JackViolet

Are you suggesting that the majority aren't willing to listen to whatever he has to say?

 

I would bet a month's wages that Mika could post a blog consisting of 200 words describing just how blue the sky was in London on one particular day, and he'd get, oh, 225 comments in response. Then we'd have 45 pages on here talking about how his analysis of the sky indicates how deep he is, three more pages making reference to his boob-shaped cloud quote and wondering if there were boob-shaped clouds in the sky on this particular day, and five pages wondering if his use of "Blue" and "Sky" is a shout out to our very own and perhaps a hint at a tour of Japan...

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.

Yeah, especially since Mika "thought they were retarded!" How crushing that must have been.

But then he came to his senses and decided they were over-intelligent enough to give a guest blogging spot to!

--Jack

noooooooo lol

 

A couple of months ago we exchanged myspace messages, and they got pretty insightful and he said I was inspiring:blush-anim-cl: since then, he's been on my good side.

Apparently so! You're in their top friends.

--Jack

But if they write in an "over intelligent" manner "half filled with irony" then even they could see the ridiculousness of the examples listed in their blog.

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

Although in their defense, Justine's MySpace *does* say she's a teacher, and she hasn't logged in since June.

hours of discussion about how the use of the words "bitches", "peeps" and "bling" in today's music is actually a modern day application of the fundamental points first outlined in Aristotle's study of rhetoric.

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

Whoa! This thread is growing at a rate of 4,503,922.3 posts per day!

 

*Orders new server, sends invoice to Mika via XpressPost*

 

Now. What have I missed?

 

Comments:

 

So people thought Mika was selectively not approving and/or deleting posts, paranoia ensued, conspiracy theories surfaced, people made tinfoil hats - but then we worked out that the comments are just being fed through a spam filter that doesn't like the word "twat"? Is that the gist of it?

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.

Guest bloggers:

 

My first interpretation was that they were friends of Mika's having a bit of fun - to me it seemed lighthearted and not at all malicious, not with the intent of making fun of Mika fans.

 

In fact, I thought the whole thing went something like this:

 

*Mika, Justine and Yvonne sitting around his flat drinking appletinis*

 

MIKA: So yeah, I've been blogging my face off these days on my official site. It's brilliant. I get to write about whatever random crap I'm interested in.

 

Yvonne: So cool! That's so not fair. I wish I could write about random crap. Like, I don't know, the search for meaning and the inherent guiding messages present in all Timbaland choruses.

 

Justine *Giggles, chokes on her appletini* Ha, that's an awesome idea! Too bad no one would read it.

 

MIKA: Weeelll, people *do* read my blog...yeah! Why don't you write something? Make it funny and ironic. *drops Macbook in Yvonne's lap*

 

That's so how it all went down in my head.

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

I don't know what to think anymore, but they don't look like teachers to me too, and if they are really friends of Mika why send comments on his MySpace page? real friends wouldn't send comments from there I think.

 

I just hope that he explained this on a future post because it would be more weird if he don't say anything ... i'm confused

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

Yeah mika and them didn't think we were smart enough to understand them which is underestimating our knowledge

 

ex. " yeah the status quoe is undeterminably high this day." Or somethins smart.

 

"But you wouldn't understand, fans of mine."

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

also some of the sentences don't make sense.

 

"Twenty-Second Century?" its still the 21st century

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

About the deleted/not-approved comments. On the Yvonne and Justine blog, I just wrote "Seriously?" and although it was sarcastic, I suppose they still could have taken it as a sincere comment. It's on there. I really wanted to write "I'm calling bull sh*t on this one", but I knew that would never get approved. At first, when it didn't show up for a while I figured it got blocked even though it's not really even offensive. I just figured since it wasn't like any of the other comments "OMG, that sounds so interesting!", it would get deleted. Anyway, it wasn't, obviously.

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

mhm I agree. especially if people start looking up like friends of those friends to find out more info on Mika or something, a lot of people could get attention they don't want or information they don't want out.

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

apparently Supertwats were deleted/never approved and someone elses who posted something sarcastic or witty.

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

no kidding. its actually quite scary...if he did piss off the wrong people

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

Jack, if you want to test him out post something right now since he's approving newest first.

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

But mine is at 12.32 and appears to have been approved

*goes back to check - but is really not that bothered to start counting

72 quotes!!*

Nope, I can't see yours, Wendi.

Easy way to count 'em:

CTRL-A, CTRL-C, paste into Word. Word will number the comments so you can see how many there are.

--Jack

It's not showing yet because 12:26 - 12:56 pm hasn't been approved yet.

You're always so reasonable.

Can't I indulge in some sturm und drang?

--Jack

This is odd. Not for me, although I've just refreshed the page before I wrote this.

Yeah, no, I was wrong--I thought it got approved 'cause it showed up on my screen between two other comments, but apparently he just approved the comments right after and right before, but not mine. Man I am special!

--Jack

Wait a sec, what quote? I have a record of having my words coming back to bite me in the arse.

The one about the aspirin and chair and following advice. It was a cute quote!

--Jack

Btw, you're right--apparently even though my comment shows up on my screen "nested" between two others, it's not actually there.

Whatever.

--Jack

Yeah, in the last one... on mine it shows up in between Bianca's and Corolyn's. Towards the bottom.

--Jack

I don't see the problem - he could have just left it, and ignored it

if he was not interested - its a lot better than some of the multiple

posts in his blogs - and some of the "other" ones!!

I followed it up by a quote from Twatty to prove her wit and that was also not approved.

Oh well, now that he's approving the other silly comments, maybe I should just assume he didn't want the word "twat" on his blog.

--Jack