CNN aired “Black In America: Silicon Valley” last night. It was actually more interesting than I thought it would be. I would have done the show differently, but I’m me and CNN’s producers aren’t.

Disclosure: I’ll watch *ANYTHING* with Angela Benton in it! >:P~~~

Yum, Yum, Yum, and a Liverwurst A La Mode!!! >:D

So I was gonna watch this show regardless of what happened in it.

I had no idea what the NewME Accelerator was before just now.

I knew Angela had gone to California for some reason, and that Wayne Sutton was there also, but I didn’t know what they were doing.

I wasn’t watching the show tonight, because my DVR was catching it, but I got a text about 15 minutes after the show started, from my aunt, asking me, basically, why *I* wasn’t in this particular CNN show. :D

oh.. Disclosure #2: I’m also partial to Soledad O’Brien, because a homeboy of mine said he used to date her when he was at Harvard, but you know how dudes tend to exaggerate their interactions with females, so that’s an unconfirmed report. ;)

Anyway… This show was about people that are involved in founding startups.

Startup Culture

I’m “Internet Famous” (#6 of 154,000,000 Google results for “Bill”), (#2 of 1,440,000 Google results for “Cammack”), but that’s not what I do.

I’m a video editor and a content creator.

I edit television shows, corporate videos, web and personal content for my clients.

I also do my own videos and co-star in my friends’ videos:

YouTube Link => youtube.com/watch?v=wTHn5oFPmi8

That’s ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from what startup-people do.

With a startup, you think you have a good idea, you think you can technically implement it and make it into a website or an app, you think you can get people to recognize the value in using it, you think you can build a base of passionate users, and then you think you can get someone to give you money to go farther in your project than you could have on your own, or you think that someone will buy your company from you and roll it into their current set of offerings.

That’s a lot of thinking, hoping, and praying involved with that process, and I’m not interested. :D

If I had wanted to do a startup, I would have done it already, and it would have been successful.

Friends of mine founded blip.tv:

and Makerbot Industries:

and Tumblr:

and Rocketboom

Photo Credit: Francisco Daum

and I’m friends with investors like Jeff Pulver:

So, if I had wanted to do that, I could have done it, and I can still do it, but I’m not interested in it, because I’ve seen how DEDICATED my friends have had to have been in order to be successful, and how much of their actual lives they’ve had to sacrifice, and that’s not my idea of a good time.

I get in, do my work, output my video, invoice my clients, and then CHILLLLLLLL, and that’s the way I like it. >:D

Working on a startup starts *AFTER* you finish doing whatever else you do to get money, because it’s a huge gamble… An incredible gamble that depends on a lot of things working the way you think they will.. Some of which are under your control and many of which are not, such as when an internet bubble bursts or when an economy goes down the drain, or some other team beats you to market with a similar product and soaks up your projected user base that you were going to use to demonstrate demand for your site or app.

On a slightly-related note, that’s one of the reasons why women have such a hard time dating in Manhattan, NYC. The guys here are busy. We have things to do. We don’t have time to frivolously throw away, sharing gelato with you at some bistro. :)

Your window of opportunity to spend time with us is severely limited, because we always have more that we want to accomplish, and unless you work in the same field as we do, or you’re working on the same startup as us, you’re not going to see us much.

If dudes wanted to live the leisurely, waste-time life, they would have stayed in Kansas instead of moving to NYC to try to grind it out and make it happen.

Black In America: Silicon Valley

First of all.. Congratulations and Props to all the founders and participants for heading out to California to take part in NewME Accelerator and going for what they know! :D

So, The first thing that happens is Angela says “For whatever reason, African Americans [edit] tend to be consumers of technology and not really creators of technology”.

IME (In My Experience), this is true. There’s a difference between UTILIZING technology and creating something that other people use.

Similarly, there’s a difference between posting videos on a website and CREATING VIDEOS that you post on a website, like Jay Smooth does, for instance:

YouTube Link => youtu.be/7_z0TUN_DwQ

As a member of the content creation community, this was one of the shortcomings of CNN’s show. They never explained what it means or what it requires to think up and attempt to implement a startup, and then attempt to gain traction, get it funded and get it sold.

It was literally impossible to go into the actual intricacies of this field in an hour-long show, which is actually only 44 minutes of show time plus commercials.

Not only that, but CNN didn’t go into *HOW* they prepared in between their “pop quiz” pitch and their actual pitch at the end of the 9 weeks.

They didn’t show *ANY* of the process that takes you from doing a wack pitch to a good one. This show needed to be at least two hours long, and probably three, to do it properly.

As someone who knows startup founders and knows the amount of work that they put in, every single day, to make their projects successful, I was entirely set up and then short-changed by the show.

The way they started it, I thought we were going to experience the process. We didn’t. There was a lot of good information, and it was entertaining, but it was the equivalent of saying “Bill is going to mix a record now”, and then you hear the mixed record. What happened in between? o_O

On top of that, CNN never showed what a pitch actually is.

Basically, a pitch is a terse explanation of why people would use your product, how they would benefit from it, and, in this case, how you intend to provide ROI (Return On Investment) to your investors.

This is a completely different skill from a) coming up with a product idea, b) being technically able to create an actual application, c) being able to recruit a team to work with you if necessary, and d) networking and publicizing your app.

For instance.. My pitch, which I never use in actual conversation, is “Bill Cammack helps you create quality video & audio effortlessly. Working with Bill ensures quality control and on-time delivery of your presentation,
freeing you up to do other things with your time.”

What that means in English is that (amongst other things) I’m a video editor, and the reason you should give me money to spend MY time on YOUR project is that I’m better than you, I’m faster than you, I know what actual quality is in video presentations, so you’re purchasing quality control, as well as not having to waste your own time that you could have spent getting money doing what YOU do well, in the process of creating an inferior product in a much longer time period.

