting booth ... that's their right. If they keep it to themselves, and show up on set and do the job of entertaining me when the camera's rolling ... let's both just enjoy that little moment of consensus.
There's so much chaos and pain in the world. I can't do constant rabble-rabble-rabble. I don't have the charisma to affect others, so I see it as a waste of time. If the revolution came, I'm a foot soldier, not a leader, because no one's gonna follow me. They follow charisma and that ain't me. I'm always looking for, hoping for, the moments of change. If and when they show, I very much want to get out and push.
I just want my fun to keep me from dwelling on the dark times for the rebellion. Empire is a fantastic movie, and some of that darkness is why. But it's like Cameron wrote in Strange Days.
Sometimes you just need to be able to turn the movie on, and then off. Sometimes that's enough to keep you going.