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?

I see what you did there, Scott

This Q&A

reads like an email Q&A with cbc.ca*

has Scott answering this question:

Q: What made you decide on ice dancing?

With this:

Scott: Ice dance was a part of my life from a young age. My older brother ice danced and like many younger brothers, I wanted to follow in my older brother's footsteps. My first love was hockey, but it seemed the more I skated and danced with Tessa, the more I fell in love with the sport. Next thing I knew I had an extreme passion for the sport.

From Tessa: there was this:

Community involvement is also paramount, and I'm proud to say that both London and Ilderton have come together to help Scott and I in many ways. Needless to say, we have a wonderful support network that we rely on immensely. 

Do tell.

________________________
*Correct. The bottom of the interview says it was email.

Look who's here

Note - for some reason the gifs of the 09 4CC turned out huge, too big for blogger, so I'm going to have to do them again later before they can be loaded onto the post. Also, while I was trying to load the huge gifs, "revert to draft" must have been hit on this entry, so it went off line until I noticed.
`

Bryce helps Jessica on BOTB

Not surprised. I thought they'd bring in Bryce at some point, because BOTB loves stuff like that. But he's there.

Also here:

Bryce spotting Jessica's lift

I wasn't sure it was him at first because a few other guys involved with BOTB are also semi-tall, dark-haired and can produce five o'clock shadow every six minutes, so they look similar when they're bundled up. But the first link comments confirm it's BD. (To me, the second link looks a lot like John Kerr until it goes close-up)

If the Jessica/Scott sham were still going on, I believe this would still be what we'd see in official media and social media linked to BOTB anyway. Bryce. Not Scott. That's how it's always been. Only in strictly "personal" social media (Skate Canada's twitter is so inept I count it as personal - it's not that professional) did they sham it up.

I wonder why it's not Sebastien Wolfe helping her with her lift. :P

I've read Dube/Savage had a successful opening night, so congrats to them, but in the video of Bryce pitching in on ice, Jessica's face looks as nauseated with terror as it did most of the time when she was getting up there via Wolfe.

I had wondered how Jessica was going to navigate the aspects of the BOTB experience that didn't look like a natural fit, but if Bryce is helping out, problem solved.

Stop the presses. Carmen is difficult. (And a round up of other stuff)

http://www.lfpress.com/2013/02/05/local-pairs-new-routine-is-extremely-difficult

Latest gem from Ryan Pyette of lfpress. Carmen is HARD.

Better late than never, I guess.

The article doesn't spell out WHY Carmen is difficult, however. Suppose Ryan doesn't know?

How can that be? He's a figure skating journalist!

Apparently in an early iteration of this article he wrote that Davis White and Virtue Moir each have two world titles.

The article headline also calls Virtue Moir a "pair". I know they meant it as in "couple",  but "pair" has a specific figure skating meeting, especially if the topic is a team's competitive program.

What does it matter? It's figure skating!

I can't blame him for believing Davis & White already have two world titles - all of the press this season for Davis White have positioned them as without flaw and completely unbeatable and Virtue Moir more or less chasing futility. Scott Hamilton called Davis White the "Best in the world". You'd think they were defending World champs and reigning Olympic champions. But that's the memo. Davis and White are IT.

Pyette points out that Virtue and Moir haven't been able to beat Davis and White so far this year.

Does he know Virtue and Moir have competed against Davis and White only once this year?

He also brilliantly says that the difference will come down to who doesn't make mistakes.

I don't think so. I think Davis and White can make a couple of non-element mistakes or even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it twizzle error and still come away with 10s in pcs and +2 and +3 GOES and all their levels, but Virtue Moir will be held to the fire. Davis and White will get credit for apparent speed (to me it's hectic,  and Virtue Moir cover more ice per stroke and are actually just as fast) and Virtue and Moir will not get pc credit for the extreme difficulty of their program, nor will they get credit for their unison, extended blade drive, and control - or their own speed. The stunning twizzle sequence will be eh and meh - at least compared to Davis & White.

It's not that Davis & White aren't good - they are. It's that they are judged by a different standard. From many accounts by those who have seen both teams in the same competition, there's not much of a speed differential, and it's claimed by some who were at Worlds 2011 that Virtue Moir were faster. Davis & White are "busier" though. They're nonstop, they're hectic, frantic, breathless - and of course none of this says anything whatsoever about control. Varying tempo and pace (which is not the same as speed) elongating and holding some moves while demonstrating exquisite blade control says nothing about your skating skills. You know what says a lot about your skating skills? Churning through the program at a breakneck, one-note pace.

Oh well, the writing is on the wall and the momentum is on their side.

Now I'm going to once again bring up something I put in the comments section in the post below this.

