JackViolet

Exactly. Exactly. I totally understand how one would think that fans would LOVE to hear about the ultimate fan fantasy come true... but I also can't imagine how anyone with common sense wouldn't realize the danger in putting such a story out there, or realize the kind of behavior it would encourage if people bought it. A safer fantasy would have been something like, "we were flying to LA and met him in the airport lounge when the flight was delayed. We chatted to pass away the hours we were waiting for the plane, and got along so well that we continued talking all through the flight... and afterward we exchanged contact info and he invited us to a show, etc etc, we got to be fast friends." At least there it's pure chance, it's a natural situation to strike up a conversation with a fellow passenger, and there's the opportunity to talk fo "hours" without it seeming like an imposition. --Jack

Well I can at least tell you her name is not Justine or Yvonne. --Jack

Actually I think you are confusing two different terms. There's "esoteric" (what's being discussed here) and "exoteric"--your given definition. Although neither of them refers to personal thought or feelings. From Wikipedia: Esoteric knowledge is that which is available only to a narrow circle of "enlightened", "initiated", or specially educated people. Esoteric items may be known as esoterica. In contrast, exoteric knowledge is knowledge that is well-known or public; or perceived as informally canonic in society at large. Or, a simpler dictionary definition: "Esoteric: understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest." --Jack

You explained that comments slide back into place after being approved, but not that curse words were filtered or that specific chunks of time were approved at different times! Well I said that's what one would get from Mana's example. Her supposition of how it went down is not at all necessarily the truth. Oh gosh I didn't even get that! See? Between Mana, Supertwat, you and babs, do we need more ironic commentary? Or rather, I'm always happy for more, but can it live up to what we already have? Fine, I'll be the only lonely one. --Jack

Okay good. 'Cause I don't actually feel that way either, I was just thinking that if people did, Mana's hypothetical situation didn't make much of a difference. But as I explained in the apple thread, I definitely think the "overly" was just a not-entirely-fortuitously-in-context chosen synonym for "excessively," and, well, as far as unrelated thoughts... I am beginning to think that I may be the one person (and maybe Christine) who actually really did want to read esoteric pop music analysis. And I'm still hoping it wasn't fully a joke and will be forthcoming. Being that it's pretty much right up my alley. Although I just don't get why the random made up story was necessary. It really wasn't very funny at all (the way it was told was clever, but I mean, I don't find the idea of the story funny), except, I imagine, for Yvonne and Justine and Mika themselves. But not to anyone who's not in on their backstory. My only real concern is that they'd better be damn intelligent and funny indeed. Because while academic analysis of pop music is right up my alley, I can get it quite well from my school's library or other places online... so I hope their observations are interesting and unique enough to justify being given a spot on Mika's blog rather than just, you know, posting them in their own online journals. And if they were kidding about doing serious pop music analysis, then they'd better be pretty drop-down funny, considering that we have quite a solid contingent of witty posters on here as is. It would be a shame if babs' comments outshone the humor of their blogs. --Jack

I don't think it works like that... I mean, it's not like you're obliged to declare your dissertation anywhere except your university... And class papers or research papers you do for independent/supervised study don't have to be published either... --Jack

It is actually! Although if anything parts of it are a little bit obvious... Have you seen this list of pop-music dissertations Blue Sky posted? "Van Halen: Changes in their Stylistic Development, and a Critical Examination of Audience Reception, 1978-1986" by Thomas Harrison "Groove and Flow: Six Analytical Essays on the Music of Stevie Wonder" by Tim Hughes "The Civics of Rock: Sixties Countercultural Music and the Transformation of the Public Sphere" by Michael Kramer "Pure Black, Looking Clear: Genre, Race, Commerce, and the Music of Metallica" by Glenn T. Pillsbury " 'We Accept You, One of Us': Punk Rock, Community, and Individualism in an Uncertain America, 1974-1985" by M. Montgomery Wolf --Jack

Yeah, but that would be a blog about his thoughts on the sky. People are interested in hearing his thoughts (whether they be about artists he likes or bags he found interesting), or looking at pictures of toys or kitsch he owns, because they want a glimpse into his life. They do not care about the thoughts of his friends on totally unrelated subjects. I wager if Mika had just linked to a blog of their own where they talked about Rihanna and Timbaland, and wrote something like "I think this is really interesting, I love intelligent analysis of pop music!" no one would have complained. But then he came to his senses and decided they were over-intelligent enough to give a guest blogging spot to! --Jack

Apparently so! You're in their top friends. --Jack

I'm probably the least suited to appreciate the ridiculousness actually 'cause I am at the moment reading a book on the intersection between the Jena school of Romanticism, 19th c. aestheticism, Karl Marx, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie. --Jack

Imagine if they actually are doing post-grad research on pop music. All this talk about how "ridiculous" their research sounds would be making them feel pretty bad! --Jack

Yup!! It was fun while it lasted though, and we could act all suspicious and outraged. I kept hoping the comments wouldn't be approved for a while so we could get more outrage in. Brilliant. However even if that went down exactly this way, I don't see how this changes the feeling people got that he was being disrespectful to his fans... In your example "Mika" seems to view his readership as a portable, all-available audience doggedly willing to listen and snap up anything he might throw their way (including totally unrelated things like his friends' meanderings) and unworthy of any consideration in their own right. And posing as traveling fan-documentary people or whatever would only be funny and ironic to them--not his audience which does not know them. --Jack

