In June 2008, Horiwood interviewed African-American blog king and celebrity blogger, B Scott of the LoveBScott website. In those days B Scott proudly wore an afro.
Two stories were written specifically for an indigenous Maori audience of horis in New Zealand, for Tu Mai Magazine when B Scott was interviewed. One on the life of a Hollywood blogger, in general. It makes for good reading.
In a Clockwork Orange Town like Hollywood can be, stars are like pin cushions, as this artwork In Your Own Skin by artist CMBL depicts. It’s always refreshing to meet a blog King like B Scott, who uplifts rather than tears down.
B Scott is pictured here achieving part of his American dream, of meeting Mariah Carey and being numbered in her star camp. Priceless!
Story follows:
The Phenomenon of the Hollywood Entertainment Blogger–A Prelude:
Written by Horiwood for Tu Mai Magazine, June 2008.
The Phenomenon of The Celebrity Blogger: A Prelude
It’s a fact. A blogger’s life is surreal. In the fast-moving world of the internet, a blogstar’s daily reality is as speedy as the breaking news of A-List stars that they report on hour by hour.
In between all of the witty headlines that a talented blogger creates and uploads along with eye-catching pics of big name stars, a celebrity blogger’s life embodies the dangerous show-biz essence of the hustle and bustle of Hollywood.
Their lives are exciting. Their brains are quick. Millions of people from all over the globe log onto their websites everyday. They have a lot of influence and power as they can shape the perceptions of the masses as much as Larry King can persuade adroitly in his in depth interviews on a media news giant like CNN.
Though once ignored by big media gatekeepers, bloggers have turned the tide as their ratings rolled in. You can’t argue with the numbers. More people are reading blogs at times, and then watching TV. The writer’s strike recently in Hollywood meant that audiences haven’t returned to their favorite TV shows, once new episodes of hit shows went back on air. Even Grey’s Anatomy with big name stars, like Patrick Dempsey and Katherine Heigl, has slumped in their post-Writer’s-Strike return ratings.
Where did these media audiences go? No one knows for sure, but blog site audiences have grown considerably during this same time frame. So… I have observed and now know where these audiences are living each day for their weekly fix of fun and entertainment. They’re online reading blogs. TV Networks now know that they need to beware of the talent embedded in the life and fingertips of a talented blogger.
It’s also a fact that people vote with their feet in America, whether that be at movie theaters, motivationally positive super churches, lavish Broadway shows or big stellar rock concerts here. You can’t argue with the hard digits that reveal the bums-on-seats popularity-principle of any uplifting and life changing, entertaining experience.
An audience will find what they want, with or without anyone’s permission. [On that note, go TU MAI Magazine staff and you TU MAI-er peeps who know where the real media oil is at for your fine diverse selves! Rock on!]
Likewise, people also vote with their computer mouses and internet-happy fingers and bloggers are now viewed as being serious media experts that are here to stay. Mario Lavandeira of perezhilton.com fame has 20 million people viewing his website each day. Larry King is lucky to get that audience for any one his show’s here in America.
Blogs are highly addictive. And a good blogger knows how to create and supply new content each day as escapist-opium for the masses they report to and dish up the celebrity news to. Something simple as “Britney, bumps & grinds yet anotha car in her merc!!!,” can garner a blogger 200,000 new -user web hits in a month.
The phenomenon of the blogger and their rising popularity into blog stardom is logically understandable. Good blogger’s have perceptive eyes, lightning wit, seemingly endless creativity, O.T.T personalities and razor sharp senses of humour.
In truth, a blogger’s “reality check” bounced a long time ago because you have to be driven and nuts to even consider being a blogger. For the best bloggers it’s an all consuming calling rather then merely a job. They feel that passionately about what they do. They talk about the importance of their “voice” in the world. It’s cute.
A blogger can steer large amounts of cash into their favorite charity’s coffers, by providing a website link to their charity of choice and encouraging their masses of devoted blog fans to “donate and make a difference.” They are sometimes like online Robin Hoods, taking from the rich and distributing resources evenly to the poor. How can you not like and admire them for such a trait?
