Kaitlyn Lawes twitter!

Great exchange! Figure skating challenge up next! #Trillium2014 #crossfit #guesswho

Did u know Kaitlyn Lawes is the 3d most followed lady curler on twitter! #16.2k

Hey Kaitlyn Lawes lost all other punctuation on her keyboard/phone! #somanyexclamationpoints

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I don't know which is worse - this or Jessica's winks and hearts.

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All of the questions in this post are rhetorical. I haven't done enough research to have the answers.

Part of this blog and blog comments section has been looking at social media marketing, including its standards of integrity. I'm curious about how come what Tessa and Scott do, which is to combine deceiving the public on twitter with promoting their sponsors on twitter, is okay. Lawes does the same thing. Mostly I wonder if we must then assume that Lindt and pb chocolate milk can be considered participants in the manipulation and hoaxing of the public about Scott and Tessa's relationship.

Most people inside Scott and Tessa's network know they're married and have a daughter; this network can be described as enormous. Scott and Tessa must be getting feedback that their tactics are fine. It seems to me they've been innovators in using social media to not just actively promote a hoax, but in actively gaslighting the supporters of their skating, and those who follow figure skating. They're not reactive. There's no pressure from the media. Scott and Tessa instigate.

That last, the "it's not us - it's you" (actually it's "it's not us - it's them (fans)) is the "unique" component of all this - to actively and repeatedly report to the people you're lying to that you're being nothing but truthful, and, taking it a step further, to assert that the people you're lying to are confusing fantasy/performance with reality. You present yourselves as constantly needing to get out there and set people straight. (Which is another lie - they lie about their supporters. Apart from the blog, Scott and Tessa's false version of their status isn't questioned online.).

Until the reality show, one might argue that the people who partner with Scott and Tessa - other athletes, sponsors, representatives - aren't aware of Scott and Tessa's tactics. Figure skating doesn't get much coverage, nor do the personalities in the sport get coverage unless they're actively seeking it out. People in entertainment, talent management, other sports, event production, and sponsorship might be under the impression Scott and Tessa function like a lot of couples who maintain a platonic facade for privacy reasons, although even before the reality show, Scott and Tessa went into way more detail about how platonic they are than other couples have ever done. They repeatedly did entire interviews in print and video where that was all that was discussed. With Scott and Tessa, it's a little difficult for anyone to pretend to believe they're just working from a defensive position, but if you're not keeping track, that assumption can be made. But once they did the reality show, nobody could pretend that anymore.

This type of situation hasn't been addressed by the FTC (or, in Canada, the Canadian Competition Bureau, the FTC equivalent), or made it into any social media best practices guidelines. I imagine nobody at the FTC/Canadian Competition Bureau is even aware this sort of thing exists - Scott and Tessa are unique, after all. With the internet, rules and guidelines evolve in response to issues as they come up.

FTC/Canadian Competition Bureau

The linked article discusses the FTC's ability to govern Canadian advertising and sales practices (I imagine what Scott and Tessa do isn't sales/advertising, but marketing and promotion).

Here's the combination of factors that I question, wondering mostly if this is okay, and will become common practice:

1. Scott and Tessa publicly insist they are single and dating other people.
2. Scott and Tessa are married to each other, and have a daughter.
3. Their extensively promoted reality show, "Tessa and Scott," which aired on the commercially broadcast W network geared towards "women's programming", told us Tessa and Scott are each unmarried, are platonic, are not a couple, and told us Cassandra Hilborn was Scott Moir's girlfriend.The actual facts are Tessa was his wife, he was a married man, they have a daughter, live together as a family, and he was not dating Cassandra Hilborn.
4. W is an "entertainment" network, not a news channel; but their marketing of  "Tessa and Scott" stressed that we'd be seeing Tessa and Scott's actual life, the real them.This promotional angle was specifically built around Scott and Tessa's honesty, transparency, sincerity, and genuine character. Scott even took to insisting it was a documentary. (I don't know if describing your personalities as genuine, sincere, etc., rather than using the words "honest" or "the truth" to describe the content of the show you're promoting, constitutes a technical out, but marketing guidelines are ALL about those semantics.)
5. Scott and Tessa repeatedly portray the public as self-deceived in wishing or wrongly suspecting that Scott and Tessa would ever be or are together as a couple.
6. Any review of fan discussion outside this one blog will demonstrate, going back years, that fans do not and did not challenge Scott and Tessa's version of their relationship, and Scott and Tessa were not and are not responding to persistent or vocal skepticism from fans.
7.Scott and Tessa are proactive. They frequently introduce the subject of their relationship, using every social media, legit media and reality television manipulation and flat out lie under the sun.
8. Scott and Tessa use the same platforms they use to lie to the public to promote their sponsors. Do the sponsors know?