Of course, things are different for me, because I don’t pitch to companies. Companies pitch their projects to me. My job is to point out my stellar track record and the companies and networks I’ve worked for that all require top-notch work.

There’s no such thing as 99% of a television show. You get ‘er done, or you fail.

I can’t afford to fail, so I go in loaded for bear and make it happen.

No Wack Demos

Navarrow Wright told the group “No Wack Demos on demo day”, which amounts to “You’re going to be ON-POINT by the time you have to give your presentation that counts”.

I thought this part was important because people don’t tend to realize that there are people better than them at what they do or what they’re trying to do, and that they can receive valuable information from those people, including “Your presentation sucked, and here’s why”.

There’s no point in wasting your time reinventing the wheel, when you can just get the goods from someone that knows more than you and then move forward, look good, present well, and be successful.

It’s like with mixing music. I personally don’t believe in people being able to do their own “mastering”, which is some kind of finishing process that people do.

DIY Mastering doesn’t make any sense, because it’s the same person listening to the track on the same amplifier and speakers in the same room, so what’s different? o_O Nothing. If you want a track mastered, you send it to A MASTERING ENGINEER that has better equipment than you have, a better room than you have, and better sensibilities than you have when it comes to finalizing records.

I felt like their session(s) with Navarrow did exactly that. It gave them a window into what they SHOULD have been aiming at, from someone that knows the drill and can accurately inform them how far along they’ve progressed, or not.

Arrington, Conway, Kapor & Meritocracy

They aired a preview of “Black In America: Silicon Valley” several days ago, and some people were crying about what Mike Arrington had to say on the program.

I had been looking forward to hearing whatever controversial statements he made, but there weren’t any. As far as I can tell, he was accurately recounting his personal experiences in his field and location.

That’s like if I were to say that 80% to 90% (anywhere from 4 out of 5 to 9 out of 10) of the people that have hired me as a freelance video editor are white, you don’t get to cry about that because, not that I care enough to count clients, but that would be my honest guesstimation of historical reality.

I’m not demeaning black businesspeople by saying they make up either 1/5 or 1/10 of the people that have put money in my pocket. It’s just, AFAIK, a fact.

I also agree with what Ron Conway said, which is that it’s not necessarily what you know, but instead, it’s who you know.

You can have as many Facebook and Twitter and Google+ followers as you like, but if none of them are relevant to your professional field, you actually have approximately zero influence when you create a “call to action”.

If you have good ideas, but don’t know anybody that will forward you to someone that can actually help you get to the next level, you’re either going to be stuck on the ground floor or moving very slowly, as you’ll only be able to do as much work as you can afford to do around your regular work schedule, instead of being able to devote all your working hours to your startup because you received some funding that will sustain you and possibly a couple other coworkers until you get the product working well enough for a beta test, build your community and go for the big bucks.

Mitch Kapor said “The part that is meritocratic is great, but there’s a big part of it that isn’t”. I would agree with that, however, that statement applies to the United States in general. People hire who they like and want to spend time with and want to see succeed, so long as those people have the base amount of skillz to actually get the job done in the first place.

If nobody wants to look at you, nobody’s going to hire you.
If nobody wants to tell you “Good Morning” when you walk onto their job site (assuming it’s an on-site gig), nobody’s going to hire you.
If nobody has any “checks and balances” references for you, such as 500+ Linkedin Connections, nobody’s going to hire you.

Yes.. These things could be a function of some kind of racial or ethnic bias. They could also be a function of, let’s call it a “social bias”, because regardless of what your heritage is, you don’t know anybody who investors or potential clients trust to vouch for you or vet you as someone worth doing business with.

Unfortunately, we can’t change people’s skin color and get a do-over so we can see how much better or worse their lives and careers would be, so all that’s left to do is be the best you can be and get what you get from your own hard work and diligence.. Not only in learning to program, but also in authentic networking that results in your being connected to the right people that can and WILL put you in touch with the right people when you need it.

Otherwise Known As “Having Friends In High Places.” >:D

Hire A Front For Your Company

So, next up, Professor Vivek Wadhwa dropped some REAL SCIENCE on the NewME Accelerator team, which I can tell from looking at their faces during the reaction shots.

They only aired a couple of his statements, but I can tell he said a whole bunch of stuff that CNN didn’t have time to air (again, because this should have been a 3-hour show instead of a 1-hour show).

Part of what he said was “Get a white guy to be your front man”. This was advice that had been given to him at the time he was doing HIS thing, and he was informing the NewME team about this technique.

Of course, that’s not going to work for me because I have my own props.

My name and face are branded all over creation, so I don’t get to send anyone else out to network for me or get me business under the guise that they’re the ones doing the video editing, because who the *** are THEY? :D haha I’ll get LESS WORK instead of MORE if I send anyone but myself as my personal representative.

However.. Like I said above.. Internet startups are mainly ideas and programming. It’s recognizing an underserved market and filling that void. The hands-on part is behind the scenes. It doesn’t matter who you send as the representative of the company. Dude’s job could merely be figurehead/front-man, and the money you’re paying him will be worth all the extra opportunities you get to pitch investors and clients if things work out the way you suspect.

In fact, I would advocate this style for anyone that has a WACK PRESENTATION, whether they’re white, black, Asian, Hispanic, whatever.

If you look busted, or you mumble when you try to speak English, or even though you know how to program, you sound like an idiot when you try to articulate your thoughts, or you have serious issues with public speaking, it’s really in your best interests to hire someone better looking, more articulate, and more confident in public than you are to be the spokesperson for your company.

Fortunately, I’m genetically predisposed to being gregarious, which is why I have 3,000 Facebook Friends, 3,000 Twitter Followers 4,000 Google+ Followers, etc, and I do my own networking as well as connecting other people that I determine should know each other for business or personal reasons.