They all admire Angelina Jolie I’ve noticed. When Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Jolie) give to the poor, so do blogstars. It’s also cute to watch happen.
They are as much angels of hope and mercy as well as being venomous cyber-b*tches with their much feared poisoned pens lancing many a star’s ego. Because they were once misheard, ignored or mistreated by the old guard in entertainment, young blogstars are resilient and tough.
They are survivors, who have learnt to give back to others in dire need. The best blogstars that I respect and know have an awareness of giving back and “sharing the love” (as they say), to those worse off then themselves.
They give, because they were once never given to appropriately for what their cleverness and were exploitatively rolled of all of their creativity in abusive and exploitative ‘media internships,’ that abound here in America and all across LA. Hey, even I did one of those, so I can relate!
Other people, even famous celebrities, once wore a young blogstar’s brilliance on their own faces on TV shows and the blogstar wasn’t credited correctly for their behind-the-scenes “creative bling” which helped attract a star’s audience and shape their profile.
One day, the blogstar woke up, their scars healing a little and took their creative wand back and began to use their writing talent to create their own platform. They did it on a “nickle and a dime” when they started a blog. That’s also what I love about them. They are as resourceful as they are survivors and they inspire me to want to do the same.
Blogstars I know (ranging from 22 years old to 64!), honestly believe they have a voice or an opinion of fairness and truth that people need to hear. Because this belief is so strong inside them, they were compelled to create their own media platform by going outside of the established media square, and coming back into the media on top of their game. To me, they rock for that!
Now, they are the watchdogs and referees of entertainment and the fame game, greatly deciding which stars have true street cred and are “real” and also who’s totally fake. They blow the whistle on cool and not cool behavior of entertainment and world leaders. They are also extremely funny, “a laugh a minute” and are surprisingly wise people amidst their often shallow, “throw away” or “quick burn” news items they cleverly create.
Whether we like them or not, they are leaders of the new media frontier world. Many are neurotic and eccentric too. They talk about “constantly evolving” and invented “freaky personas,” to both entertain and to let people know not to mess with them, or they will “jack them up” before you can say the word “yesterday.” I like it! Their “tude” is very Maori warrior-ish fierce! And also very LA.
A lot are in their early twenties. They have raw and naïve youthful ambition as their motivating fuel. They are fierce media warriors who are the world’s rising media experts and there’s no stopping them. They are also the kings and queens of hip. They can blow up a relatively unknown YouTube singer who caught their eye, within a 6-month time frame by featuring them three of four times on their blog site. They are star makers of new stars.
The blogstar generation’s popularity hinges on their ability and talent to utilse and cash in on the increased usage of i-phones, crackberry culture, text talk, website addiction, YouTube and MySpace culture and the miracle of mobile telephony.
Blogstars are often both prophets of entertainment as well as being young multi-media gurus. Their predictions of what stars will do next, or should do next are frighteningly accurate! If they get it wrong, they could get sued here in America for defamation. They have court cases pending all the time. But they still have the courage to be honest, give their view, back their gut, stick to their guns and do what they do well.
Because they were once ignored, (most are a little bit A.D.D!), more then anything, a blogstar lives by their gut instincts. Perhaps that’s what I most admire about them, because as a Maori Kiwi, I can relate as we all stem from ancestors who clearly followed their gut instincts too into unknown great ocean waters.
No matter what race we all are as Kiwi’s, we can all say, that along with our Mori Ori and Maori founding ancestors of the Pacific, that our tipuna’s fine instincts guided us to live in our green enviable paradise known by all in the world as “Godzone.”
A blogger doesn’t have an “actual Aotearoa” like us lucky Kiwi sods do! So, the best they can do, is create a magical and entertaining playground in cyberspace on their blogs that audiences can visit and be their guests in.
They are tourist guides into the latest, emerging trends in entertainment. And it takes a talented person to define daily, the digital age in which we live.
A blogstar makes sense for us of the craziness of being human in the world. A blog is a narrative of life lived in the fast lane. Hollywood is a blogger’s favorite theatrical world to siphon entertaining surrealness into their blogsites and increase their bog’s popularity and profile. Bloggers also have a touch of naughty, which makes them lovable and fun. Touche!
