Self Dealing: The New Social Media-ites Self Obsession July 26
Kelly Killoren Bensimon at Opening Day of the 2010 Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge at Blue Star Jets Field
Social Media-ites, please do keep in mind that it’s not really “journalism” if you are in essence covering yourself. In that case it’s called “self promotion”, “self dealing” or serving as your own publicist.
There is nothing wrong with infusing yourself and your brand into a story. These are after all strange and unusual times. Many are hurting and can use a little brand extension, but then if that case let someone else write about it and photograph it. For when you masturbate unless someone else’s hand, mouth or even feet are involved than no matter how you slice or dice it, it’s truly nothing more than an exhibition of self love. Capische?
On Saturday afternoon, July 24th as my brother drove the two of us out to the East End of Long Island to cover events for the MacDella Cooper Foundation and The Watermill Center’s 17th Annual Benefit: Paradiso my email rant via blackberry to a select friends list ended up on Scallywag & Vagabond. I was almost going to ask the publisher Christopher Koulouris to pull it down as I suspect it would not make me many friends, although what else is new right? But then after arriving at Mercedes Benz Polo Challenge, taking photos of many of the guests of import, I found it nearly impossible to get a clean photo of Kelly Killoren Bensimon from The Real Houswives of New York City who was also the July 4th cover model for Social Life Magazine, for which I write the Society column. You see Kelly Bensimon was too busy taking photos of and videoing herself on her own iphone while her team was also videoing her, to accomodate photographers who wanted to take her photo. On a blistering Saturday afternoon in the heat, the last thing I needed to do was get in the way of Kelly’s self love at Two Trees Farms in Bridgehampton.
Truth told when this old man first leveled a critique at GuestofaGuest for its practice and promotion of self love, many dealers critiqued me for raining on their parade dismissing me as envious of the success of the Gen Y Social Networking site which has since, not surprisingly, given the history of their financial backers, morphed into Facebook Lite. Generation Y’s self absorption seemingly knows no bounds and has made them drunk with indifference, hooked on bad art/culture and thus the ideal consumers of the culture of distraction. While the country has gone to hell in a proverbial hand basket our best and brightest are consumed with everything Lohan, Hilton, Gaga, Kardashian et al etc.—wondering how they can in essence be like them and similarly cash in. Example of the culture of the social retard is no better exemplified than Micah Jesse and his following band of twit-idiots who represent nothing of character, substance or lasting value in our society other than I am here, I want to be famous and will stand next to be people who are famous and have my photo taken with them. By comparison, American Porntrepreneur, Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild almost seem to have redeeming societal value, even if merely attending one of Joe’s gatherings, in some states serves as a woman’s implied consent to be sexually molested, turning her into a veritable Samantha from Sex & The City or just another Christine Saunders.
While the social whales referenced above search for the right price for their barren hustle, even famed game show host Bob Barker knows that The Price is Right when he donated $5 Million to the Sea Shepherd’s whale rescue missions. Maybe if more of us were saving those whales, we could allow the Japanese to harpoon some of the social whales referenced above and rid our society of the social blubber, rather than the endangered species that they continue to hunt with abandon, and save the cause of humanity in the process.
Where prior generations asked questions about the state and future of humanity, this one doesn’t bother cause its too phucking busy looking at itself in the mirror, taking pictures of itself and jacking off on Facebook. In America at the present time there is no Beat Generation to question whether society sucks, just one over run with narcissists beating off to their 15 Minutes of fame and hoping to turn that famegame into the cause of a lifetime. The tools of the trade for the new Social Journalist are a mirror and a camera aimed in their direction at all times. Critique of these folks can even potentially make one persona non grata at events where these exhibitionists are on display and allowed, if not encouraged to document and exhibit themselves with your event as their backdrop.