Shanzhai Lu

on a side note, i first heard this phrase the other night at dinner in SF w/ Jeremiah. hilariously fitting if you ask me. i have one particular case study in mind where an individual has spent the past year making up an entirely different persona online compared to real life.

why do people do that? especially in a world where online and offline world are converging more and more as i see people geting back to old school basics of legitimate person to person connection -- where social media then becomes a tool that reinforces offline connections that are real.

People are people, and for whatever reason, will occasionally try to be someone they are not. I know many real world rock stars, who for whatever reason, are not hip to nor participants in social media. This doesn't mean that they should not be given the benefit of the doubt simply because they are not active SM participants.

I know of far far far many other people who have few real world accomplishments, yet have somehow awarded themselves SM maven, guru, or even rock star status, simply based on a nice gravatar and a quadruple digit follower account.

People are generally good. Whether or not they are connected via SM is somewhat irrelevant, other than the convenience factor.
I advocate judging people by what they give, what they create, what they think, not by their "connectedness".

p.s no disrespect to you or @joywang whatsoever, i know you both give and create.

Hi Jeffrey,
Thanks for the feedback! Sorry for being a bit vague. I get where you're coming from and I think it's a different context I speak in. I'm all for harmless misrepresentation i.e. the person wants to live in a fantasy world. I get that. But when real lies are told. Real money is lost and real people are hurt in the process because of this misrepresentation, then I hope you understand why it annoys the crap out of me.

Social media is secondary in this. First and foremost the person is of questionable character to begin with who has somehow managed to convince 50K followers on Twitter that they are someone they are not as part of their LA based business. There are real people behind those follower counts who have gotten burned and refuse to do business with him.

Hope that makes sense. Thanks!

Right on -- Stay True!!!