I always thought Daft Punk figured out the perfect solution to the how to be famous problem. Everyone recognizes their artist name and their artist costume, but virtually no one knows their real name or would accost them on the street.
https://www.insider.com/instagrammer-arii-2-million-follower...
Make ten deals like that per year, that's $100,000k.
$100K doesn't seem like a particularly amazing payoff for that. Most "real jobs" tend to become more stable and lucrative as you gain experience. I'd definitely prefer a job that paid $50K that I could at least somewhat rely on to exist next year over $100K that could disappear at any second.
During my college years, one of my dorm mate’s dads was a famous Hollywood producer. He once said to me, “You want everyone to know your name and no one to know your face.”
Taking it a step further, we could quote Bill Murray:
I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: ‘try being rich first.’ See if that doesn’t cover most of it.
"Well, I know what it's like to be famous but I can't tell you anything about being rich"
It’s been a long time since I last watched them, but there was something special about the show and the movie.
It wasn’t simply people doing dumb things to hurt themselves.
It was more like, experiments to see what kind of crazy stuff they could pull off without hurting themselves too bad. That’s how I see it anyway.
It was also an insight into skateboarder culture.
And they were quite a creative bunch of people, often coming up with new things to try.
And on top of that they were good entertainers too.
To say some of the cast members had issues though is an understatement.
Also to the GP - trying getting famous by being stupid. I'd say it's harder than getting famous by being smart. Instead of competing with a handful of geniuses you're competing with a world of morons.
No, I don't think so. Any blowback he's gotten is not from "fame" but rather his difficult personality.
He seems to fancy himself as Tech Faulkner; I'd rather be Tech Hemingway.
If Eric's brother Bret is as naïve about politics as Eric believes, then Eric is as naïve about word choice. Probably more so.
I'd have more control over my time (no need to work a day job I don't feel passionate about). I have issues with making doctors appointments and things because I still feel kind of awkward taking the day off, if I were rich that would also not be a problem because once you have fuck you money you can absolutely take the day off to go to the dentist.
I'd have more of an ability to set my own schedule meaning I could more readily do things like go learn a martial art or participate in hobby groups.
Like sure I don't think it would solve anything but it seems very much like an out of touch ultra rich thing to say. I don't think most people think being rich would make their lives perfect, just a lot fucking better than they are currently.
I could see that being a disguise
Shame we're seeing places explicitly banning facial recognition rather than biometric recognition.
People already know the root cause, and it is overpolicing and discretionary enforcement of crimes like drug possession.
The broken-windows policy has been disproven, despite disproportionately impacting "the specific groups" (black Americans) that now pollute the dataset that ML uses.
And even in the concept or drug possession and drug consumption, all groups have been shown to use them in the same distribution. For example. These kinds of things start a cycle that means the second and third minor infractions cause greater consequences in court, which further reduce opportunities that lead to the dangerous crimes being committed.
So we already know the dataset is polluted.
Pointing to the top of the iceberg and saying "well they commit the crimes no need to spend any energy on this mystery why don't we all just admit they're the problem" is a complete deflection promulgated intentionally and you should really check your peer group and media sources if this is the extent of the comfortable worldview you (or anyone passing by) have, the problem and solution is already known.
The solutions are being implemented in a patchwork and slowly, which is not incorporated in datasets that ML use, largely due to apathy and lack of awareness of engineers and the management of the tech companies involved, and lack of representation of the affected groups in engineering and management of tech companies.
No, you've only pushed the root cause back a step by doing this. It's entirely possible to understand that the way we're doing policing is wrong without resorting to an artificial, borderline-creationist mindset on aggregate group behaviour. Religious thinking is not going to help anything here.
> So we already know the dataset is polluted.
The dataset reflects something approaching reality. If anything, it reflects a version of reality that is already attempting to artificially compensate for group differences in order to quell conflict.
If you want to change reality, if you want to see less crime, if you want to see truly fair policing, then admitting to reality is an important first step. You're basically arguing for "juking the stats" in order to find fairness, when in reality such actions won't stop people from getting robbed, murdered, or having lives that offer so few opportunities for advancement that they end up turning to hard drugs to cope. ML is not to solve this problem either way, but it can actively prevent the problem from being solved if it becomes yet another mechanism to paper over the actual situation and instead point the finger for responsibility away from where it belongs: with individuals and their choices.
It's a shame it has to be like this. There's plenty of valid statistical / demographic information out there that lines up perfectly with everyone's lived experience, but the conclusions drawn from it are not pretty. All I can say is that it is possible to make inferences without making value judgements; we can point at problems without having evil intentions and without suggesting tyrannical interventions.