Nobody’s better at being me than I am. >:D

Relationship Issues

I was glad to see a dude from my school alum.MIT.edu/www/BillCammack on the show, and I was also glad that he and his girlfriend created a site/app about dating, being that there’s just about NOTHING I enjoy talking about more than women! >:D

However.. And I realize that CNN may have edited this to look a certain way to craft a storyline, but if you’re dating a chick, her safety is ON YOU and her transportation is ON YOU! :D

For a few months while I was at school, I had an official girlfriend, like people actually knew we were together.

During that time, if I needed to export her from my dorm room in West Campus, *I* had to walk her ass all the way to Mass Ave so she could get the bus back to her school.

It’s all in the game. It’s part of the deal. If there are 8 people living in a 3-bedroom, small-ass-house, and your girlfriend isn’t invited to make it 9 people, how you interact with her is ON YOU.

Word to Herb. That’s what Skype is for. iChat. Do something! :D

On top of that, Angela left 3 daughters back at her crib. Wayne left one son at his crib. I saw some other video of at least one other person having a wife and child, so they’re not likely to be too sympathetic to “My girlfriend has to take the bus” when their loved ones don’t even have that option.

It was cute that CNN brought up the “white girlfriend” storyline and then cut up a bunch of sound bites, so we really have NO IDEA, WHATSOEVER what anybody thought about dude’s girlfriend’s skin color, but, again, it barely, barely, BARELY skimmed the surface and short-changed us AGAIN as far as something that might have been interesting and relevant about this situation and could have sparked important conversation.

Seriously.. CNN left so much material on the cutting room floor that it’s just embarrassing.

Hopefully, they won’t recycle the tapes they used and they’ll do a WAYYYYY extended version of this program (which I doubt), but my suggestion to Angela and friends is to get your hands on the raw footage before they delete it, because there are at least 3 more documentaries y’all can make from this.

Anyway.. The point is that he’s the only one that came with a co-founder. Everyone else in the house was a standalone. That’s automatically going to put you at a disadvantage, because half of your team wasn’t invited to the house.

It’s going to be on you to figure out how to make that situation work for you.

Everybody there was scrambling to make a good demo in the time they had in the house. Nobody has extra time to take care of someone else’s business.

For next season, secure a sponsor like Ford, so there’s at least one car dedicated to the house, so if someone brings extra team members, he or she can make moves without inconveniencing other NewME members.

Walking While Black

So, Wayne was walking down the street between a cafe and the NewME house when he was apparently stopped for WWB.

I would have enjoyed seeing the actual footage, but either CNN decided not to air it or they didn’t have a camera crew with Wayne when the incident occurred.

Arrington had already said that it’s a white and Asian world out there. In situations like that, WWB is going to happen one time, so local cops can put an eye on you, check your ID and check your demeanor.

After that, it should never happen to you again, because the rest of the team should be informed that you’re in the area and liable to be walking around in the middle of the night.

In fact, this goes back to what I was saying about getting a Ford sponsorship, so NewME members don’t have to be walking all over creation.

If it happens to you more than once, *THEN* it’s a potential harassment problem.

I know this sounds dumb, but life isn’t fair. Deal with it.

In fact, it’s not even really a police issue, it’s a guy thing.

When you’re used to an environment being a certain way, and then it changes (in this case, going from having essentially ZERO minorities around to having several, who don’t appear to own cars), you’re going to want some information about the new person/people.

I went to a bar on Long Island one time with a “well-tanned” friend of mine, and we had been hanging out for for a while, when this guy with a fancy Italian nickname walks over and introduces himself to me.

I shook his hand, and eventually, he got around to asking me what we were doing there.

I looked him in the eye and told him we were there to drink some brews and check out some chicks.

He nodded, and then I asked him if that was a problem. He said it wasn’t, so the three of us hung out until he walked back over to his 7-8 local homeboys and told them what he had found out.

My friend and I chilled, without incident, until the bar closed down. Meanwhile, the dudes that had sent their envoy over had proceeded to get in a fight with another crew of 5-6 white dudes, right there on the dance floor of the bar, which was rather entertaining. :D

The point being.. If someone’s concerned that you’ve entered “their space”, it’s actually BETTER FOR YOU that they step to you and decide for sure whether they have a beef with you or not, than it is for them NOT to approach you and then if you eventually have to interact with them, they’re working off of entirely unfounded and incorrect conclusions that they made up about you in their own minds.

Go For Yours

Even though CNN devoted all of like 25 seconds to it, I think that Anthony Frasier‘s storyline was the most currently relevant and compelling narrative amongst the NewME members.

The only way out from under the current American economic crisis for a lot of people is going to be reeducation.. PREFERABLY in a field that doesn’t leave you relying upon local people and companies for job and career opportunities.

If your job is to put doors on cars and they move the plant to another country to maximize profits, you’re not getting another car-door-putting-on job. You have to learn a new skill.. ASAP.

I really like Anthony‘s response to “How can I buy my mother a house?”, and wish him the best of luck with his startup, playd.it, which is described as “Foursquare for gamers. See what your friends are playing on everything from Xbox to mobile. Discover new games and rate the ones you already played.”

This is “Hustle” or “Grind”, even though currently-popular music would have you believe that both of those words have negative, illegal connotations.

Without this type of work ethic, people waste their time instead of improving themselves, learning a new skill, networking, or publicizing their products.

You have to have a goal.. Something to look forward to.. Something you want, like buying your mother a house, and then you have to use the fuel you receive from that to propel you forward into potential greatness.

Whether you succeed or not, at the end of the day, you know you did all you could to create the future you wanted for yourself, instead of slacking, brooding, lamenting, and dreaming about what might have been if you would have applied yourself.

It’s Easy To Talk. It’s Hard To do.