Does this mean a public figure can basically tell any lie they want about their personal circumstances on social media, market it, and have it be validated by legitimate media, sponsors, other public figures?

New Tweets From Tessa

Tessa Virtue has been in a sharing mood. Almost an oversharing mood. Who'd have guessed that she'd jump into twitter at all, let alone that she'd launch with the swimsuit issue:

Do you think Scott's seen this picture? For
years he's paraded himself in his swim trunks
on social media, while Tessa not so much.
She won't even attend the same events
Scott attends if the event is near a beach.
Turns out we're all allowed to see it; it's only Scott
who's not. Good thing Scott's not on twitter. 

She looks great in what is no doubt a current photograph, considering she also tells us that for a straight month, this has been her diet:

I don't know why she tweeted about going into the gym, suggesting she needs to compensate for the booze and sweet tooth. Look at Tessa in that swimsuit. Our assumption must be that the swimsuit photo is current, and we know the "I've been pigging out all month so I'm glad to get back to the gym!" tweet is also current, but how can the sleek photo AND the pigging-out-get-back-in-shape thing both be current? She's magic.

Well, even if she is a bit out of shape, super high heels are slimming:

$295 CAD. I think she and Piper Gilles are
fated for a beautiful online friendship.

A lot of ladies eschew heels when they're pregnant. And until the very end, a whole bunch of pregnant ladies wear heels straight into the delivery room.

Posh could manage heels while
pregnant, but Tessa is no Posh.
(Or Kate Middleton, who also
wore heels when pregnant)

Tessa started off the summer drinking wine and pigging out on French pastries while posing in a bikini in a way that appears to contradict all the wine and pastries she claimed to have scarfed down, but hey, she's young and an Olympian. I certainly don't think that photo is older or anything.

The real point of this post is a few of Tessa's upcoming tweets came my way, and I thought I'd share them here:

I'm going to put out something else I think: 1) I don't think Tessa's midsection up there is actually on the same plane as her swimsuit bottoms; 2) where is her belly button ring - is it dim because of the filter used on the photo or is it gone; 3) the actual naval is a different size than previous shots we've seen of Tessa.

I could never promote that message of concealing who you are with all of this going on in Russia. I’m kind of happy that I did it on my own terms.

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Ms. Bucsis said she finally opened up after friend and teammate Kaylin Irvine encouraged her “to actually live an authentic life.”

Anastasia Bucsis, Olympic speed skater.

Bucsis reputedly participated in an LGBT documentary
filmed in Sochi on the dl. Sounds great, but no way
it's as raw and real as Tessa and Scott's Journey to
Silver in Sochi, Which They Were Lucky to Get,
Considering How Their Skating Has Deteriorated,
and How They Work Each Other's Last Nerve.

Anastasia Bucsis tweeted the image in the blog's post below this one, and she's the athlete standing next to Scott Moir.

Sure, we're talking apples and oranges. There's no parallel between Bucsis's journey, and Scott and Tessa's desire to commodify their chemistry, aggressively foist upon the public their publicly platonic relationship as the real deal, so tune in, cause you don't get authenticity this genuine every day, while pursuing a pattern of baiting, switching, jerking the public's chain, while concealing from their targets the fact that they're married to each other, and parents together. Scott and Tessa aren't inauthentic inauthentic. It's just the public they're screwing with, and we know what we're worth. Pffft. Everybody who matters knows about Virtue Moir. Grappling with private and public acceptance of your sexuality and lying about it until you and yours come to terms is a serious matter; making idiots out of a public that earnestly supports you, defends you, and believes everything you say is just fun.

Still, I hope Bucsis doesn't become a regular sham facilitator. I'd like to think that synapses do fire somewhere in Canadian sports.

Randy Starkman is an "Olympic Sports reporter", who, in April 2011, had this article published in The Toronto Star:

22 year old Anastasia Bucsis is Patrick Chan's girlfriend

And we have this from The Advocate, published in 2013:

Anastasia Bucsis proud to be gay

in which Bucsis says she came out to family and friends two years ago. Which means, in 2011. This timeline suggests that in April 2011, at age 22, Anastasia Bucsis was in a thriving romantic relationship with Patrick Chan, inspiring him on and off the ice, according to Starkman. But before 2011 was done, Bucsis realized she was actually gay. Wasting no more time, she came out to family and friends.

