And belief is everything.
There was a mantra in the sixties that has long since disappeared. It said you didn't want to be co-opted. That was a grievous sin. To sell out to the man, especially when you expected a win-win, for them to have your best interests at heart, wanting you to succeed...
On their terms.
A price is extracted for every sellout. They say they'll let you do it your way, which is true, as long as it doesn't contradict their way, their goals, which are markedly different from yours. The man wants to maintain his business at all cost. Rough edges are excised. The key is to keep gaining adherents and never lose one. Come on, you've seen the stock market, it's all about GROWTH! Furthermore, companies are bought and sold all the time, different people run them with different precepts, and this is how you bury loss, bad decisions, you just sell to or merge with another. So if you're throwing in with the man, you can't offend anyone, you can't do anything off brand, you're already a second-class citizen.
So freestyle skiing was a renegade sport. Pursued by people who didn't want to be constrained by racing gates. They didn't want anybody to tell them how to do it. First and foremost they wanted to have fun. Which included not only skiing, but alcohol and drugs... You dressed in a certain way to stand out, akin to growing your hair long in the sixties.
But then came legitimacy. Inclusion in the Olympics.
Well, the sport had to be cleaned up. First came the outfits. With patches on the knees so you could see that the skiers had their knees together, something anathema in the rest of the ski world. Yes, ever since the late sixties it's been about skiing with your legs apart, creating a platform, for more stability.
And in order to make it fair, the courses had to be equal, so the moguls were manufactured, all the same, everywhere. This is like trying to make the waves the same for everybody surfing. And yes, surfing was in the Olympics this year and you can include that sport in the paradigm I'm establishing. That a small coterie looking for "legitimacy" and bread undermines the whole enterprise.
And there used to be three freestyle skiing events: moguls, air and ballet. But ballet was too judgmental, so it was dropped. And that killed it. No one does ballet anymore. As for aerials? It is now populated by gymnasts, not skiers, the fact that they have skis on their feet is incidental. Believe me, the average skier does not think about doing multiple twisting flips.
And then the sport evolved. There was a technical breakthrough. Shaped skis. Skis got wider and shorter and...
Bump skis got narrower, stayed relatively long and were soft. As a matter of fact, no major ski manufacturer makes a specialized bump ski anymore. There's one company that makes them in Japan, and you only see them on the feet of these mogul skiers in their inane outfits practicing precision in fake bumps. Something no one else in their right mind would do. But it's an Olympic sport!
As for snowboarding, you can tell me all day long how big Shaun White is, but the truth is for most of the past decade snowboarding has been on the decline, growth has subsided. Not only does snowboarding have some inherent flaws, snowboards are poor/difficult in the aforementioned moguls and they're useless on the flats, but snowboarding is no longer cool! It was Gen-X that adopted snowboarding and grew the culture. Talk about renegades. But now that it's been formalized, youngsters would rather ski, test limits out in the wild. And there are big mountain ski competitions, but it's certainly not an Olympic sport. They're daredevil enterprises, which is anathema to the Olympic committee.
It wasn't until the early eighties that people were made aware of how much money could be made in the music business. It was a combination of MTV and the CD. MTV had a singular playlist blasted throughout the country, whereas radio was Balkanized. And there were images! So if you were on MTV, you were on your way. MTV was around the world, so you could tour everywhere and sell your music on overpriced CDs and stars became bigger, and richer, than ever before.
But they had to be good-looking.
And then in the twenty first century, when recorded music revenue sank, bands became brands, and whored themselves out to anybody who would pay. The dollar became paramount. And the core, the essence, the music itself, secondary. You win a gold medal, does the sport matter? Not really! And medals trump the regular competitions. Everybody knows in ski racing it's about the World Cup, a season-long enterprise. The Olympics are just a set of races. But the Average Joe doesn't realize this, so if you can just win a medal... And in some sports, like swimming and track, there are a plethora of medals. And in most sports, the only glory is in the medals, you're forgotten for four years until the Olympics come 'round again. If you're REALLY lucky you can cash in on your fame, but only a few do, the rest continue to labor in obscurity for the next four years, after the previous ten to twenty of training...WHO WANTS TO DO THAT?
Yes, it comes down to what people want to do.
Rihanna was just declared a billionaire. I ask you, what does that have to do with music? NOTHING!
God, most of the statistics are phony. If you can't enter the chart at number one you need a new team, it's a game that can be played and won by everyone. But no one buys a record because it's number one, no one even listens to a track because it won a Grammy. You can tout your Grammy, but no one really cares but you. As a matter of fact, the more you get to core artists who are about the music foremost the less they care about the Grammys, because they know they've got nothing to do with music!
But the world wants to slice and dice, categorize, judge, when in so many endeavors this is impossible.
Like freestyle skiing.
Like skateboarding.
Like music.
Mogul skiing was never about precision, it was about hanging it all out, showing your mettle, as opposed to conforming. Watch the bump skiers today, BORING! It's all the same!
Same deal with skateboarding. It was about the trick, the cool factor. It was about the stars, not the victors. Falling was part of the game. Quick, name who won the skateboarding medals? YOU CAN'T!
Just like most people can't even name two Rihanna songs.
But they can mention multiple tracks from albums by old acts that younger people are unaware of.
But in order to play the long term, credibility game, you have to be willing to say no, in a world where everybody wants you to say yes, where selling out is a badge of honor, the the athletes/musicians/singers come and go, but the industry remains. You're just grist for the mill. And if you do it your own way you're derided.
Then again, we live in a world without credibility.
Which is why people are so hungry for it, for something to believe in. Which is the power of online stars/influencers, it's direct to the consumer. Of course too many are whored out to the corporations themselves, but so many fans see it as a badge of honor, how nobodies extracted money from the man, "ripped them off" in the parlance of the sixties. It's the influencer and the fan against the man.
Don't play this out too far.
Then again, most influencers don't last.
But for those who do, it's much more about them then the products they're selling. As for those getting clothes and other items just to feature them on their channel... The star is the items, not the people, and the old people burn out and new ones come in and no one maintains, because there's no there there to begin with, there's nothing to believe in!
You've got to learn how to say no. To do what you feel, not what others tell you to. The audience, people can tell. You can't measure it, but you can feel it. They don't print it in news stories, but people who hew to their values have longer careers, with more lifetime earnings.
But we live in a short term world.
Which is fine if you're working for the man at the corporation. But if the product is you, guard your image very closely. One misstep can ruin your career.
And know when it comes down to art, organization is anathema. Which is one reason artists have never been able to organize, they don't see eye to eye!
And that's a good thing.
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