Regardless of CNN trying to tell a 3-hour story in 1 hour, I’m glad they did this installation of “Black In America” about a sector of the society that isn’t typically focused on.

Hopefully, as several of the NewME members stated in the final block, people who “look like them” will get the idea that THEY can do the same things in life if they apply themselves.

Programming isn’t the point. Moving to California isn’t the point. Being an internet-famous blogger or social media personality isn’t the point.

The Point is that all of these startups began with an idea and progressed into implementation.. The Point is that you don’t have to accept the 1-5 ways that society claims you can make money or gain fame or pull chicks or whatever your goal in life is.

Sit down. Lay down. Stand around. Think about what’s missing for you or for someone else. Think about whether you can fill that need. Think about whether it’s economically feasible for you to attempt to fill that need. If it isn’t, sell the idea to someone else, or recruit other people that already have the equipment and skillz you need to pull it off, and offer them some kind of ROI for getting involved with your idea.

It doesn’t even have to be elaborate. You might be really good at using clippers to cut hair and shape up lines. ok, fine.. You look all fresh ‘n fly when you go to the club, but how about lining up a few customers at $10 each, then investing $80 in a shiny, new set of clippers & trimmers, making your money back immediately, and then letting all the rest of it be profit? o_O

Maybe you didn’t even KNOW that there are people that will give you money in return for a percentage of ownership of your company if they believe in your idea.

Maybe you didn’t even consider attempting to get investors and sponsors and passionate consumers and family members to assist you in realizing your goals and dreams.

So I think the show made some important points, although, like I said, being someone that knows what it takes to do what we do on the internet, even to write a long-ass blog post like this one, I’m aware that CNN skimmed over A LOT of the technical aspects of what needed to be done over the weeks that the NewME team was in Silicon Valley.

I’m sure the production goal was to show social issues and not technical ones, but I think that if you’re going to attempt to tell a story detailing bias in a community, you have to describe and display the technical merits and prowess of the people that the bias is supposed to be against.

Like, I can’t just say that someone didn’t hire me to do a video for them because I’m not white.. I’d have to demonstrate that I’m better than the person they hired, and then demonstrate that the potential client KNEW I was better than the other person and still hired them instead of me.

CNN didn’t delve far enough into the individual members’ skillsets to potentially make the case of “This startup should have been funded, but wasn’t, and it’s potentially because of a societal bias in this field”.

Anyway.. I enjoyed the presentation. It was good to see some social media people on the big screen. :)

Good Luck to them on their startups, and Good Luck to Angela on season 02 of the NewME Accelerator! :D

YouTube Link => youtu.be/UHceXqOMFrI

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There seems to be some confusion amongst some of the members of the female community about the value of making and attempting to distribute a sex tape “starring” yourselves.

I’m sorry to inform you that sex tapes are played out. Actually, to be more accurate.. I’m happy to inform you, but you’ll be sorry to REALIZE that sex tapes are played out and you’re going to have to find another way to attempt to become famous or intenet-famous or whatever you’re trying to do.

The Originals

The reason why sex tapes were a hot item back in the day is because they WEREN’T. SUPPOSED. TO. BE. RELEASED.

The thing was that some chick shot a video with some dude for fun, and by hook or crook, that video somehow made its way to bootleg DVDs and online downloads. The whole buzz of it was a) “Does it exist at all?”, and b) “Where can we get it?”.

When the rumors first went around, the chicks denied that they existed until the first people started seeing them and telling their friends about them. Once the stills & video clips went up on the net, they had no choice but to own up to the fact that yes, that’s them in the tapes and yes, they’re that type of chick to videotape having sex with someone.

Second Wave

The next phase in sex tape evolution was the gals who decided to cash in by deliberately making and attempting to distribute sex tapes while following the initial model of acting like they didn’t want them to be released.

This got over as well as the first wave did because people still didn’t believe girls would do this to themselves. If the tape existed, it HAD to be the guy’s fault and the girl was being victimized, which is what people actually tune in to watch.

Had those tapes been released in a normal fashion, they would have sat on the shelves getting dusty because nobody actually cares whether a gal has sex or not. Did anyone think any of these chicks were virgins before they saw the tapes? Nope.

So the whole point to celebrity sex tapes is victimization. Someone (usually the female) got taken advantage of. That’s what people tune in for.. to be the fly on the wall while some guy’s sneakily videotaping a girl with a hidden camera or if the camera’s visible, he told her that nobody would ever see the tape, and now it’s available for sale to the public.

That was Then. This is Now.

This brings us to the present day… Somehow, some women view sex tapes as a viable vehicle by which they can attain… fame?.. notoriety?.. celebrity status?

I find this completely amazing as well as stupid.

What’s even worse is when you can’t even pull this stunt off without dragging your father’s celebrity name through the mud. I mean, it’s just the height of disrespect and ungratefulness.

EVEN. ACTUAL. PORNO. CHICKS. DON’T. USE. THEIR. REAL. NAMES!!! :/

So first of all, the victimization that everyone tunes in to watch “sex tapes” for doesn’t exist because you decided to make the tape and announced the tape before it was even released.

Second (which is actually FIRST), nobody even would have watched the tape if you hadn’t been your father’s daughter. If you would have changed your name like REAL porno chicks do, nobody would ever have heard of or seen your video.

Third, if you already have deep connections in the film industry, what’s the point of doing Z-Movie pornos? If you can get acting roles just based off of your last name and your father’s juice, what are you getting out of having someone point a camera at you while you’re “having sex”, which I have to put in quotes, because I’ve seen one of the scenes and it was crazy WACK!

Fourth, if you *MUST* make a sex tape, at least go all out and hire a makeup artist to smooth out your skin tone and hide all those ghastly spots on your ass.

Fifth, if you’ve just “had a passion to do porn”, why not just do it? O_o .. Why not just be the next nondescript ***** sucking **** and leave the family name out of things entirely?

