The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Lose faith in society: Paris for President
Bill Gate$
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Fapi7rbg_qg
At first I thought, maybe this video is a joke, but sadly it isn't. Our consumerist lifestyle, people's stupidity, commercialism, fake beauty...just everything that is so pathetic and wrong with society, is all summed up in this video. This song is horrible, offensive and just plain fucking garbage, but it will sell millions none the less.
At first I thought, maybe this video is a joke, but sadly it isn't. Our consumerist lifestyle, people's stupidity, commercialism, fake beauty...just everything that is so pathetic and wrong with society, is all summed up in this video. This song is horrible, offensive and just plain fucking garbage, but it will sell millions none the less.
Love is Patient.
Bill Gate$ on
0
Posts
Err, Paris Hilton's first album didn't sell millions.
Personally, I think it's a mistake to paint Paris Hilton as representative of the current zeitgeist. Paris Hilton isn't popular; she's just famous. The distinction is that most people don't like her, and the majority of us certainly don't celebrate her values. Instead, she's earned her notoriety by presenting herself as a subject of ridicule and disdain, which makes her less like Marilyn Monroe and more like a geek in a carnival sideshow.
Unaccomplished and dangerously vapid celebrities aren't symbols of the direction this country is taking. They're just the modern equivalent of freaks.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
there are hordes of young women who love her, who when asked - and i have seen this, en masse, in crowds of adoring fans when horrible shows like ET are on - who when asked why they like Paris will reply "she's so original, she's so beautiful, she's who i want to be, she's independent and brave and" etc.
it is a bizarre phenomenon, but it's basically idolizing. they want to be her, so they love her. they even attribute qualities to her that they desire, because she represents what they want to be - wealthy, famous, "beautiful," etc - since their dreams have been constructed by a society that worships celebrity as an idea. she isn't independent or original, but they value these words as totems without considering what they actually mean, and so they attach them to their idol.
Wow, a group of people on a television show dedicated to people like Paris Hilton are big fans of Paris Hilton, and somehow that's proof of widespread approval?
Look at her album sales. 180,000 in North America is dismal for someone with her notoriety,
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I can't watch the video here at work, so my opinion may change later, but I'm personally more saddened by the fact that we have someone with the handle "Bill Gate$" here than I am by the thought of someone voting for Paris Hilton.
i was presenting the tv show as evidence of the exact words, not of her popularity itself.
she is not enormously popular but she is popular. i don't think her vapidity is representative, but the nature of her fame and the pure celebrity worship that constitutes it is representative of our culture.
Again, I think the her fame is built upon the mockery and hatred people direct at her rather than any kind of misguided adulation young people may throw her way. After all, she's never had a successful creative venture apart from the Simple Life, which was edited and written specifically to make her look bad. Furthermore, news coverage of her is overwhelming negative, seldom straying from the sort of sentiments you yourself express in this very thread.
Are jokes at her expense and the title of pop culture Anti-Christ really worship, in your book?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I think you're right, especially lately; the worm has turned, and she might very well be more unpopular than she is popular.
But there was a time when she was popular, and there are still people who do celebrity-worship her. The fact that her popularity is in decline doesn't mean there has been a significant shift in the way our culture of celebrity works, it just means people have gotten bored. The ones who did worship her have turned to another idol.
She's been a calculated caricature of the privileged, intellectually dead socialite from the very beginning. She's never been presented as someone who deserves praise, much less basic respect.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Probably.
Are you suggesting that she was only ever unpopular? That she is on magazine covers and tv shows and in movies, that she has various product lines and fan clubs etc, because everyone hates her? That doesn't really make sense.
Yes, that is what I'm suggesting. If the majority of people hate you and a small subset like you, then you have the makings of a career. Both parties serve to keep you in the press and help you maintain your status as someone who can sell magazines or sustain a cheap reality tv show, and the latter group gives product lines a small enough boost in product sales to make it worth attaching the Paris Hilton name to them as opposed to simply trying to sell them under a zero recognition branding.
My friend runs a celebrity gossip blog, and I myself used to write for it and another site. 99% of the readership for these things loathe Paris Hilton, but nonetheless will read anything about her simply because loathing is an invigorating, affirming feeling. You yourself experienced it when you wrote the OP, I'm sure. After all, when you point to a single person and her supposed legions of fans as what's wrong with America, you're implicitly placing yourself above that person and everyone who approves of her behavior.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
And by talking about her, all you are doing is feeding that fortune.
Henceforth we will call her She Who Must Not Be Named in order to diminish our own meager contribution to her ever-inflating fortune.
Also, while I have no doubt that she's smarter than she appears, I think her financial success probably has more to do with the various people she pays to manage her affairs than any heretofore unsuspected talent for business. That said, her skill for self-promotion, even if it's rooted in her continued degradation, is undeniable.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I didn't write the OP.
I think that, without hard numbers, you can't really make the claim that the portion of people who did like or do like Paris Hilton is insignificant.
I'm not really sure what the point of this discussion is, but what I am concerned about is not Paris Hilton herself but the fact that a person like her, a pure celebrity, can be popular in any meaningful sense of the word, at any time, to any group of people that could be labeled a "demographic." She's not the problem, and it's certainly not the core of "what's wrong with America," but celebrity worship itself is a bizarre and fascinating problem, and she is an example of it.
