I did a Google search for "how buzz is created for celebrities." There didn't seem to be a lot there. Probably, the last thing that celebrities and those who work for them and who profit from them want is for there to be a lot of information online about how a celebrity's reputation is created and maintained.
There was this publication from 2012:
Quotes:
Address:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/celebrity-public-relations-group-launches-social-media-company-to-create-buzz-worldwide-160662605.html
___________
That's saying it plainly, so it's understandable that the page of results wasn't crowded with other publicists saying the same thing.
I already know, from having tried to figure out how to manage my own reputation online, that primarily what online reputation management businesses do is create "positive content" that pushes negative content to the 3rd or 4th pages of search engine results for someone's name. This costs thousands of dollars.
Once you have name recognition for a client, then it's about maintaining positive recognition and minimizing negative recognition; am I piecing this together accurately?
How is that done?
I suppose what I'm also asking is how does anyone expect someone who criticizes people who have had these mechanisms in place for years to protect their reputations not to be annihilated?
What's the tipping point at which someone who is famous and wealthy can get away with anything?
The "positive content" generated for the rich and famous isn't exactly fake news, is it? Every word of it may be a lie, but most of it is probably never read, at least not by anyone other than young fans whose emotions have already been manipulated so that they live in desperation to read anything that has the name of their favorite celebrity in it. It's more like the advertising filler that used to be in paper newspapers; do they still have that?
Once someone is famous and popular enough, then online tabloids don't all need to be directed to publish positive content, do they? They can profit from reader interaction that is drawn to them by their use of celebrity names in content.
Negative content, which I remember being the prevailing type of content in paper tabloids in the checkout line at the supermarket before the advent of the Internet, is perhaps not as enjoyable and carefree for tabloids to publish as it used to be, especially because so many online tabloids can be read for free. Maybe people used to pay a few dollars per person to be amused by a negative tabloid story; what's the cost-risk-benefit ratio for negative, online, tabloid content in terms of the potential of being sued? If online tabloids are paid not by consumers but by advertisers according to how much traffic is brought to the tabloids, then publishing a lot of negative content isn't worth the risk of being sued.
Do I have this right so far?
When publicists/managers/PR teams have been in business for a long time, when they have one or more successful clients, when they have a track record of generating millions of dollars and committed fan bases, then what? Then the people who made the stars begin to gain respectability on a higher level of press, correct? They're interviewed by more serious news sources, sources which are read by more serious people. If their success continues, then they are given more formal name recognition of their own; they're listed by serious news sources as "influencers," and that's when the serious people who read the serious news sources start to pay attention.
How soon after a celebrity image coordinator attains his or her own name recognition as an "influencer" does he or she gain access to politics? What's the route? Fundraising? In the past, was it mostly fundraising? Now, is it a combination of fundraising and generating content at the social media of the influencer's clients?
How many years of manipulation and lying does it take for an entertainment industry influencer to have a seamless, respected network of celebrity and politics, a network which is so seamless and respected that the individual people in that network feel impervious?
Every so often, there's something or someone that doesn't blend into the pattern. Something a celebrity or several celebrities did; a more glaring indiscretion, even a crime, even a crime committed against a lot of people who aren't celebrities, even for a long time. What do they do if the thing or person doesn't go away on its own, is never permanently erased or intimidated, doesn't recant, and can never entirely be discredited?
Then it becomes a contest between might and intelligence. The sheer power to inundate all visible space with positive content about the wrongdoers and negative content about the person or people who are wronged is set against one Twitter, one blog, whatever the person or people who have been wronged can afford. And then the one Twitter, the one blog, has to get everything right all the time, just to create momentary breaks in the resounding chorus of ridicule, skepticism and, for women and sexual misconduct survivors, sexual harassment and other abuse.
Everybody already knows all of this. Older adults can understand it in the context of traditional media and public relations; younger adults have spent their lives in the virtual reality of these dynamics.
So, the logical route for someone who has been the victim of sexual assault by a celebrity is to publish his or her account anonymously, if he or she is too afraid to go to the police. The problem with this, as Justin Bieber has now demonstrated, is that when the celebrity's lawyers have shut down the anonymous Twitter, then there is no way for the person who has now been turned into a target to be contacted by people who want to help.
His lawyers have filed a $20 million lawsuit; how? To whom was the notice of the lawsuit delivered? To nobody? If his accusers want a copy of the lawsuit that's been filed against them, do they have to look for it online? His lawyers have also successfully asked a judge to make Twitter help them identify his accusers; obviously, the accusers weren't present or even direct participants in the court proceeding about forcing Twitter to provide all the information that it has about the accusers.
I think that's what's called a plan of attack. First Mr. Bieber's employees and managers shut down his accusers, and then they hunt them down.
The truth, as always, is irrelevant.
I don't mind making mistakes; you can't mind it too much or you'll be immobilized by fear, and I have more than enough of that already. If there was no Julie Gunn, then there was no Julie Gunn.
The denials of sexual assault that Justin Bieber and his team have published in statements and at social media are not credible.