Scott proclaims the greatness of Canada and Canadians while treating Canadian fans like dirt. But if fans were really the reason the sham exists, why would it be so sloppy, so schizophrenic, so unprofessional, smirking and inconsistent? Why would the amount of sham and the numbers involved consistently exceed what would be required if privacy were the purpose?

Why would Scott and Tessa stir the pot just when fans were doing what Scott and Tessa presumably want them to do - back off? And how is it that the interest of the community and the family and friends has not waned? They're always available!

You'd think they were all still in high school. Maybe they wish they still were.

It's not fans whom Scott and Tessa are managing and keeping at bay with the sham. Fans are just pretext. The ones being managed are the other hangers-on, old school friends, old family friends, skating friends, family members, the needy at Skate Canda (are any more needy than some Skate Canada directors) and the needy at home - for whom Scott and Tessa's gold medal is the validation of a lifetime or for whom their reflected glory feels like opportunity.

The sham might be easier to get your arms around when considered as a home town community expedience. It redirects the home town community's focus away from Scott and Tessa themselves, personally, while giving the community an ongoing role to play in their lives, a role that proves Scott and Tessa haven't grown beyond the community. They still need the community, and the community wants the reassurance that it's still needed.

It especially gives Tessa that buffer.

Not that I think Tessa wouldn't and doesn't adore having hundreds of people consider her family, and entitled to know and speculate on all the intimate details of her personal life and decisions with Scott, to her face or behind her back or both, regardless of their actual relationship with her.

This isn't corruption. This is an honor.
In Moirville, there is nothing more important Quinn Moir
could be doing with her first breaths. Her uncle
won a GOLD MEDAL.

(^The above photo made perfect sense. When a woman in my family gives birth, one of the first in line to hold the baby immediately after delivery is always the long-distance girlfriend of the mother's brother-in-law. Everybody wants her to display it as her profile photo immediately. There's nobody more appropriate.

^This kind of shit illustrates how grandiose the position Scott and Tessa's fame holds in the eyes and minds of Moirville. Their accomplishment is felt personally, sustaining the connection is important for the ego and personally validating; Scott and Tessa must never outgrow it. They're still the same - and as so many Ildertonians are still the same - what's more validating than the belief that the hometown heroes are as well?.

It seems very important to these Ilderton people. Who Scott and Tessa are, personally, and what they become - and who they validate -  has an importance that is disproportionate to the place it should occupy in the real lives of anyone not Scott and Tessa themselves.

To too many of them, it's about them. To quote John Lennon, it's bigger than Jesus for them. And as such, they're making themselves ridiculous.)

No doubt Scott and Tessa's little one will grow up to be as uninterested in the lives of their parents as most little kids are in the lives of their parents. I believe Michael J. Scott and his wife, Tracy Pollan, have said that their children are bored by Family Ties reruns from the time their parents first met.

It will be a thrill for neices Charlotte and Quinn to hear their names in the Kiss'n'Cry in public archival video of Scott and Tessa's competitive career, but Scott and Tessa's own little one isn't going to care that they were completely erased from the historical record of Scott and Tessa's exciting competitive career  - a history that everyone else in Ilderton has tried to put their public fingerprints on in one way or the other.

And Scott and Tessa's grandchildren won't care either.

What's really important is that the grown Moirs, the Medway and Fanshawe alumni and associations, and other connections in Ilderton and London feel validated and elevated NOW. Everybody, no matter what they're doing with their lives, is reassured that Scott and Tessa didn't become "better than". They still belong to home.

Scott and Tessa have helped them think and believe this way by giving them a role "manipulating" one of the categories of people the home crowd feels comfortably superior to - a bunch of women, a bunch of outsiders  - many of them GRAY HAIRED - who can afford to attend figure skating events or follow it on the internet.

As much as I've read from this London/Ilderton group, as congenial as they are - self-questioning they're not. Self-examination isn't their strong suit and maturity isn't either.

They walked into this with big heavy boots without ever examining some of its dubious premises and assumptions. They dug a crater sized hole with this thing that says more about their near insatiable need for validation and importance-by-association, that says more about the outsize, oversize role figure skating plays in their world, than it does about the reality of Scott and Tessa's "relationship" with fans or the role figure skating celebrities play in the world of figure skating fans.

What sets Scott and Tessa apart from other famous skaters? Their community. And who are the only ones with the outsized, ridiculous, absurdist, egocentric and puerile fan relationship schemes that have no link whatsoever to either privacy needs or basic logic? Scott and Tessa. This is all emotion and ego-based. It's neediness.

There's a connection. The sham does reflect the community.

Even though Ilderton's got farming roots, I think that community could use a little fresh air and its denizens could do with getting out more. Out of the skating world, out of a complacent mindset. At least before they decide it's perfectly fine to fuck over people who've done nothing to them, when there's no need for it. All to gratify their personal need to feel important by proxy.