Except:

Being closeted and not knowing any other speed skaters affected her performance in 2010, where she competed in the 500-meter event.

Closeted means "knew she was gay." In 2010.

I suppose Bubcis could have been so fearful, so committed to denial, that by 2011, she was in an actual romantic relationship with/deceived a young man who just happened to be Canada's highest profile male singles skater, the front-runner for 2014 Olympic gold, a guy who just happened to be promoting his short program as the story of a young man in love for the first time.* Whatever, by the end of 2011, Anastasia was done living a lie. I hope Patrick took it well. That has to be what happened there. It can't be that the relationship was an expedient publicity thing for both, for their separate agendas. What are the odds?

In the 2013 article, it's said Bucsis doesn't want her sexual orientation to be her entire identity, and her coming out publicly, in advance of Sochi, was a response to Russia's anti-gay policies. Not wanting her sexual orientation to be her entire identity certainly puts Bucsis ahead of Scott Moir, who wants his heterosexual, active duty penis to be most of his public identity. It never takes a rest, that thing. Always on task.

I'm not suggesting that Kaitlyn Lawes is gay. But as soon as it emerged that Kaitlyn Lawes was Sham Girlfriend V.3, we knew that Kaitlyn Lawes was promoting herself in a fake relationship. That's not anything we knew about her before. She handed us that one. In our role as the dumbass dupes, or at least in our role as the absolutely powerless, are we supposed to pretend not to know it's a fake relationship? Is it okay to ask why Kaitlyn Lawes would promote herself in a fake relationship, or to wonder, since she's in a fake relationship now, if her prior public relationship with DJ Kidby was also fake? I don't want to pussyfoot around, knowing she's got to be shamming for a reason, getting all euphemistic when it comes to one possible hypothetical (i.e., is this a Bucsis situation), while being perfectly comfortable explicitly hypothesizing the potential existence of a legit boyfriend she (and he) prefer to keep on the dl (a/k/a "the Cynthia Phaneuf option"). Both hypotheses are, in principle, equally benign. But we all know that not everybody, especially in Canadian sports, feels the same way.

Key point - when Bucsis came out, there was no mention (that I've found) of her having previously been "out" as Patrick Chan's girlfriend. Her contemporary narrative is that Bucsis was a painfully isolated closet case who, with the love and support of wise friends and mentors, found the courage to live an authentic life. But, if we remember that she was Patrick's public girlfriend, that's problematic - for Patrick. Sure, we now get Bucsis's side of things, but what about him? Why would he promote a fake relationship?

Let's not open that door. Just press delete instead.

These articles aren't information. They're chum. They're vehicles that provide the "journalist" with a clip, while positioning the subject(s) inside whatever frame it's decided serves their immediate self-interest. That's it. Whether the journalist is an "Olympic Sports Reporter" or a purple prose spewing groupie like Rosie DiManno, same difference. These "journalists" are hype hacks. For anyone who anticipates that the media will play connect-the-dots when/if Scott and Tessa reveal, nobody's going to connect the dots. Narratives are never matched against prior narratives. The only relevant narrative is today's.

At least Anastasia and Patrick didn't spend most of the 2011 Star article telling us how really really really real their love is, like it or not. Bullshit is standard operating procedure when athletes and celebrities position themselves in the public eye. It's content for content's sake, buzz for buzz's sake; the actual narrative is transitory, and often celebrities know the public is in on that. Scott and Tessa are different. These two continually underscore that they are not only the authors of their narrative, no matter how often it changes and/or contradicts itself, but the sole interpreters. They instruct fans what to think. They don't just lie their faces off, they take pains to emphasize how incredibly transparent, open and genuine everything is. It's one thing to market your bullshit, which pretty much everyone does, it's sort of another thing to market your bullshit specifically and proactively as standing apart from everbody else's due to how authentic and real it is, and then pat yourself on the back for your generosity and transparency. That extra step is pretty thuggish. They're not content to think the public might be responding a la - "Blah blah blah that's this week's story - maybe next week's will be more interesting." Tolerating any sort of sophistication or empowerment in or among elements of their public isn't in Scott and Tessa's playbook. They prefer to be better than, and condescend.