Killing one person in any kind of failed transaction is a bad enough offense that I believe you deserve at least a decade in jail. That said, I do believe in rehabiliatory justice, and that we shouldn't just throw people into an environment that's essentially some cross between a dysfunctional highschool and a networking seminar for criminals; but people who are willing to kill over $100 do not belong in public until they have proven conclusively that they have enough self control to be released.
The opiate epidemic, on the other hand, is a crime so heinous that it is nearly genocide-tier in nature. The perpetrators of such (i.e. the Sacklers among others) knew what they were doing, continually doubled down over time, and profited tremendously. Such parenthetical elites usually suffer absolutely zero punishment for their actions, nor is there any attempt to make rehabiliatory justics take on the challenge of so-called "white collar crime". At best, the perp learns how to hide their intentions and actions more, how to operate behind more intermediaries for abstraction's sake, etc.
Now, consider the topic at hand (which is somehow facial recog and not Daft Punk whom I loved dearly): what is the common factor here? It's simple: if you perform an analysis of the group memberships of the people who commit crimes in the aggregate, uncomfortable truths are revealed.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882683463/the-computer-got-it...
https://lawandcrime.com/civil-rights/third-innocent-black-ma...
https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-marilyn-monroe-effect-the-...
I wouldn't be surprised if this is a common trait of celebrities. Wear a mask, literally or figuratively, on stage or camera. Take the mask off and you're just an ordinary person that no one else will notice.
Bowie talked about that mask here, and how he used it to face his fears:
https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/166082106996/my-friend-t...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/fashion/david-bowie-invis...
https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/2610/No-One-Recognized-Marily...
My local neighbourhood has its fair share of nationally known famous faces. I’ve never once seen any of them treated like a celebrity because they don’t act like one.
Celebrities on campus is likely also a much more normal thing at UCLA, USC and in LA in general.
The corollary to the S.E.P. field in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (SEP - Somebody Else's Problem Field - loved the concept for the ultimate invisibility cloak)
Even if you somewhat it, you don't really expect it.
One early morning at tourist area (where I'd already seen a few celebrities), my friend and I are playing Daytona USA and this sunglass-wearing dude comes down and sits next to us to play. He looks vaguely familiar, but I guessed I had just seen him there before — there were a lot of regulars at this arcade. I'm bragging, but not exaggerating, when I say we were world-competitive at this game. This guy was good, but we destroyed him.
After the race, the guy got up, smiled at both of us, said nothing, and left. My friend and I talked a bit about the race — a sort of post-race analysis we often did to see if there was anything new we could learn — and during that process it sort of dawned on us that we had just played against a NASCAR driver.
This reminds me of a celebrity encounter I had once. I walked into a Gold's Gym in Raleigh, and saw a guy doing triceps press-downs on the machine right by the path to the locker room. I had to walk past to get to the locker room and as I approached I realized I was looking at Arn Anderson (professional wrestler).
I was a bit shocked and as I walked by him I did a double take and blurted out something stupid like "Tell me you're not Arn Anderson!?!" Of course he dead-panned the whole thing and just looked at me and said "I'm not Arn Anderson". By this point I realized it was absolutely him, but I was too awe struck to think of anything intelligent to say, so I just kept walking.
Probably about as stupid as I've ever come off in public in my life. :-(
The conclusion of the story though, is that he wound up in the locker room while I was still getting ready for my workout and I got a chance to chat with him for a while. We talked about the "good ole days" of Crockett Promotions / WCW and the 4 Horsemen, etc., etc. He seemed like a nice guy. I just regret forgetting to ask for an autograph.
It turns out, that gym is (well, was... it's closed now) close to the arena in Raleigh where the WWE shows take place, and it used to be common-place for professional wrestlers to stop in when they were in town for shows. That just happened to be the first time I personally met any of them.
I also saw Ed McMahon in an elevator a few months later at my shared office space. Something to the effect of, "Going up?" and I replied, "No down, thanks." Totally normal average Joe encounter.
Such a strange world we live in.
I got to sit next to Jamie and Adam on a plane from Phoenix to Atlanta once, everyone totally knew who they were because they were wearing their stage clothes and everyone kept bugging them (and by extension, me). They were understandably annoyed the whole time. I suspect if they had taken a minor effort to not look like their TV roles there'd have been far fewer people that recognized them.
https://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/mythbusters-feud-...
I remember seeing the French ex-president in a retirement home (he was visiting his father) and I was thinking 'nah, can't be him, what would he do here' until I got confirmation from the people I was with that it was in fact him.