If any of these people actually do hold a low opinion of fans, fan expectations and fan behavior, all we have to do is look at THEIR expectations and behavior, and their need to be included and involved, and wonder how much they're projecting onto fans. They're needy enough themselves. But of course, in their own estimation, they're a lot better than fans. Fans must be WORSE.

I bet fans are not. I bet what fans want from Tessa and Scott - Scott, especially - is a whole lot more reasonable than what these people expect from him. It must a nightmare - people who actually know you, equipped with a fan's greediness for validation, entitlement to access and a belief that they're due the details.

And that certainly does put Scott in a unique position among currently competing figure skaters, particularly his training mates who hail from slightly more diversified home towns such as Ann Arbor and New York.

The Cassandra/Scott photos have all been sitting (or one sitting, the other standing).
Or the "party pictures" - cut off at the waist and in at least one Hilborn bent at the waist.
Was Scott standing on a crate? Is Cassandra sitting higher up on something or standing
on a box up there? Let's see full body Scott and Cassandra side by side.

P.S. - down below in the comments someone mentioned how profilic a girlfriend Cassandra is being on twitter - she's giving Jessica a run for her money with the swoony chatter about Scott and vacations after worlds and missing him and how she loves and adores him  - all stuff most people twitter about to their besties. Especially when your pals live in the same city. Why text when you can twitter in front of strangers? Scott likes the type - Jessica had the same habits.

The comments also mention that Tessa's presumed boyfriends are less prolific. Well, yeah. They shoot out an instagram or one of their pals feeds them an easy one about Tessa, and then they're out of material. And why is that? They lack an audience. If Tessa decided to annoint one of those Medway boys as her new boyfriend, twitter would see a whole lot more activity, because none of it is really for us. It's to give the folks at home something to do.

I remember with Jessica. She'd have up a profile picture of just herself. She'd be posting deathless status updates about Starbucks or Cafe Presse. Facebook would languish like this weeks on end. Scott has dinner with the Queen of England - not a peep from Jessica or any of her pals. Scott who?

Suddenly - the bell rings and she'd bolt from the gate. She'd start posting all over the place - most of all on Ildertonian & Co. facebooks. At times you'd see her losing focus - substituting exclamation points for content, but it was all happening in one manic spurt. She'd be here, there and everywhere. Someone in Ilderton would sneeze and Jessica God bless you'd.

And why was she all over Moirville? Because they were waiting. It was to.give.them.something.to.do.

When you're trying to give people MATERIAL, quantity matters. You can't have half of Medway descending on the same status update or comment. You've got to post something on your own wall for Carol, Cara and/or Alma and maybe a couple of others, then you have to go running around all over Facebookland planting opportunities for everyone else to weigh in. If she slacked off, she'd hear from the Moir Matriarchs, you can be sure, so she ran it like her hair was on fire. Then,  just as abruptly as it all started  - silence.

Tessa - she had Fedor. I don't think the people around Fedor really gave a shit about using Fedor's sham connection with Tessa to claim some turf for themselves alongside the exciting Moir Virtue ascension road to figure skating royalty. Fedor had friends in US skating mostly, he had friends in Europe, he had peer friends and not as many older people up in his business, and he had car friends. So a twitpic and a passing mention of Tessa sufficed. He was just lip servicing with his end of the sham. He wasn't trying to feed multitudes. Unlike Scott. And the Virtue side of the family wasn't looking to get in on Tessa's sham action. Her stuff was just to balance out Scott's end, and Scott's end created activities for those from his community who felt proprietary. Tessa's end of things didn't have that mandate.

Same with Ryan Semple. Clearly a little personal publicity and a slightly heightened public profile was all he was seeking. He wasn't trying to serve all of the Semples plus the Canadian alpine skiing community with his Tessa sham.

P.S. it's fascinating how Scott, who takes every opportunity to remind us all that he's not on the internet, has had two girlfriends who, once involved with him, break with all their past practices and loudly proclaim their love for him and plans with him in front of strangers on social media, while ostensibly just chatting it up with friends. But their friends never return the favor and chat up their love lives on facebook or twitter. When it was Jessica, her friends Julie, Sarah, Adrienne and Vanessa, and her sister Veronique didn't use facebook to blast Jtaimes to their boyfriend, talk about how they missed their man, or run around tagging their boyfriend with hearts and winks, even though their boyfriends were on facebook. They all chatted it up with Jessica though, about Scott.  Hell, Jessica gabbed more about Scott than Anabelle did about Cody.

And now Cassandra and her friends and family. Are the girls responding in kind, sharing their love for their boyfriends incessently by name on twitter, in front of strangers? Sharing plans? Or is it all Scott's girlfriend? Cause that's how it goes with private, internet-shunning guys like Scott who are famous in their field. They always want their private lives and lovey dovey chit chat regularly paraded on the web.