It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed getting out, shuts the door and it goes back up the ramp.
It's all fakery.
100% of content on TV is fake. I used to say except the news, but now I'm not even able to trust that. If it's a commercial, definitely fake. If it's a TV show, 100% fake. Games shows shoot 5 episodes in a day, so when they say "last week's winner" it was last hour's.
I say this as someone that has been involved in all of it. However, the pre-interview is actually less about necessarily leading the interview but about helping the interview avoiding the dead air, blank stares, um, uhs, wells, type of stuff. Also, it is a great way to calm the nerves of those being interviewed if they are not normally in front of a camera which can be very intimidating to people telling a story they may already be nervous about. Trust me, you should be thankful for them.
It's the post editing decisions that you can really get yourself into trouble. You can totally make a sane person sound insane, or totally change the interview. Anything that is not live must be questioned in how much you trust the producers to actually allow the interview to go out as it was rather than chopped up to fit the producer's agenda. If I was to be interviewed, I would make part of my conditions to the interview being that I would be allowed to have my own camera/audio that could record uninterrupted to be able to counter any shenanigans in the edit bay.
Yes, I actually don't mind the pre-interview. It is a sensible thing to do for a variety of reasons. The thing that makes me cringe is more the late night talk shows (not all of them mind you) where the guest provides the questions to the host because they (or their PR people) have written some anecdotes for those questions/topics.
you might of well have responded with the one word reply of "Wrestling!"
You think no officials of any sport did or didn't make a call because of some bet somewhere? You think a sports player didn't make a catch? You think sports players aren't using performance enhancing drugs so that you might be entertained while they get rewards?
Some people just really want to believe that television is real. It's just not healthy to have this much faith in TV.
I've never watched the NBA, so I'd have no idea.
> You think no officials of any sport did or didn't make a call because of some bet somewhere?
Just so you're aware, there are numbers between 0% and 100%.
Or are you backing your claim down to "100% of content on TV has some faked element in some episode eventually"? Because that's not a very useful claim.
That's not a very useful statement either because most TV is openly fictional.
You made a really strong claim and doubled down on it, but I'm not sure if you actually mean anything close to what you said.
https://shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com/2016/12/14/she...
“… The segment was shot in July and it documents Ms. Larsen traversing the Island with her friend and realtor Roxanne Briggs as they tour three Shelter Island homes on the market in the $650,000 to $850,000 range.
Spoiler alert: Ms. Larsen actually bought her Longview home back in 2015, a full year before the show was taped, so the outcome was a foregone conclusion by the time the “Island Life” crew came to town…”
I have however gotten her to watch "This Old House" which actually shows real remodeling and home repair as opposed to sledgehammer porn fallowed by contrived drama between the hosts finishing with a walk through of a staged house where they advertise tacky furniture and overpriced appliances.
At correct time: https://youtu.be/H6EbDCxotdg?t=488
Better than driving on a real road whilst talking to a camera off to the side, no? Every car scene in every movie and TV show is "fake" too, just so you know.
That's not fakery. That's every classic car owner's dream. You get to show off the hot rod and not put miles on it. I am sure he does plenty of joyriding in that thing. Guy is anything but phony. He is actually one of thee more wholesome dudes on television ATM. We need more Guy Fieri's.
For example the Nike corporation. Some groups have heaped praise on them for supporting Kaepernick and related social justice protests. But was it altruism? Of course not. Their market research simply showed that their customers tended to feel passionately about that issue. So they did the math and calculated that the revenue they’d lose by taking a public position was more than made up for with what they’d lose, and better than if they’d remain neutral too - as their founder said “It doesn’t matter how many people hate your brand as long as enough people love it.”. Consider too that Nike now sells a majority of their product overseas to a very American-skeptic market.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/when-i...
It irks me people like Branson are blasé about faking something they don’t have to fake. He’s probably dedicated to the environment even if his activities and businesses aren’t friendly to the environment.
But just faking it like he really did it, he carried on with the ruse during his little speech too. Like, why?
There are a number of books about Branson, and they all underline that he's "not a detail person." As in, he literally doesn't understand what he's doing a lot of the time.
He's good at surrounding himself with competent people who make things happen. He's also good at sales - talking a good game, being charming and optimistic in front of the cameras, and getting people to put up money.
But after some early successes - especially the record company and recording studios - his record of delivery is mediocre, with not a few expensive failures.
With Branson everything is a front and not as solid as it appears to be, and he has a long list of former associates, clients, and partners who are not as impressed as they were initially.
That's not ideal for a conventional business. But when you're dealing with experimental aircraft full of rich people having a very risky adventure, the potential for disaster is spectacular.
People have already died on this project, and it looks as if it's only a matter of time before it literally blows up in someone's face in an extremely expensive way.
Sorry, I don't have anything substantial to add to this. But I just had to react with a smiley :-).
Mostly setup and then portions sold off, with Virgin licensing their name to the business.