Save It For David

Unfortunately, due to the “Famous guy’s daughter gets boned on publicly-distributed DVD” aspect of this situation, of course the tape is going to sell, sell, sell. Hopefully, this won’t give more young ladies the idea that if they make a sex tape, they might be able to parlay that into money, status or fame.

The fact of the matter is that sex tapes are played out. The fad is over. All that’s left are girls that choose to **** on tape and those that choose not to. It’s not cool. It’s not cute. It’s not edgy. It’s expected, predictable and boring… Especially if the video reveals that you have just about the sensuality and moves of a RealDoll, except the doll has a better body.

The sex tape fad actually reminds me of the girls dancing with girls in the bar fad. *yawn*

Remember all those girls that used to try to get props from the guys by dancing together and hoping that dudes would think they were lesbians? Remember how they used to get over at first? Welp.. they ran that trick into the ground and now y’all look like what you are, chicks trying to get attention from dudes. Nobody’s falling for that anymore and they’re not falling for “sex tapes” either, so hang it up.

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Two years ago, in May 2008, I wrote “Fame, Popularity & Star Power” and then “Fame (Part 2)” two weeks apart from each other. The main point was that I was trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts about fame in order to respond to an opinion my friend Dave had expressed about why I do what I do.

I never actually figured out how to exactly articulate the difference between what I’ve done for basically my entire life and what a lot of people do now. Today.. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up watching a video where someone interviewed Melyssa Ford.

Melyssa was saying something about something… and then she goes “Fame used to be the by-product of success and now it’s the ultimate goal”. A few seconds later, I rewound it and listened to that line again and was like “HOLY ****!!!!! :D That’s EXACTLY The Point I Was TRYING To Make!!! :D”

Fame vs. Popularity

I’m not famous.. Though a lot of people will say that I’m MicroFamous or Internet Famous. I’ve been ranked inside the top 15 Google results for “Bill” (out of currently 377 million results) since February, 2008 (2 years and counting). I’m also inside the top 30 results (out of 264,000,000) for “Bill” on bing.com. I’ve been blogging for years, and BillCammack.com is currently serving 5,000 pages per week, according to Quantcast & Google Analytics.

Whatever infinitesimal amount of Fame, Popularity, Star Power or Personal Brand Recognition I currently enjoy is, as Melyssa would say, a by-product of my success. It’s a fringe benefit. It’s icing on a cake. It’s certainly not THE POINT of anything I do and it’s certainly not *WHY* I do anything I do.

When I post a video of something I did or somewhere I went..

It’s not so you or anyone else can go “OOOOOOOHH! Look at what Bill did! :O”.. It’s because I. ALREADY. DID. IT. and I’m trying to share an incredibly small percentage of my real life experiences with whomever might be interested. If I stopped filming things, I’d STILL be doing a bunch of cool stuff with a bunch of cool people. If I stopped blogging, I’d still be hanging out with a bunch of chicks and enjoying myself. I’m not performing or doing anything that’s out of the ordinary for me. I’m just trying to share so you have a SLIIIIIIGHT idea of what my life is like.

Sharing

Even that last sentence seems to be braggadocio. Who the **** cares what *MY* life is like? :D

Well… All I can say about that is that back in the day my friend Dan McVicar (a.k.a. Clarke Garrison on “The Bold and the Beautiful”) created and hosted a Social Media site called “The Late Nite Mash”.

My friend Marty Daniels, whom I met through Dan’s site, lived somewhere in the sticks where I was never going to visit and filmed a video while walking around at a county fair in his local area.

Was the video exciting and action-packed? Nope! :D However.. I got to experience something I never would have experienced, being that a) I wasn’t going to ever travel there to go to that fair, and b) it was being filmed through Marty’s “eyes” and experiences, so it was necessarily different from what would have happened if I had been there filming with my own camera.

I got value out of that, which I obviously remember to this day, so my goal in sharing is to attempt to pass that on to people that don’t live in NYC or don’t live in the USA at all or experience this city in a completely different way than I do.

Also, I get correspondence and blog comments from people that watch my videos or read my blog posts and got something out of it. TO ME… That’s what it’s ALL about… Sharing. Messages In Bottles. I send out the communication. If you received it, good. If you got something out of it, even better! :D

I couldn’t give a damn about serving 5,000 pages a week. I’m way more motivated by the 50 people that are currently subscribed to my blog by email. Thanks, y’all! :D I see youse out there! ;)

I’m also motivated by and thankful for my set of regular commenters, including recently Steve, Frank, Christine, Gail, C-Jay, Albert, Sophia, BM, Elly, Michele and even Fishingrod, who’s been SLACKIN’ lately, but I know she still loves me! :D

To Me.. It’s all about the communication. I post and output media in order to share, with you. If I stopped doing it, the events of my life would continue as they always have.. I’d just have more time to do them instead of taking time out to write long-ass blog posts like this one. :)

Fameballing

Going back to Melyssa’s point.. Now that so many people have access to expressing themselves via Social Media, a lot of them are doing what they can TO become famous, which has become an END instead of a BY-PRODUCT. The question for them is “What can I do to get more Twitter followers? O_o What can I do to get more Facebook friends? How do I get people to consider me a Fameball?

People want people to follow them… They want *ANYONE* to follow them. They just like how it FEELS to be followed. It doesn’t matter what they have to do or how bad they make themselves look so long as someone new subscribes to their channel or RSS feed.

This is the difference I was trying to explain to Dave, but failed until now. I’ve been popular since my earliest memory I still have available to me, around 5 years old, in kindergarten. I have *ALWAYS* had crews my entire life. I’m currently Facebook friends with guys and gals I knew in Elementary School, JHS, High School, College and from work & social environments after I graduated.