Eh, young teachers have done worse things than have myspace pages. Like sleep with students. (I'm not saying they are teachers, just that having a non-professional myspace does not really mean anything--lots of people have them.) And when Mika was just starting out he did use his music page to talk to friends. I don't doubt they're friends of his, it's the other stuff that seems weird. --Jack

I don't think anyone would be able to understand that. That makes no sense. Although it would be a pretty funny comment to post on a blog... --Jack

They kinda sound just the same. --Jack

That was a pun. "Twenty-Second Century Emotion"= "20 sec. Century Emotion." I think it was a reference to the shorter attention spans of our current pop culture (3 minute radio-friendly pop song, etc). They were making up paper titles, and academic paper titles are often based on puns and wordplay. --Jack

Yeah, I don't think Mika's deleting sarcastic comments, just ones with swear words, and maybe some really rude ones. About the J+Y blog--it wasn't that people took it seriously and then went trawling through comments, it was that some people were like, "ok, so this has to be some kind of joke--but what kind is it?" and then went looking stuff up to figure out just what was true and what wasn't. So I'm saying either Mika needs to make his jokes more obvious (to the point where no one's tempted to research them to figure out the truth behind them) or not joke quite like that. (By "needs" I mean, "if he doesn't want people to go off on cyber-sleuthing sprees." If he doesn't care, then whatever.) --Jack

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, from what I gather from the last few pages, people have already found Yvonne's myspace? Mika & Co should not give any incentive for people to become even more zealous in their sleuthing. --Jack

No no, all of mine were eventually approved. The only ones that weren't were the ones mentioning SuperTwat's name. I think Mika just didn't want the word "twat" on his blog, or maybe it was even automatically filtered by software and he never even saw it. When ST posted under another name, her comments went through. --Jack

Well it would be not cool. Like, I'm not saying stalking him or anything is justified by that blog, but considering that people do stalk him, I don't think he should be making "figure out what's true about my life/my friends and what's not!" into some kinda game. People have found out his address after all via online searches. Who knows what else they can find that he may rather not be public? And then post here as part of the attempt to figure out whether a particular story is true or not? --Jack

The "contact us at" thing was plainly just a joke, that was cute. But the random nonsense of the rest of it... If Mika's trying to encourage fan "muscling their way backstage" and pestering, I'm sure he'll get what he wants. And if he wants to test how far fans can sniff out fake stories, I think he should consider that some people here have quite good computer skills (not me:naughty:), and that there is quite a lot of stuff you can find in caches, and he may not want to encourage much more cyber-sleuthing. Uncovering old myspace messages isn't the least of what's possible. Neither is tracking tour dates. Finding secret myspace profiles and hacking into the pictures, etc? Even figuring out and tracing down real email addresses? That's also possible, and you'd think the last thing Mika needs is to have people do that just to figure out what the hell he (or his guest bloggers) are on about. --Jack

Although Mika did perform in 2005 in Miami. http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/42666/pop-singer-mika-breaks-rules-breaks-out/ "MIAMI - The last time Mika played Miami, about two years ago (2005), the pop singer performed a record company-sponsored, 20-minute showcase set. His meager crowd encompassed a handful of publishing people, some musicians, “and my grandmother and my great aunt and my Lebanese relatives, my Miami hipster friends, a tiny selection of people from every scene in Miami,” says the Beirut-born, Paris and London-bred Mika Penniman, on the telephone from Los Angeles on the eve of his U.S. tour’s opening date." However, it certainly wasn't an event where someone who wasn't an insider to the music industry or already a friend could just walk in on, and it certainly didn't have all the visual claptrap we've come to know... And it's certainly not "last winter." --Jack

To be honest I am not sure the fake story was really meant to mock fans so much as weirdly try to "connect" with them? I mean, what they wrote is like basic fan fantasy--go see the musician, get backstage somehow, get to talking for "hours" and become great friends! I may be being too sweet here but I think maybe they just kind of wanted to use that story because they thought we'd enjoy it somehow. I just don't get the "esoteric" stuff. If they are just gonna write about pop, not particularly esoterically, and they're just taking the piss about the limitations of how "over intelligent" pop commentary can possibly be... um, well, ok I guess. Except that there ARE people who do valid pop commentary that draws upon philosophers and theorists, and do it well. If they're (slight chance) for real about it, it's just so vague that combined with the fake story, it's offputting. My comment on that entry was kinda meant to draw out whether they're serious or not, and be like "hey, anyone can provide random topics about the links between philosophers and pop, but can you actually back it up?" If the whole thing is a joke and we're never even gonna hear from them again, I don't get why Mika got defensive about them. --Jack

I guess it IS the name. You troublemaker!! I love your comment, too. Hahah. Seriously, I have no idea why he approved that ridiculous one. --Jack

Eh, I'm tired of the game. :-) I'll come back later after everything's been approved to see if I should act outraged. --Jack