ETA: I just want to elaborate a bit more on the difference between what Virtue and Moir do, and regular spin/image shaping. Regular spin/image shaping doesn't often deal with facts, but attitudes, feelings, etc. For example, skating partners love and respect each other, can't imagine skating with anyone else, really appreciate this experience or that opportunity, aren't sure what their next step may be but are excited at what's ahead, blah blah blah. They could hate each other, be x-ing off the calendar til certain things are accomplished and they can be rid of the other person, they could find certain obligations and experiences tedious or worse, they could resent a whole bunch of shit, but at the end of the day, we're talking people lying about how they feel. If you think feelings are facts, maybe that's bad, but we all have to be diplomatic in our jobs. That stuff really does go to the professional side of things. Then there's the fake relationships, but very often, as with Chan and Bucsis, the two participants at least are actually single.

There's also stuff like Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries, where he later said something like he doubted she entered into the marriage with genuine intentions; it was all about the show. No duh, but, whatever her intentions, she actually DID enter into the marriage. Kardashian/Humphries weren't being marketed everywhere as an engagement/wedding/marriage while the reality was he had a wife and kids stashed somewhere and the entire thing was, factually, a charade.

Plenty of things are charades emotionally. "I hate you, but I have to pretend to love you." (Or vice versa, as with Scott and Tessa's "reality show.")

Scott and Tessa distinguish themselves because they actively, aggressively, market lies as facts. The selling point is that they're giving us facts. Where else is that done?
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*That's stronger promotion for Take Five than, say, "In Take Five, Patrick portrays a young man in love, a milestone the 20 year old has yet to reach in his off-ice life because he still shares a room with his mom."

The Scott and Tessa mark

syn·er·gy

the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects

Synergy

As I was about to hit "publish" on this post, I remembered the P&G "Moms" commercial, the one where Alma Moir recalled what she told Scott and Tessa as they were coming up in ice dance: "You need to leave your Scott and Tessa mark."

This past week, I watched Life Itself, the new documentary about the late film critic, Roger Ebert, who died last year. Ebert's original partner, Gene Siskel, died in 1999. As a team, they'd become multi-media celebrities, often more well-known than the movies, directors and actors they reviewed. On top of their own program, they were regulars on talk shows and were interviewed by all the entertainment outlets and major publications. But, when Life Itself looked at Siskel & Ebert’s career, it kept striking me as amazing that as their fame and influence grew, they remained movie critics. They continued to honestly critically evaluate the movies instead of Tina Brown-ifying themselves. If Martin Scorcese made a crap film, they called it a crap film, despite their admiration for his other work, and even more despite Scorcese’s particular vulnerability to their opinion thanks to a time he'd felt boosted by them when he’d been at a low point in his life. They respected a lot of Rob Reiner’s work, too, which didn’t stop Roger Ebert from saying this about Reiner’s movie, North.

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Imagine an era when somebody thought an audience could be insulted! Here’s the link:

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/north-1994             

He wasn’t just getting his hate on; he makes the case. Of course, it's also pretty funny.

Siskel & Ebert hobnobbed. Although both lived in Chicago, the job required they be in the thick of the show business scene. They were at the Oscars, the parties, in green rooms, at film festivals. They knew and regularly interacted with the people whose worked they critiqued. Despite this, if you were a movie-goer, you could rely upon Siskel & Ebert giving you their honest opinion about the merits and deficits of a film, without pandering. Jian Ghomeshi, they were not.

After watching Life Itself,  I found this from an interview they gave in 1998:

We have tried to move beyond the mainstream, and review foreign, documentary, independent and restored films, but audiences are more than ever driven by marketing campaigns. "Siskel & Ebert" is one of the few shows left on television in which opinions are even actually expressed; the vast majority of entertainment "coverage" consists of vampirism, in which media outlets attempt to borrow the fame of celebrities without expressing an opinion on the worth of their work. There is more coverage of a major movie BEFORE it has been seen than after. Example. I was recently asked to "write 600 words on Armageddon movies," and append my own list of the "top 10 Armageddon films," for a national magazine, as part of its coverage of the upcoming movie "Armageddon." This movie is unseen by me and probably by the magazine. I declined. Would they be interested in what I thought after I saw it? No, by then the hype will have moved on.

That was 15 years ago. Ebert called it Vampirism back then; today it's synergy. It’s about fame and self-promotion, for the journalists as much as for the subjects they cover. That’s it. Unlike with Siskel & Ebert, we, the public, don’t get anything out of it, certainly not enlightened discussion of the sport, definitely not any genuine insight into the skaters, not even into the skaters as athletes. The journalists are product, the athletes are product; we’re consumers, consumers are stooges, the end.