I meet new people every single time I go to an event, which is several times a week here in NYC. I’m popular FOR REAL, as a by-product of who I am as a person. I’m successful in business FOR REAL, as a by-product of how I conduct myself when I work for clients and their passing that information on via word of mouth so new prospective clients call or email *ME* asking if I can work for them, not the other way around.

This is exactly the explanation I was looking for, so Thank You, Melyssa Ford! :D

Who are you, again?

Lots of people these days are putting the cart before the horse. They want to be famous, but there’s no reason why they should be. They want to have successful blogs, but they don’t write ANYTHING ORIGINAL. They want people to follow them so they can enjoy the sensation of people seeming to give a flying **** about anything they ever thought about.

To me, that’s completely empty and worthless, which is why I’m finally getting to put this topic to rest two years later. I’m popular because I’m supposed to be.

Anywhere you put me, I’m going to make new friends & acquaintances. I’m MicroFamous because of who I am and what I do… EVERY DAY.

I did it yesterday, I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m gonna do it again today because being popular is natural to me and not something I hope to be, wish I was or would like to convince other people that I am.

I just spent a couple of hours writing this post because it’s worth it to me. I get my own kicks out of it, my email subscribers are going to receive it a few hours from now. My RSS subscribers are going to receive it right after I press “Publish”. Eventually, I’ll run into someone that will mention this post to me f2f, IRL and then I’ll be fascinated, amazed and appreciative that the current wonders of technology afford me the privilege of speaking to whomever feels like listening to, watching or reading my content.

So now I’m fully self-expressed on this topic. :D I’m fully prepared to explain to someone why I’m different from people who output content to get attention and collect followers, yet whom under careful inspection are clearly exposed to be attention-whores and who are, in reality… Famous For Nothing.

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If you enjoy anonymity, it used to be that the only people you had to worry about dating were actual celebrities. This was because THEY were the only ones showing up in the media. The paparazzi get paid to chase them all over creation, taking pictures of them, and then they’d end up on those dumb shows that come on after the news that scrape around for any gossip they can find about someone currently famous.

Social Media has advanced to the point where it’s not only the ACTUALLY famous that you have to look out for. There are people that are said to have micro-fame or are called “internet famous”. There are different levels of micro-fame, but the way SM works, the level doesn’t really make a difference. ALLLLLL you need is for one person to take a picture of you and place it on a site or in a feed that other people pay attention to, and you could end up in social bookmarks, reblogged, captioned… what-have-you.

In this case, the best defense is a good offense. You’re way better off controlling your own media from the giddyap than trying to chase it down after the fact. As an example (which has nothing to do with dating), I went to a party one time and out of the tons of pics I took with people, I took one with this chick I had never met before. There were lots of people taking pictures at the same party. After I posted mine, I got a sob-story email from her with some bullshit about how she didn’t want this guy she knew to know that she had been out partying. :/ She asked me to take it down and I did… *NOT* because I believed a word she said, but because all of my pics are with people that *WANT* to be in them with me. I didn’t need her up in the mix with that kind of attitude. :D

The obvious question is… “Why are you so stupid that you a) went partying when you weren’t “supposed to” and were risking getting caught? b) went to a party where probably one out of every four people there had a camera and was taking pictures? and c) didn’t say to people that were taking pictures that you needed not to be seen on the internet?” Actually, (c)’s irrelevant, because if you KNOW you’re not supposed to be out partying and you see cameras…… LEAVE!

So anyway, like I said, that particular situation had nothing to do with dating, but it’s clear to me that there are a lot of people that don’t realize the times we’re living in and that your ass might be tagged on Facebook before you wake up from the alcohol you drank last night. So for those people that don’t understand what time it is in the year 2008, here’s what you need to know in order to date the “Internet Famous”…..

1) Don’t do it

If you really enjoy your privacy, don’t date anyone “internet famous” AT ALL. :D Look for a like-minded person who’s TRYING to stay out of the limelight like you are. If you just CAN’T get over it and you’re sweating this micro-famous person so much that you just HAVE to try it, read on…

2) Don’t go ANYWHERE with them in public

Especially in a place like NYC, where we all use public transportation and/or walk, DO *NOT* go ANYWHERE out-of-doors with your internet-famous crush. There’s no telling who reads that person’s blog or knows what they look like and will be the first one to report the where, when and with-whom of sighting a micro-celebrity. The odds of noseyness increase exponentially if said micro-celeb has declared some form of relationship to someone via Social Media Status Updates. This leads to a wildfire spreading of your business, as people try to confirm with myriad other friends of theirs: “Isn’t whomever dating so-and-so?”.

3) Meet them everywhere

If you STILL insist on going out in public with this person, MEET them places. Don’t arrive at the places WITH them. People are easily psyched out by asynchronous arrivals and departures. Make sure you’re there before they are and you leave before they do, or vice versa. Make sure it’s a good 30 minutes before the second person makes moves from the location. You can always meet up at the cribbo later on. ;)

4) Hide in plain sight

It’s very funny how people attempt to play it off that they’re messing with other people and then they act so completely different towards that one person when they’re together in public. You may as well have a neon sign that says “We’re Dating”, with flashing lights and pointing arrows… Or maybe those T-Shirts that say “I’m with Stupid =>” “<= Stupid's with Me". :D

Instead, if you're supposedly single, Act As If. Hide in plain sight. The micro-celeb will need to understand and support your position. You're doing THEM a favor by dating them in the first place, so they need to hook you up with certain concessions that minimize the risk of people finding out that you're messing with them.

5) NEVER post relationship status updates

All you need to look like an idiot is for your status to go from “single” to “it’s complicated” to “in a relationship” and back to “single” every week. If that’s what’s really going on in your life, Keep. It. To. Yourself. :D Save all that status stuff for when it’s ACTUALLY real, not when you THINK it’s real. If you just HAVE TO post SOMETHING, keep some physical stickies next to your computer so that when you get that urge, you can physically write on it that you’re dating someone and stick it on your wall so you can look at it and admire it for a few days until you need to crumple it up and throw it in the trash.

