Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Celebrity vs. Non-Celbrity Rant

Celeb Rant
OK so who is this? Lara Croft Right? Angelina Jolie? No it's Allison Carroll she's been the official Lara Croft for the video games promotional stuff since 2008 where have you been? (That is what many people will say about me after this rant I guess)

I am beyond tired of Non-Celebrity-Celebrities. The people who are famous for just being famous. How the heck did they become famous? People who appear on or win these reality TV contest shows are NOT CELEBS! WHY OH WHY Does the frack'n Media treat them as celebrities?

When I first heard about that couple who had eight kids and got a reality television show to tell about them just because they had eight kids I didn't know or care what their names were. Then I started hearing about Nick and Sally or Cathy or whatever her name was/is. Every once in a while there would be a news headline that said "Sally upset over wedding cake" OK who the heck is Sally again? Oh Yeah she's that woman on that stupid reality show. People actually watch that show?

I am also sick of when the media using just one name in a headline. "Jessica is Pregnant" OK WHICH JESSICA? Simpson? Hawn? Beal? Sarah Parker? Rabbit? Private Lynch? WHO? WHICH ONE?

It used to be in reporting you would give the person's full name THE FIRST TIME you mention their name (an usually also in the tagline or headline) THEN after the first mention you can give just their last name. Since you have already mentioned their full name and your readers know who you are talking about. If you have a small closed audience and always mention the same people I guess you can get away with this type of first name only reporting, but most of the time this is just too confusing.

The same applies with organizations and companies. You give the full company name, or the companies public trading name FIRST then later you can use the acronym or abbreviation. The few exceptions are The FBI, CIA & KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti - English translation is Committee of State Security) organizations that are widely well known often world wide and are not often confused with something else.

OK we can get when someone says "Jacko" they mean Micheal Jackson or "Jay-Lo" is Jennifer Lopez but other than that most of the time it can get pretty confusing and then frustrating if you aren't up on the Celebrity of the Minute.

So please World Wide Media stop with the "Simpson goes back to Jail" Head-Lines. Which One? Jessica? O.J.? Bart? You know it's worse when the name is Smith or the first name is John. OK which John are you talking about now? Which one is currently the most popular John?

[Edit note:] Why is there some bracket like lines with the KGB translation? It doesn't show when I preview, but shows up in the final form. Weird.

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