They are puppeteers inside the Hollywood circus. Celebrity bloggers use and manipulate the images and profiles of famous people, often using big stars as mere secondary characters that they puppeteer under their lightning-quick keyboard fingers to position humorously within their blogs.
Beyonce’s glamorously famous red carpet pose, with one arm raised, positioned slightly behind her head in a daring sleeveless and cleavage-plunging gown, can be reduced to, “Beyonce works her slutty pitt-action, again!!!” Blogger’s are mercenary with their treatment and representation of big stars.
But somehow, the best bloggers always manage to make us laugh. This is their true gift, and we only laugh at what we find to be slightly true. They are comedians that get the endorphins pumping through our paparazzi-hungry veins. And that’s got to be good for one’s health!
But what motivates a blogger to do what they do up to 16 hours a day? They are both clever recyclers of “star’s big media moments” and perhaps desperado parasites of another’s fame, depending on what light you view them in. This is Hollywood, so they can be forgiven for that parasitic human frailty. A blogger has to eat and survive somehow each day too, I guess. And they work darn hard for it each day.
One thing is for sure though, if someone has a shine on them, you can bet a grand that a blogger is going to import some of that shine into their blog in order to get the stardust all over their blog pages and onto their own media profile as a blogstar.
They are also the envious Tinkerbells of the rich and famous whose fairy dust they swab off stars and sprinkle onto whomever they deem to be worthy of having a voice. Likewise, they are also the Peter Pans of emerging media who will perhaps never grow up. Which can be viewed as a good or bad thing.
Post-teenage hood, they are still cutting out their favorite stars pictures from their favorite magazine’s and putting them up on their ‘bedroom walls.’ This time, their bedroom is cyber room online for all to see who their heroes are that they emulate.
Millions of people view their vlogs (video-logs) often shot in their bedrooms by themselves, too, each day. Personalising through a v-log upload is a blogger’s favorite tool, to keep the blogstar’s disciples close at hand.
That being said, in a town built entirely of smoke and mirrors, like Hollywood is, celebrity-driven blogs provide a window into the glamorous reflections of the lives of the rich and famous. By using the images of stars we somehow came to admire, bloggers give us a quick fix respite from the banality of our own mundane nine-to-five normal lives with their fresh blog postings on the hour.
No one knows better then a celebrity blogger that fame is illusive. A blogger lives around the quicksand-like terrain of the fame-game. Each year they watch new stars rise and walk the red carpets, while mapping the “once A-List, now trainwrecks,” that fall from grace each year as fame’s gravity sucks stars down into the dreaded D-List terrain through being overexposed.
As they say here in Hollywood, “What goes up, must eventually come down, but plastic surgery sure helps a lot, dontchathink?” And a blogger’s scalpel is their writer’s “pen.” Many stars now secretly pay my blogger friends here, just to keep their A-List, star power hot. Or, not to say anything ill of them. It’s a serious business being a blogstar I’m noticing.
Blogstars love a successful star as much as they love a trainwreck. (And America loves to love herself her trainwrecks!) Coverage of stars who are O.O.C (out of control) gets a blogger noticed fast, and daily web hits increasing is what being a successful blogger is all about. Britney’s recent meltdown a few months ago, cemented many a blogstar’s fame today.
A blogger must hold their audience for the advertisers who post ads on their site. This is how they get paid and it’s a cutthroat game each day. Advertising is the main way a blogger makes any money and has a pulse.
Bloggers don’t see a penny for two or three years, until they “blow up” and can make close to a half a million dollars a year. Only the best one’s do though. By far, my favorite blogger is rising blogstar, B.Scott of LoveBScott.com.
He’s totally nuts! Always good blog audience fodder in my book! Besides, if America is set to possibly have her first black president, then it perhaps needs to first make way for its very first major black and multi-racial blogstar, in a young B.Scott. :)
ENDS ~posted by Horiwood.Com, Hollywood California USA. 11.4.09~