6) Control yourself

Once in a blue, as I’m walking down the street and a guy’s walking towards me with his girl, when he detects me, he tightens up his grip on his girl… holds her hand tighter… puts his arm around her… something. It’s really funny. :D That’s a subconscious defensive reaction. In his mind, he feels the need to indicate more than he was already that he’s “with” this chick. It’s typical male territorial pissings, but the point is that he’s giving away the fact that he’s nervous about losing his rap to this chick. If his game were TIGHT, he could leave her alone with any number of dudes and not be worried that she’s gonna give it up.

Similarly, you need to play it cool and control yourself when you’re out in public with this internet-famous person you’re supposedly not dating. Fellaz… Do *NOT* eyeball people like “Why are they hugging MY girl? :( ” if you’re supposed to be dating her on the sneaks. Ladies… Do *NOT* find reasons to interrupt every single conversation your boyfriend’s having with other chicks unless you want to make yourself a prime suspect.

7) iChat is your friend……… sort of. :/

AIM/iChat, Skype, ooVoo, what-have-you are all brilliant alternatives to risking going out in public to communicate with your internet-famous crush. They all have video and audio capabilities on top of being able to text chat. Use these services to have fellowship, get your laugh on, figure out plans and timetables for the evening (see tip #3), veto clothing decisions, etc… Just keep it clean so Chris Hanson doesn’t invite you to sit down for a glass of lemonade. :(

The downside of iChat is… If YOUR video/audio icon stays ghosted for hours and so does your crush’s… you’re busted. :D

8) Make up a fake significant other

This actually works like a charm. :D People are basically simple-minded when it comes to relationships, so as long as they *know* you have a significant other floating around somewhere, they’ll blind themselves to the fact that you might be dating your internet-famous crush. Make sure this fictitious character lives far enough away from here never to show up at ANY scene events, evAr…. but close enough that you can hop on Metro North, LIRR or Amtrak for a couple of hours and visit them for the weekend. Make them affluent enough to live wherever they live, but NOT affluent enough to train it to NYC and party… evAr.

If the heat is on and the jig is about to be UP… Your FSO will suddenly get a promotion… causing them to move to Japan, and since you can’t/won’t learn Japanese, you’ve decided it’s in your best interest to let the relationship go. :(

Grieve for 1/3 of the time you were dating your FSO, make up a new one, rinse, repeat. :D

9) Enlist the help of others

You may not be able to carry off these tactics on your own. If this is the case, getting trustworthy people down with the program will help you immensely. If they are hanging out with you and the internet-famous person…. they will say they were only hanging out with you. If they were only hanging out with you… they will say they were hanging out with you and your FSO. They’ll make up stories and propagate them throughout their Social Media sphere of influence to corroborate whatever position you’ve decided to take. They will text you ahead of time not to show up together if there are unexpected Social Media people where you planned to hang out for the evening. Actually… Some people get paid to do this. They’re called Personal Assistants.

10) Don’t tell your internet-famous crush JACK!

Nothing… Nuth-Thang… NOTHING! :D This person has problems keeping THEIR OWN BUSINESS “out the street”, so you KNOW they’re gonna blab YOUR business all over creation! Save it. Don’t tell internet famous people you’re dating JACK that you wouldn’t post on your own blog. Don’t tell them anything you wouldn’t tell your Grandmother. Don’t tell them anything that you wouldn’t tell your next SO after you break up with them. Nuth-THANG!!! :D

So there’s your guide to dating the “internet famous”. This is 2008. People in Australia can find out what you did last night in NYC before you’ll be able to find the same media yourself and attempt to get yourself untagged. Your best bet is to take evasive action and enable preventative measures similar to those that I’ve outlined. Overall, your best bet is not to date ANYONE living this Social Media lifestyle if you’re not interested in being a part of it yourself.

Welcome to the show! :D

DatingGenius

…

EDIT: Bonus Tip! :D

I wasn’t thinking about this, but an excellent tip was passed to me just now, and I wanted to add it….

11) Get a hobby

Normally, being “internet famous” goes hand-in-hand with a lot of interesting things going on in that person’s life. Make sure that YOU have something that YOU’RE doing that can be a focal point for conversation as well. This is one of the reasons why actors date actresses and celebrities and entertainers tend to date each other as well. Each of them have interesting things to talk about from their side of the table. You don’t have to be doing “big thangs”… Just make sure you have SOMETHING going on so that you don’t always have to talk about your SO’s internet fame every time you get together.

As the contributor of this tip said:

Internet famous people get bored dating a “fan”.

DatingGenius
 
 

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After my cousin… whom I didn’t even know reads my blog… had some fascinating comments for me about my Fame, Popularity & Star Power post, I thought I’d try again to explain what I get and don’t get out of posting to the internet.

Revisiting the definitions I used for the article:

Fame = a lot of people have heard of you (clearly relative… “a lot”)
Popularity = a lot of people LIKE something about you
Star Power = a lot of people know what ADDED VALUE you bring to a production

Fame

Now… By those three distinctions, Fame, to me, is absolutely useless. People have heard of your name?… but have no particular interest in, care about or respect for anything you’ve ever done? hehehe No Thanks. :D

There are lots of people that are famous for nothing. People know their names because their parents are rich or because they run around town making scenes or everybody thinks they’re jerks. Still, these people are famous. To many of them, that’s worth something. I’m sure it gets them in the door at some clubs they otherwise wouldn’t be allowed into or it gets them laid a couple of times with groupies that enjoy self-validation through being selected for sex by someone that people think is someone.