> A famous actress, who was just the warmest person ever
> Several rappers
> Several championship-winning athletes
> Michael Steele, who was apparently a Geek Squad regular
My favorite was probably the gentleman who I believe had been on the Cosby Show: he came in twice, both times to drop 5 figures on TVs. Dude singlehandedly saved my job.
Obviously Kraftwerk's robots look like them to a certain degree, so Daft Punk have taken the on stage anonymity further but the anti-pop star thing is pure Kraftwerk.
There was famously only one way to contact Kraftwerk, via a phone at their studio with ringer mechanism removed.
If you had the number, only given out by their lawyer, you rang a preset time of day when the handset would be lifted... if you were lucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miWlfAlllOI&list=PLm69e5uphT...
it is a great coding music
MF Doom, Sia, the list goes on.
That's a great proof of talent, isn't it?
Gorillaz definitely benefited at bootstrap from being "the new project by Damon Albarn of Blur".
In Europe (UK but also elsewhere) Blur made it big with "Girls & Boys" (#1 in UK, massive hit). The chorus was an absolute meme where I lived.
It definitely looks like him, but who knows.
My hipster inspection is way out of date.
Semi-related, but one of my favorite satire posts of all time: https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/jk-rowling-rec...
Then 4 normal looking guys show up and he's like "Oh right, they don't dress up like that all the time".
Is a question common asked
On his head a bucket of chicken bones
On his face a plastic mask He's the bastard son of a preacher-man
On the town he left a stain They made him live in a chicken house To try and hide the shame
He was born in a coop, raised in a cage
Children fear him, critics rage
He's half alive, he's half dead
Folks just call him Buckethead!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Comic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BBZVQ4zBcU&ab_channel=RBArc...
I suspect it has more to do with the fact that when he wasn’t actually being (arguably) the worlds best drummer, he wasn’t in people’s face and making himself known. Running into a random dude on a motorcycle in Wyoming, or sitting in the corner of a coffee shop reading a book, most people would never think “Rockstar”.
Of course Gene Simmons, Mick Jagger or even Geddy Lee all have very distinctive faces so they are kind of screwed in that regards.
If you wanna talk "you have no idea who this is but an incredibly prolific artist", I want to put forth Max Martin [0].
It's hard to be famous without being famous, which is what Daft Punk pulled off.
I would assert that being famous is a skill that not all famous people develop, thus the disparity between those who shun fame and those who don't think it's a problem.
I like Jerry Seinfeld, but he (or at least the persona he plays in public) has this habit of being unable to put himself in other's shoes.
What I find rather interesting is that if one search for Mafumafu's face, what one obtains is his virtual avatar, a nonexistent character by which he repræsents himself in most instances, and one has to add keywords such as “real” to see his actual face, — which is all the more interesting since he's actually quite beautiful and clearly puts quite a bit of effort into his appearance.
My favorites are, of course, the black meal artists who only go on stage in theatrical makeup under stage aliases such as “Necrobutcher” and “Zhaaral”, whose real names and even genders are often unknown behind the makeup.
It also permits one to hire additional stand-ins and perform in multiple places at the same time.
I know this is some very hardcore marketing realpolitik but this is it.
Sia covers her face because she's not pretty, not because 'it's art'.
Adele's albums are closeups of her face not anything else, because she's attractive there, that said, she always wore herself well enough it didn't matter that much.
One of the few 'not good looking' is Ed Sheeran, but he's at least young, he's not going age well in front of the camera, it may not matter that much.
Google 'famous singers' and they are all quite attractive. Shawn Mendez and Justing Bieber are both one in at least 10 000 attractive. The ladies it's much harder to tell because of their makeup.
What would have made this much more interesting is if Daft Punk decided to actually 'replace themselves' and just let others take on the helmets. If they really wanted to milk it they could have gone for 'multiple versions' i.e. a standing show in Vegas, NY and Duabi or something with stand-ins. That's completely selling out but hey. There are possibly some legit ways to do that, like actually getting extremely talented producers and artists into the masks for a while to help kick of their career. They could make some really nice PR out of a culty thing like that.
Who they are can change as long as they look and act the same. It brings down costs and allows the creator to scale.
It's better than plays because shows in different cities will have different actors and everyone knows.
But you do lose the ability to promote based on individual people. And for plays that can be a huge draw. Stars will bring people.
Think of how much bigger blueman group coull be if each had a different personality. Perhaps a cartoon could have been made.
I wonder if any groups have stand ins ready to don the mantle for live performances if there were ever, for whatever reason, a double booking.