Even before Covid, Virgin Atlantic is a real shit show financially with virtually everything (planes, landing slots etc) pledged as security for debt to some lender
Guy plays a sort of reality tv fictional persona which is a vamped up version of his own personality. His show is entertainment and not a documentary. Of course, he's not driving through the continental USA constantly to get to restaurants. He's a normal middle-aged man who needs rest and vacation and time off. He sleeps in decent hotels with his staff and they fly to their next destination. Workers deserve, at least, basic amenities and asking people to live a real life cartoony character is a bit silly. He's not hotrodding around everywhere (which would be risky to him and put a lot of miles on a classic car). His production is probably two dozen people. Its a business and should be respected as one from a worker's perspective. All 'reality' tv shows are heavily scripted. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
I'd be surprised if he even came up with the idea. They probably had a speech written for him, he got busy (or just felt out of it) and didn't bicycle there as planned, so they found some footage to release so they wouldn't have to change the speech.
It's identical. In this thread, Guy Fieri fans jump out to declare his persona actually true and good; on another message board, Branson fans are doing the same thing, explaining how he's nothing like Fieri.
The more money you have, the more you have of this kind of power mediated by economy. You can, in particular, use this power to have politicians do work for you (many ways of doing this are perfectly legal). Conversely, political power - the kind mediated by legal systems or explicit threats of violence - is directly convertible to money.
(There's also a special variant of the latter - power wielded by organized religions. The power to browbeat others into doing almost any arbitrary work. Of course, that one too is trivially convertible to both money and political power, and vice versa. That's why fully separating business, church and state is fundamentally impossible. They're different facets of the same thing. An Unholy Trinity.)
Power is how much money you control.
They’re not as closely linked as you think.
A managing partner of a $1B fund is more powerful than a person worth $10B on paper whose wealth is all tied up in a minority position in a company they are unable to sell the shares of.
Or consider the power of Biden vs his personal net worth.
Not we have rich business savy guys with not much of a science background holding the cards.
I have met very few wealthy men, young or old, who had great ideas. It's almost like the money dulls their brains? And their vanity projects are usually way out of their wheelhouse.
It's the same with Writers. I have read very few wealthy guys shop could write. They certainly have the time to write, but it's dribble. They are only read because they have money.
See https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/the-real-natur...
Orbit -- half way to anywhere -- that's the accomplishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit#Examples
(The Karman line is around 100km, so if we want to use 500ish km as the threshold for reasonable orbits, we really are in the ballpark of a hand's worth of fingers).
The altitude isn't really the point, so much as the trajectory -- if they miss the ground at least once I say we give them a round of applause.
So much energy invested in a dick measuring contest. I hope humanity reaches a point in which the incentive structure would stimulate a more meaningful investment of human labor. Not to say I'm not part of the problem...
People remember Yuri Gagarin, not these people.
I’m more concerned that he also puts other people’s lives on the line.
I suspect there is a natural evolutionary curb on the somewhat sociopathic qualities at work, whereby bravado is kept in some check by self-culling being commonplace.
Well, no.
All for the best marketing position for the near-space tourism business that Virgin (and, in competition, Blue Origin) is launching and each promoting with the media frenzy around their respective founder-on-board demo launch.
If I have to choose between this and nuclear-armed superpowers intimidating each other with super-accurate rockets - I'll take the billionaires.
To be honest I think it's awesome. We need people who are able and willing to push for something beyond the everyday, and it doesn't really matter why they're doing it.
I disagree with that. Why they are doing what they are doing is very important.
Elon is a set of flaws walking on two legs but his plans make sense: Humanity has all their eggs in one basket by being a single planet species. To change that we need to make space travel much, much cheaper than it was. To do that we need reusable and economical spacecrafts. He works alongside this plan.
Branson made people build him the adult version of a coin operated mall kiddie ride. You give it money and it shakes you around and later you can tell people that you are now an astronaut.
Two people, both have a ton of money and both used some of their wealth to assemble a team to build a spacecraft. The difference between them is the “why” they did this.
One if suceeds has changed the history of humankind. If he fails at the grand goal misserably he still made a vastly succesfull space company.
The other if he succeeds has a funfair ride with bragging rights. Meh.
The why is all that matters, because it affects the how and the what fundamentally.
No, you're overgeneralizing.
As counter-examples: - fitness goals - financial freedom goals (eg the FIRE communities) - altruistic goals - romantic goals (impress a potential partner)
are all proof that humans can be motivated by health/desire for physical well-being, kindness, compassion and personal comfort to progress to goals beyond the day-to-day.
Competition motivates some progress, but there are other sources of motivation as well :)
Romantic goals are inherently competitive - if you succeed, you're taking the partner from whoever else would have gotten her had you never existed.
Financial freedom isn't competitive really, you're right.
Altruism is borderline, given how much of "altruistic" activity is really about social signaling and competitive status games through conspicuous giving. Even if subconsciously.
All the above are day-to-day goals though, except perhaps altruism. By not day-to-day I mean something beyond satisfying the desires of your physical body to feel good, fuck, eat well, be safe, be admired, etc. Goals about species, deep time, eternal questions, the fate of the environment or the planet.
Personally, I found it the exact opposite. It's like the author was trying to pad something simple into "War and Peace" type volume.
Gave up after just a few paragraphs, as it's clear the author had no intention of getting to the point any time soon.