I think my lack of interest in fame comes from elementary / junior high school. Growing up in New York City, personalities develop really early. They have to, because you have to fit into your clique(s). It’s not like the sticks, where you can be just anybody, or NOBODY and have the exact same experience in life. In NYC, you like Rock or you don’t. You like Hip-Hop or you don’t. Your parents are rich, or they’re not. You dress cool, or you don’t. You drink and do drugs (yes, in JHS), or you don’t. You’re cool, or you’re not. You’re smart, or you’re not. You’re artistic, or you’re not. You play a cool instrument, or you don’t. You have to work, or you have an ‘allowance’.

I was fortunate that by going to specialized schools, all these kids were thrown in together, because their parents wanted them to be the best in the world. I got to mingle with future movie stars and future gas station attendants. Kids from Park Avenue and kids from the projects. Kids whose parents were already famous and kids whose parents weren’t even born in the USA (hehehe not that that’s a prerequisite for fame hahaha).

What I took away from that was that even if your family’s name rings bells or you throw the best parties or you have the most money or the best girlfriends, that doesn’t make you cooler or more interesting than somebody people haven’t heard of. Since I like cool and interesting people, fame isn’t something that’s important to me… my own, or someone else’s.

My cousin also snapped on the fact that I said I don’t care about this stuff, yet I posted my “recent visitor list”:

hahahaha :D Well… The thing about that is that people don’t hit my site looking for Bill Cammack. People come here looking for concepts that they were contemplating and searched for. Just because someone visited from Australia, looking for information on the dating scene in NYC doesn’t mean that they looked at the author’s name or even gave a damn who wrote the article. So, Yes… :D It’s congruent to say that I’m not interested in fame, and in the next breath mention how people visit my site from all over the world.

I thought of my cousin the other day when I was hanging out and someone I had never met before was raving about a video of mine (that he had no idea I created) that he had watched and enjoyed. I was happy that he enjoyed himself, haha but I never mentioned that *I* was the one that shot and edited that video. Had “fame” been an interest of mine, I would have made sure that he knew that he was speaking to, as well as hanging out having brews with the incredible content creator, Bill Cammack! HAHAHA… How ridiculous is that? Worthless. I was glad that he enjoyed it. I enjoyed that he enjoyed it, and the conversation changed topics without me requesting props from him and propagating my worthless “Fame”. :D

Popularity

Popularity, OTOH, is extremely useful. I can see how I can be accused of using the internet to attempt to gain popularity. It makes sense, because it’s very tough to distinguish between popular people posting THE FACTS about what they do on a regular basis and unpopular people attempting to *become* popular by strategically crafting an internet persona. I can’t help it that I hang out with cool-ass-people ALL THE TIME! :D

It’s not my fault that this is NYC, and there’s ALWAYS something going on. :D

If I happen to get out my camera and document something that’s happening, that’s because….. it’s HAPPENING. :D It’s not something staged for the benefit of the internet population that stumbles onto my site from Google.

Popularity’s built in the trenches… Person to Person. You can be as internet famous as you like, but if you’re a Herb in person, your props go right down the drain. Popularity’s an aura you carry with you… Your ability to make friends on the fly and enjoy people’s company. It’s about the interpersonal relationship you have with the person you’re spending time with right now.

Having said that, the internet affords us all the opportunity to get to know each other asynchronously, and in most cases, anonymously. What people post to the internet is an expression of their own interests, intelligence, fantasies, desires, skills… Where that becomes useful is when someone’s aware of you because of your internet presence and then gets to meet you IRL and find out how close your real life persona is to how you portray yourself through text, images and video.

So… For people that ARE popular, and especially those that have always BEEN popular, the internet isn’t an extremely efficient way to increase that, because the real relationships are built when people actually spend time together… NOT when they’re reading something someone wrote or watching a video they made on the internet.

Star Power

Increasing one’s Star Power via creating and posting content to the internet is really the most valuable takeaway of the three, IMO… other than one’s own satisfaction in creating and being an artist. Since you can create stuff but never post it, we’ll take that out of the running. :) The ability to demonstrate what you do and how well you do it to people around the world, watching it asynchronously, on their own time schedules and when they seek it out themselves via search engines is both immensely powerful and addictive. I had a conversation with Phil Campbell in England and Liz Burr in California about a post I wrote the other day, and I haven’t discussed that post with anyone, IRL. The ability to express one’s self without the limitation of territorial boundaries is exhilarating… even in a text post like this. I also understand that it’s hard to explain to people that aren’t involved in it because *I* didn’t understand it until *I* got involved.

Since Star Power’s based on the added value that *YOU* bring to a project, it’s built regardless of the projects you work on… assuming you’re branding yourself correctly. If you’re the host of the show, you want people to know what your name is, so that if/when you branch off to do another project, people understand the quality you’re going to bring to it. At this point, both Veronica Belmont and Lindsay Campbell have parlayed this concept perfectly, IMO. People are aware of the value that they bring to the table, regardless of which shows they’re fronting. Is it useful and valuable for people in Japan to be aware of the work one does in the USA? Most definitely! :D

So… Out of the three, Fame does nothing for me personally, because it never really touches your life. Popularity’s fun and useful, but it’s something generated AUTHENTICALLY in close quarters, not across the wires and screens of the internet. When you know, feel and understand what REAL popularity is, internet popularity’s relatively worthless, mentally and emotionally. Star Power is great when you want to work with someone else on a project. They know the quality you’re bringing to the table, and can decide whether they want to collaborate with you based on their honest perception of you as a person and your qualifications as an expert in your chosen field.

I post because I enjoy it. If I meet great people IRL because of it, Great! :D If it makes it easier for me to work on video projects that I think are cool and interesting, Great! :D The only other benefit I can think of right now to Internet Fame is that I never carry business cards… I just tell people to Google “Bill“. :D

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