Apparently she has a 15% approval rating according to a Washington Post poll, which is lower than Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, and Dick Cheney. I wouldn't consider that worship.
And sorry about mistaking you for the OP.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
G. W. Bush probably has her beat, though.
Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape,
But tonight, it's heavy stuff.
^ Took the words right out of my brain.
IIRC, Conrad Hilton decided that none of his heirs would get to be idle rich, and established a charitable foundation sometime around the 1950s where the bulk of his fortune went when he died. So while I'm sure being a Hilton made it much easier for her to become rich than if I tried, whatever millions she has she made herself.
*I'm recalling this from HS AP History, so some of the fine details may be wrong.
She still made her millions based off of existing millions. Imagine the following experiment:
Take a bunch of random people. Give them an interest-free loan of ten million dollars, repayable in total after ten years. How many of them do you think would be able to take that money and set up successful, self-sustaining business ventures in that time? I'd say most of them.
That is remarkable, and hilarious.
I'm wondering whether it was higher earlier in her "career," and if not, then I must admit she is almost entirely a hate-engine, powered by the disgust and contempt of the population, a sort of living shard of resentment vaguely associated with class conflict. In fact it would be a strange inversion of normal celebrity-worship.
It wasn't as clear when she first stepped on the scene but it's pretty clear now that she has created a persona deliberately and strategically for its marketability, and she pokes fun at herself a whole hell of a lot these days.
She's managing a brand. There's nothing really heinous about it.
Once I stopped being an angry, clinically depressed, Nietzsche-reading high school sophomore I kind of lost my ability to be outraged at paris hilton
Seriously? I was under the impression that it was rather difficult to set up a successful, self-sustaining business.
It sort of just came off as some pretty okay satire to me.
The song wasn't very good to listen to though.
Anyways, I come to the opposite conclusion and say most of them would blow it on luxuries and cool stuff instead. What was that income number again, something like $100 million a year? It takes work to make that kind of money. You can't just take a little petty cash from daddy, hire a publicist, and just watch the profits roll in.
I don't particularly like Paris Hilton, but I refuse to denigrate someone just for having money, especially when for all appearances they seem to have invested quite a bit of effort into getting it.
If I could do what she did I would.
Yeah. If you don't have $Texas. Now grant yourself millions of dollars to hire advisors, consultants, and an excellent labor force. Spend money on the research to figure out how best to leverage your talents.
In Paris's case, that worked out to "Okay, I'm famous and have an extravagent lifestyle. People are unashamed fucking voyeurs. How can I use that to my advantage?"
The point where I realized she had bluffed us all was when that first anti-McCain satire came out. I know she didn't write it, but suddenly she was behaving in the video like someone well educated, relatively intelligent, and with a full ability to speek clearly and concisely even while retaining elements of her trashy persona.
Then I started looking around a bit more, and saw how much money she makes, and at a few accounts of people who have met her in more normal off camera situations saying how nice she is to everyone. Look at the report of the people who made the President Hilton videos with her. They all say they showed up expecting her to be a real Diva, but there she was with sandwhiches and ice tea made for them, and all her lines learned and practiced.
Honestly I believe she is self creating. 'Paris Hilton' is an act put on for our benefit by Paris Hilton.
I mean, it's not a joke that the song was recorded, it's right there. But... it's obviously meant to be humorous.
Well yes, but certain celebrities actually are spoiled, crazy and insane (Wesley Snipes etc). I used to think Paris Hilton fell squarely into that category, and might actually define it.
And I actually just watched that video and am willing to admit that never before has someones rise in my estimations been so meteoric! Not only was it funny, it had a layer of self depreciating mockery, combined with a few solid policy suggestions
Honestly that was one of the finest positive campaign videos I've seen so far this year
This is all very possible. Depending on how much of "Paris" the brand is an invention, she's somewhere between not unintelligent and fucking brilliant. I don't think we'll have a way of knowing until she gets old enough that "vapid rich-bitch super-ho" is no longer a salable item. If she's really that smart, she'll find another way to rake in the dough. If not, she'll live off of royalties and investment interest.
I mean, theres a good chance that she's not a genius, but instead someone who is lucky enough to simply be able to draw a solid wall in her own mind between the things she does at 'work' and her real life. In my opinion it becomes more and more likely she is just a normal girl, with a business idea which would destroy the life of most people who tried to do it.
I think accurately maintaining such a persona would be fairly difficult - most people suck at putting on a convincing false front. It depends, as I said, on how much is false. The leaked porn tape, for example - was that an actual leak, or was it planned? It certainly created a lot of buzz, not the least of which that she came off as kind of a flaky bitch in it. I mean, who answers her cell-phone during sex? Especially while filming it? In theory, the whole thing could've been staged. If not, the "vapid bitch" image isn't entirely manufactured. As I said, we'll find out in the years to come how savvy she really is, and how much she was simply smart enough to hire someone and say, "Okay, make me a really awesome business plan."
Yeah, I was wondering about this too. It's obviously a humorous song, not a serious announcement that she's gonna be running for president.
Also, I like the song.