Although the Kaitlyn Lawes roll-out as Sham Girlfriend V.3 still appears to be in the early stages, upon review it mostly looks like a blatant attempt at a slicker level of execution, a semi-pro attempt at synergy. The curlers appear to want to enhance the profile of their sport, and when stars of "this" sport intersect with stars of "that" sport it's a good hook for instagram and twitter. That's the "Look how all grown up the sham has become!" part of it, but I think that’s only a piece of it. The other part is regular old sham. It's the curlers as burgeoning public personalities, or, as Tessa Virtue likes to put it, “personas.” It’s clear the curling team has launched a campaign to more widely disseminate and establish their public personas, and it stands to reason that, as individuals, they have varying levels of comfort with how real each wants to get with it. Should you want to get really really fake with it, Tessa and Scott are a natural, synergistic fit.

Jessica Dube and Scott came off as if they were personally branded by Debbie “I’m a genius!” Wilkes – that sham had a parochial, self-congratulatory vibe. Cassandra seemed like a straight up quid pro quo – Virtue and Moir were casting for a hometown girlfriend to appear in their reality show, Cassandra was an aspiring model/star wannabe who belonged to their London/Ilderton crowd, and ergo. Neither sham promoted skating, or did much else other than tell us Scott's penis had a female exercise partner, and it wasn't Tessa.

This sham seems to have agreed to promote curling, and the curling team (the newly sophisticated, synergistic part), and Kaitlyn must have her reasons to want a fake boyfriend, reasons which would be connected with how her own profile grows along with the widening profile of the curling team at large.

Were I Kaitlyn, I’d find a better candidate than a married father who has been aggressively hoaxing the Canadian public for seven plus years, but I’m sure I’m out of touch. This is the new normal. When I think about it, Virtue and Moir have lowered the bar, and clearly, their approach is making inroads. The likes of the Kardashians are so old school. The Kardashians actually are a family. Although a lot of people thought Anna Wintour trashed up Vogue when she put a woman famous for a sex tape on the cover, I think maybe one day we’ll be nostalgic that Kim Kardashian marketed a sex tape where at least it could be said she was actually having sex with that guy. As of now, the Kardashian level of authenticity is quite a few notches above Virtue and Moir’s, and I think pretty soon the Kardashian way of doing things will be obsolete. That's the Scott and Tessa mark.

It's not like Moirville is subtle

It's not random. It doesn't work like that.

And not for nothing, but let's remember a triple play of family events right after the Olympics last time and consider how it's setting up right after the Olympics this time. That didn't stop Scott from putting the Jessica sham on blast or Je taiming Jessica on facebook.

P.S. - this just occurred to me, so file it under the category of "Slow-witted":

Scott and Tessa could be being cagey about their retirement plans in order to keep the spotlight on themselves and Moirville. Yes, I think they want to stay in, but there's the need to stay relevant as well. Moirville went big the past two seasons, and went grabby. But Moirville isn't really good at saying "That's enough." Keeping the issue open keeps VM (and Moirville) in the spotlight.

Look at Shannon Woodhouse's follow-up:

Look at that follow up. Even "good friends" is a lot to see when you're watching from another table. What's the "can't say more than that." There's more to say but I can't say on twitter? Or couldn't tell if it was more?

This is such b.s. Imagine you work in an institution and at the next table is someone else who works there, dining with her well-known son, her husband and a guest. You get on twitter and tell the world the son is there with a well-known guest, and you put your name on that tweet. You don't ask permission to tell the world your colleague's business or her son's business. You know it's just fine you're putting news about a colleague onto the cybersphere. When a stranger on twitter follows up with a question, you are happy to expand and you are unnecessarily cryptic about the status of the famous son and his friend. Shannon Woodhouse is a freaking adult, a grown person, not somebody who just left school. This was a set up.

Please with this.

P.S. - Recapping DWTS tomorrow night - am not watching in real time so will wait til the videos are up on abc.com and elsewhere. I do know the scores so far - Meryl on top of the leaderboard. I'm anxious to see if it's the routine or the dancing (Maks got Willa Ford tens for Foxtrot once so it's not always dancing. But if he got Meryl to really do it, good for them. With Willa he pretty much held her up.)

I think there's bizarre score inflation for this season. I recently checked out the season where Zendaya/Val danced and that team got 8s for better stuff than they're giving 9s and 10s for this season. Maybe they're inspired by DW's ice dance career.