Thus spake ERIC P. CHARLES circa 11/25/2009 06:14 AM: > I think there is confusion over the thing to be explained. The question of > celebrity in this case is not "why should you trust someone who loves Garth > Brooks?" but "why should you trust Garth Brooks?"
That's not what celebrity is about, though. Celebrity has nothing to do with trusting the celebrity. It has to do with trusting the people around you, some of whom know things about the celebrity and some who don't. It's easier if you think about things like sports stats. Just because you argue that one team should win the next game or that so-and-so is a better quarter back than some other guy doesn't mean you trust that guy. It means you have some leverage for a trust relationship between various friends. > Why do we treat these people > as if they are part of our extended family? We don't. Just because I talk a lot about who Brad Pitt is married to doesn't mean I treat Brad Pitt as if he's part of my family. It _does_ mean that I have things to talk about with my friends who also talk a lot about who Brad Pitt is married to. > What do you really know about Garth > Brooks that makes you think you should buy a car he recommends? If Garth Brooks recommends we buy a car, we buy that car because it gives us leverage with our social clique (presumably orbiting details about Garth Brooks). > Why would you > care who he is married to? Because knowing that gives me leverage with my social clique. > Surely this type of interest and trust used to be > limited to village members. Surely then, that type of interest and trust is > being extended to a group other than the one it evolved to extend to. The trust is built up within and around the social clique, not with Garth Brooks. The celebrity is merely the fulcrum, the _category_ that makes trust a fine-grained thing. > I'm not really sure how the argument goes from there, but that part seemed > relatively straightforward. [grin] Yeah, people tell me that I've totally missed the point ALL THE TIME. So, it doesn't bother me to be way off base, here, too. I claim that it's not that straightforward at all. We are _not_ confusing "village" trust with "world" trust, as Nick argued. We are exercising a part of our extended physiology, namely the TV/Magazine media, in order to exercise/maintain a complex trust matrix. That's my story (aka rhetoric) and I'm sticking to it. ;-) -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
